The question came up as to it's table-fare worthiness, but I explained that this fish had meat much like that of a mangrove snapper, although they typically have to get larger than mangroves to get good size filets. Nonetheless, it was in the cooler. As...
could pick a spot at random and find good bottom and fish. We hadn't been in the water 5 minutes before a 40-50lb cubera snapper comes by and I unwittingly descend and give chase. I was able to get close enough for a view but not much else. The beast...
West we went the worse the viz got. We swam around for a few minutes trying to get our bearings when we chase a couple of snappers to an area that finally looks familiar. Almost immediately, I spot another grouper shooting under a ledge for cover. This...
me (and hopefully some of you) tremendously along the way. I have looked forward to my Summer escapades chasing mahi, snapper, grouper, hogfish and facing sharks and goliaths every Spring... that is, up until this year. Life as we all know gets...
better to have fish in the box! At our next spot, Carlos and I were still in the water together when he spots a nice Cubera Snapper while dusting up the bottom trying to bring some fish in. I spot it from the surface as well and I watch as he approaches...
As soon as I do, I see a grouper swimming along and I consider dropping in on it when I see to it's left a beautiful Mutton Snapper. I try to calm down but excitedly breathe up (more like "gasp" up) and drop on this gorgeous specimen. As usual when...
the ledge finding no fish, I glance over to my right as I start to ascend when I spot what seems to be about a 10lb Cubera Snapper. Cubera's are not common in this area or depth and I have only shot one other here about 12 years ago, so I immediately...
a couple of our spots on the way home. Our plan to head Southwest coincided with the second part of our plan to find the snappers. You see, last week was the full moon and the mangroves usually head out to spawn in the latter part of June after a full...
about 3 hours), I woke up to beautiful calm weather and we quickly decide to head West this morning to see if the snappers have started moving out to spawn since we haven't seen any real numbers in shallower water. Since we had visited the clumps last...
and has beautiful relief with large coral heads strewn along the whole line of the reef. I start seeing small mutton snappers darting about as soon as I jumped in. I keep scouting the reef looking for a legal grouper when I hear my brother in law...
20-25 feet away catches my eye. As I focus a little more I see the outline and the telltale dot on the tail of a Mutton Snapper. The fish was sitting in the sand facing away from me and had camouflaged herself very well by changing her body color...
August 24-25, 2013 - Lucky #113! In a lean Snapper summer, the new grouper spot comes through again.
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May 24, 2024 - Memorial Weekend Opener!
What an incredible way to kick off the Memorial Holiday weekend with this beautiful 25# PB (in Key Largo) Black Grouper. Found her in a spot I've been checking for over a year! I knew it would be holding something special one day!
What an incredible way to kick off the Memorial Holiday weekend with this beautiful 25# PB (in Key Largo) Black Grouper. Found her in a spot I've been checking for over a year! I knew it would be holding something special one day!
What an incredible way to kick off the Memorial Holiday weekend with this beautiful 25# PB (in Key Largo) Black Grouper. Found her in a spot I've been checking for over a year! I knew it would be holding something special one day!
March 4, 2023 - Key Largo African Pompano - Sailfish visitor
A video from a dive last week in Key Largo where my throw flasher proved to be exceptionally effective, so effective in fact that it brought in a special visitor that I never even saw until I was reviewing the video back at home! Stoked to check a fish off my bucket list with a beautiful 25lb African Pompano!
March 4, 2023 - Key Largo African Pompano - Sailfish visitor
A video from a dive last week in Key Largo where my throw flasher proved to be exceptionally effective, so effective in fact that it brought in a special visitor that I never even saw until I was reviewing the video back at home! Stoked to check a fish off my bucket list with a beautiful 25lb African Pompano!
After trying and being disappointed by the Omer Zero Cubed mask last year, I picked up a couple of other masks ( Mares Star and Sporasub Mystic ) that fit fairly well and did not disappoint, but were not the perfect fit I've been looking for in a low volume freediving mask so I didn't feel overly compelled to write a spearview about them. In defense of these masks, they are both low volume masks that are relatively inexpensive so for the money they are great purchases. Of these two, the...
{sigplus link=goprohero2 index=1} {/sigplus}I finally jumped on the HD bandwagon and bought myself a Hero2 HD digital camera by GoPro. These little beauties have been around for quite a while now so hearing about them isn't exactly news. But since I finally got around to purchasing one for myself and it happens to be that the Hero2 is the biggest leap in performance that they've given these cameras since their launch, I figured I would put in my 2 cents worth.
Back in March of 2010 I enrolled in and completed the FII Level One freediving course . I was extremely happy with the course content and the outcome (check out the SpearView ). Unfortunately for me, I'm not a professional freediver, so as with many people, life gets in the way and complicated which in turn keeps you from building a true regimen that reinforces all the good behavior learned in the course. Needless to say, I forgot some of the basics, fell back into many of my old bad habits...
Throughout my relatively short history in spearfishing (as of this writing), I have only used a few different spearguns. Now obviously, my opinion in this matter is not one of extreme trial and error. Mostly it consists of recommendations made to me by those I spearfish with along with some of my own common sense. In the beginning (early 1990's), I used one of my brother-in-law's extra guns. Specifically, a 38" Arbalette. Now this gun had already seen finer days by the time I started using it....
It didn't take me long to finish rigging up the 120 with a new reel and 2.2mm dyneema line. Unfortunately as of now (Apr 2009), I haven't had an opportunity to get into the blue water to put this new toy through its paces. I am definitely jones'ing to give it a try! I am also working on making my own flashers for use in blue water. I have been watching these being used on a few spearfishing shows and their reasoning seems sound for their success. They didn't seem too hard to make, so I decided...
Over the weekend of March 27 th & 28 th I took the Level 1 Freediving course offered by FII (Freediving Instructors International) at their Headquarters in Pompano Beach FL. FII was started by Martin Stepanek, a multiple time freediving world record holder. The Level 1 curriculum is taught over a 2 day course. The first day is classroom and pool based and spans almost 9 hours. This course is designed for beginning freedivers and is supposed to get novice divers to a depth of 66 feet.
Wind Seas Viz Temp 15-25 ESE 4-5' 30-40' 81F Once again, the most anticipated weekend for Florida spearfisherman rolls around and this year I actually got to plan some time off and hit it for a few days in a row. I hadn't had many opportunities to dive this winter (with the windiest winter I can recall) and even on those few occasions I did get to go, it just didn't live up to expectations. I was so excited to finally get back in the water this year for a full weekend of diving and...
Sat 8/4 Winds: SE 10-15 Seas: 2-4 ft Surf Temp: 81 F Viz: 20-30 ft We headed out this morning after missing the early morning low tide to see if we could find some mangoes at the reef. At first sight, it didn't really seem to be too rough, but first impressions are sometimes wrong (really wrong). The water was choppy and extremely sloppy. We hadn't even made it into Hawk's channel and the water was already throwing 3-4 waves at us. We rough it and continue on. We got to our first spot to find...
Winds: 5 SE Seas: 1-2 feet Surf Temp: 79F Viz: 30-40 feet Today was a beautiful day for diving in Miami. Unfortunately, the fish didn't seem to agree with us. The water was crystal clear all the way to Soldier Key, but we just didn't find the fish. We shot a couple, but we didn't really run into the numbers we are accustomed to. All in all, still a great day of diving.
Well, the FWC met for 2 days on June 8th and 9th, 2011 and not only had a changing of the guard with a new chairman and vice chairman, but made quite a few other decisions. Most importantly for Florida spearos and fishermen are the changes in the Permit, Florida and African Pompano bag, size and gear limitations. You might need to take your Captain's course to be able to identify the new Special Permit Zones (SPZ's) that they have apparently approved wherein anglers (both rod/reel and spear)...
Winds: SE 5-10 Seas: 1-2 ft Surf Temp: 81 F Viz: 20-30 ft This weekend we found a strange phenomenon in the water (at least it was weird for us). As we rode out to some of our spots, the water appeared to be practically crystalline. But when we jumped in the water we found a rather odd themalcline. When diving in about 30 feet, we found the bottom 5-6 feet to not only be warmer, but extremely dirty. The other odd thing about this phenomenon was that the water was extremely warm by comparison....
Seas: 3-5' Winds: 15-25 SE Viz: 10-15 Temp: 86F This week I was hoping for something a little extra. At the start of this weekend I hadn't shot a grouper yet all summer and I was hoping I would get the first one in spite of the fact that the weather forecast was pretty horrible and I was only going to get to dive Saturday because we had to get back home early this weekend to make it in time for a friend's daughter's birthday. So with little time and an unfavorable forecast, I was going to see...