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....
{sigplus link=oculusr5 index=1} {/sigplus}Hot on the heels of my review of the GoPro Hero2, I felt I would be remiss if I didn't follow up with a review of the case that resolves the one (and only one in my opinion) flaw in the Hero2 design, it's underwater focus (or lack thereof) flaw. You see, as I wrote about in the Hero2 review the curved lens on the stock case creates a focus fallacy when shooting underwater. It's fairly common knowledge now, so if you want to read about it, you can check...
The summer had been busier than I would have liked this year and I honestly hadn't had as many opportunities to post much less given much thought to writing a new SpearView, but after having time to really reconsider, I realized that I had actually had multiple opportunities to try out new equipment this year (not all of it successfully). Further to that point, when I took the PFI Freediver course back in March I had decided to invest in a new mask and ended up deciding on the Omer Zero Cubed...
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.
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...
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...
Seas: 1-2 feet Winds: 10-15 E/SE Viz: 15-25feet Temp: 82F The winds continued to to calm down today so we headed out to see if the viz had improved as well. We headed west today hitting some spots in about 25-35' hoping we could run into some more large mangroves. It was just 2 of us today (my brother in law and me) so the limit would only be 10.
Wind Seas Viz Temp ESE 5mph 1-2' 40' 81F This past week started out looking very bleak. Storms rolled through the middle keys pretty much all day Monday and Tuesday with torrential downpours and winds in excess of 30mph. It was so bad in fact that people that had intended to stay the week decided to head for home and see how the week progressed from a distance. Between the wind that had picked up last weekend and the horrible weather at the opening of the week we pretty much thought that the...
Winds: 30 east Seas: 5-8 feet Surf Temp: ?F Viz: 0 feet Unfortunately, even the weather people have to get one right every once in a while. This weekend was everything just as advertised. The winds were howling at about 25-30 mph from the east which made it for very rough going for those brave few that even attempted to get on the water this weekend. We ended up breaking out some frozen fish and lobster and cooking up a big meal for everyone. While the company was great, the fishing was...
I am very excited to have another year of spearfishing and freediving just about ready to begin. Last year we were able to get a couple of winter dives in with some pretty decent results , so we hope to do even more of that this winter. As soon as the weather permits, we will be donning our wetsuits and jumping in for some fun getting back into shape for the summer ahead.
Seas: 1-2 feet Winds: 5-10 E/SE Viz: 35 feet Temp: 85 F So I head down a day early this weekend to take advantage of the opening day of lobster season (August 6 for those that don't know). The forecast called for 1-2' seas all weekend so we were hoping for some smooth sailing and clean water. Since the craze is usually so out of hand in the keys, our plan was to be on the water before sunrise so we could be on our first spot by the time there was enough light to see. The forecast didn't...
Winds: 5-10 South Seas: 1-2 feet (maximum) Surf Temp: +/- 80F Viz: 15-25 feet The viz was about as good as it was last weekend, but the important thing is... NO BULL SHARKS! It sure was nice to be able to actually shoot more than 1 or 2 fish before having to move to another location. We took our time picking out the best of the schools and ended up shooting a couple of really nice mangoes and hogs. We've been going more for quality than quantity lately and it has been very gratifying. The...