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 20-21, 2009 - Mild winds, calm seas, crappy viz and a few bull sharks.
I wasn't really prepared to do or record this when it happened, but while offshore doing some Mahi fishing off of Key Largo in July '23, we had a bull mahi that would not leave and would not take a bait no matter what we did. Since we never leave home without our spearfishing gear, I suited up and what happened next was.... well, that's why you watch the video.
I wasn't really prepared to do or record this when it happened, but while offshore doing some Mahi fishing off of Key Largo in July '23, we had a bull mahi that would not leave and would not take a bait no matter what we did. Since we never leave home without our spearfishing gear, I suited up and what happened next was.... well, that's why you watch the video.
This review is actually long overdue as I've had this mask for well over a year now and I honestly don't know why I hadn't done it before now. After trying multiple masks over several years (and several hundred dollars), some were good (Mystic, Star, Nano), and some were bad (Zero Cubed). Before this, I had actually decided upon the Cressi Nano as "the one". I thoroughly enjoyed the fit and volume of the Nano, but there were a couple of VERY minor issues with the fit. I'm convinced that the...
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....
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...
I finally bit the bullet and decided to sell my No-Ka-Oi. It had gotten next to no use in the time I had owned it and it seemed a shame to have it just sit there so I Ebay'd it. With the funds from that sale, I invested in a gun that is a little more multi-purpose (at least that is how I convinced myself to get it :). I was extremely torn among 3 choices. I was considering the Euro 120, 120x and 130. After a couple of weeks of deliberation and a lot of flip-flopping, I decided on the Euro 120....
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...
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...
Seas: 1-3 feet Winds: 15-20 SSW Temp: 85-88 F Viz: 10-45 feet This weekend started out with more of the same as the past few weeks as far as the viz went. We dove on Saturday. We were able to limit out, but it took a few spots and a fair amount of work. We just haven't had any luck with the clarity over the past 4 or 5 weeks and it seemed like we were in for more of the same since the wind had actually switched back to a SSW direction. We had been hearing that the temporary switch to the E...
Seas: 2-6 feet Winds: 15-25 E/SE Viz: 8 feet Temp: 84F This past weekend we were visited by what started as tropical depression three and ultimately grew into tropical storm Bonnie. Although the storm itself was ultimately ineffectual, the build up for it was of monumental proportions. As usual the weather forecasters declare doomsday in the Florida Keys during the week as their forecasts had the storm building to over 50mph and traversing right through the middle keys. By Friday morning, the...
Winds: 20-30 Variable Seas: 3-5 Surf Temp: Like I went in the water... Viz: Unknown, but most likely nil Well, thanks to our first official tropical depression (later to become Tropical Storm Alberto) of the 2006 hurricane season, we did not have much fun at all this weekend. The weather was miserable to say the least. The tropical depression was sitting just below and to the west of us and kept pounding us with winds and cyclical rain (almost like bands in a tropical storm). All was not lost...
Seas: 1-2 feet Winds: 5-10 SSE Temp: 82 F Viz: 10 feet More of the same (or actually worse) with respect to the viz this week. We hit a couple of shallow spots at slack but found no fish, so we headed a little bit offshore to see if the water had cleared up since last week. To our dismay, we found the water conditions were probably about as bad as they were last Sunday. We were in 30 feet of water and diving 20-25 feet to get a clear view of the bottom. This first spot only had a few fish that...
Winds: 8-10 South Seas: 2-3 feet Surf Temp: 82-83 F Viz: 20-35 feet (variable with the tideline) This weekend started out pretty nice. The weather was agreeable on Saturday to the tune of mild winds and very tolerable seas. On Saturday, we were able to head out to some of our offshore patch reefs and shoot up the mangoes with enthusiasm. We hit a couple of our favorite patch reefs and shot about 24 of the beautiful snappers, all in a very respectable size range. However, just as the dive was...
Winds: 15-20 SouthWest Seas: 5-6 feet Surf Temp: 84 F Viz: 20-25 feet This year's mini season was a little different for us since we went down to the keys to find our bugs. We usually stay close to home to go bug hunting for these two days, but the last couple of years had been a little more than disappointing so we decided to shake it up a little. We did end up bagging our limit, but with the limit in Monroe county being half of the Dade limit, it sure didn't add up to much! We didn't worry...
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