We get to one of our spots and at first the water looks deceptively clean from the boat as we peer into it. We see some snapper swimming around so we gear up quickly and jump in hoping to make this a short trip with a full bag limit. Unfortunately upon...
to see if we can land a few more fish to fill our bag limits for the day. So we head out to Hawk's channel to dive for some snapper and more hogfish. This trip came up almost empty with only 2 hogs to show for our effort. I had spotted two 8lb muttons...
in the end as the fish seemed to be a respectable 14-16lb specimen. The day proceeded slowly with a couple of hogfish and snappers being bagged (not by me) as we worked the heavy seas for hours all the while looking for more grouper. It wasn't until we...
bottom coming up at me like I hadn't seen all Summer. Even though the only fish we found here were some larger schoolmaster snapper, it was great to drop and swim around the boom to see if anything larger would show up. When we had pretty much decided...
with the entire family on board, we decided to head out West without hesitation hoping we could find more of some of the snappers we had found a few weeks ago (even though that wasn't even all that much). We had hit a few spots back then that had some...
all it was still a great day (no matter how horribly I was shooting) as my friend Adrian ended up with about a 10# mutton snapper as well as a 24" red grouper (he's really annoying that way ;). We held off on cleaning fish that day because the women...
That's not to say my re-entry wasn't without it's sting... At the next stop, my brother in law shoots one of the nicest snappers we've seen in weeks (at least in our cooler) and I come up with a big goose egg. We move on and at the next spot, I decide...
to the West was especially dirty. First stop, #58. A nice shallow warm up dive (only about 20 feet) that usually holds snapper with an occasional whopper thrown in for good measure. We swam around #58 and after not being able to find the main landmark...
shot but I got the fish so I was still stoked. As I'm dispatching the fish and reloading my gun, I notice a legal mutton snapper has let his curiosity get the better of him and has moved in close to investigate what all the commotion is about. Those of...
that shot on the big one. The fact is that if it weren't for that very reel, I would have lost my personal best Mutton Snapper that I shot on my first Summer dive of 2010 (see May 22, 2010 - It's about time). But this new reel is the epitome of form,...
Grouper since the limit is now only 1 Black/Gag per person (and we weren't targeting Red Grouper in this depth) and a few Snapper but the water was clean and we figured this was our last stop on this whirlwind tour before heading home so we were really...
less clean due to the constant wave action against the nearby rocks. There I saw a legal Black Grouper as well as a Mutton snapper that was probably about 10lbs, but missed the former and couldn’t close the gap on the latter to take a shot. Nonetheless,...
heading West chasing fish, clean water and open spaces with limited success. We hit a couple of spots with big numbers of snappers, but not very many were of any considerable size. We were able to pick out one or two good sized fish but never seemed to...
the shot... Bobby 1, mangroves 0. If you've seen the video in the video library of the staghorn, you would know that the snappers on this spot love to hide in that rock, so I immediately head over to it and wait for the fish to start showing up. Sure...
Type:
Article
Author:
Bob Diaz
Category:
SpearBlog 2011
Results 41 - 60 of 116
Gallery Spotlight
June 16-17, 2012 - First "Full" Weekend this Summer
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 4th of July holiday I was able to break in my hawaiian sling made by HawaiianSling.net (Ray Uppstrom). I had purchased this quite some time ago in preparation for a trip to the Bahamas and I finally got to try it out in the waters around Cat Cay, South Bimini. This isn't your normal hawaiian sling. The design is completely unique and interesting in its approach compared to traditional slings. This sling is much more akin to a bow and arrow than it is to a regular sling and it looks...
Believe it or not my latest addition to my spearguns is not one for shooting fish (well at least not shooting to kill them). But it hopefully will help others watch online what I love to do underwater. I have made a camera mount for my Riffe Euro guns. This mount will fit on any Euro that has the reel inserts (basically all of them). It was terribly simple to make. The only fairly tricky part was putting together the actual mount screw for the camera tripod mount itself.
This year at The Blue Wild I was fortunate enough to meet Mike Hickey. I know of Mike from his appearances on Speargun Hunter on the Outdoor Channel with Sheri Daye. Mike was orginally a guest on the show and in later seasons participated as an underwater videographer. Mike is the USA distributor for FreeDivers ( FreeDivers USA ) spearfishing equipment. I came across his booth and after a great conversation about spearfishing, we started discussing the rising cost of spearshafts specifically....
Over the winter I looked into and purchased a couple of sets of Reef Runner Gear's fin skins. I had contemplated having my own manufactured but when I came accross these, it just didn't seem worth the hassle. You can create your own custom design for a few bucks more and although you can run into some small snags when doing so (I'll elaborate later on), Jon from Reef Runner Gear is an awesome guy to work with and he will do everything he can to make things right.
This past weekend, I finally got to go to The Blue Wild dive expo. After 3 years of everybody telling me about it and not being around to get to go to it, the stars finally aligned and I was able to check it out. Unfortunately, it meant missing out on 5-10mph winds and less than 1' seas inside the reef, but there were other reasons I couldn't get out this weekend, so I figured I would take advantage to check it out and possibly win something from the raffle to boot (I won't keep you in...
Winds: 10-15 SE Seas: 2-4 feet (sloppy) Surf Temp: +/- 80F Viz: 25-60 feet Saturday was pretty much a wash for me due to the fact that I had to pull an all nighter on Friday and didn't get to show up on Saturday until about 3:30 in the afternoon. But after downing 6 or 7 beers and laying down early to get a full night's rest that night, I hoped Sunday was the beginning of a better weekend. Unfortunately, I was wrong, my brother-in-law was sick with a flu so it made it a little hard to get him...
Wind Seas Viz Temp NW 5-10mph 1-2' 20-25' 75F It seems like once you break the ice of making it out the first time, all your subsequent attempts at getting out on the water just seem to come a little easier. So with another good weather forecast on the horizon this week, I started the calls on Wednesday to see who might be interested in another outing this weekend. After connecting with the usual suspects, my brother in law and I decided to go out on Sunday as the forecast was just a little...
Seas: 1-3(am) 3-5(pm) Winds: 10-20 ENE (am) 20-25 ENE (pm) Viz: 30-50' Temp: 81F This week's forecast was calling for a fairly typical Memorial Day weekend, rainy and windy. But what were the chances that those charlatan voodoo witch doctors (more commonly known as meteorologists) would get it right this week? I've lost count of the number of times the meteorological evangelists promised wonderfully light winds and calm seas only for me to make the hike and arrive to find weather conditions...
Seas: 1-2 feet Winds: 10-15 E/SE Viz: 15-25feet Temp: 82F On Friday once again, the winds and seas were cooperative and allowed us to get out for some more long awaited dive time. We stayed out west on Friday because we thought we had our best chances for clean water. We don't exactly get an early start as has been our habit this past week. We get underway around 10a and head southwest. We stop off at #67 to find that the water still hasn't cleaned up this close to home yet. In addition to...
Seas: 2-3' Winds: SSW 10-15 Viz: 25-40' Temp: 82F After yet another weekend with a minimal breakdown on the boat (just remember, BOAT= B reak O ut A nother T housand), I head down this weekend trying really hard to remember why I do this. After all, the past few weeks have been nothing but breakdowns, bad weather and bad seas with only a couple of bright spots along the way As a matter of fact, I mentioned the fact that it had been a few weeks without any really mentionable fish for me to my...
Seas: 4-7' (some 8') Winds: 15-25 SE Viz: 10-15 Temp: 86F I've always told people that even the bad weather is better in the keys. Well it would seem that Mother Nature is determined to test my resolve on my declaration this Summer. This has been without a doubt the Summer plagued with the worst weather and viz that I can recall. There have always been times of bad weather as is the case anywhere you go and anytime of the year, but this year the wind hasn't let up long enough to allow the viz...
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