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Things that are supposed to happen...
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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....
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.
{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...
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...
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: 5-10 S/SE Viz: 40 feet Temp: 84 F After hearing from my brother in law all week how incredible the weather had been (SOB even sent me pictures), it was finally Friday and time for me to get back down there to shoot some fish for myself. With yet another late departure plus having to fuel up the boat on the way down after that week in Cat Cay (ouch!), we didn't roll into the campground until after midnight. It was probably 1:30 or 2 by the time I got the boat parked,...
Seas: 1-2 feet Winds: 5-10 SSW Temp: 85 F Viz: 30-60 feet When I arrived Fri night we started talking about what we were going to do the next morning and figured that this weekend we would pull split duty. One group would head offshore to go for dolphin and the other would hit the patch reefs and go for some of the more local fare just in case the offshore outing wasn't as productive as one might like. So the offshore fishing crew headed out before dawn. I heard them setting up in the wee...
Winds: (Saturday) Variable 15-20, (Sunday) Variable 5-10 Seas: Light chop, 2-4 inside the reef, 5-7 outside the reef Surf Temp: +/- 85F Viz: 10-15 feet At least we were able to salvage Sunday out of this weekend. Saturday afternoon wasn't too bad, but the boat didn't want to cooperate, so we spent most of our afternoon working on it. It rained most of Saturday and well into the night. Sunday, we awoke to clear blue skies and calmer (not calm) seas. We headed out for a morning dive, and came...
Wind Seas Viz Temp S/SE 7mph 2' 25-30' 73F Disclaimer : No matter what I do or write, it is NEVER a good idea to dive alone. I do know better, but I'm old and stubborn (no excuses, just stating facts). No matter how cautious I am with staying in shallow depths, watching currents and waves, it's extremely dangerous to dive much less spearfish alone. The possibilities for life threatening situations are too numerous to count, so please don't follow my very bad examples. Since October of last...
Winds: 5-10 South Seas: 1-2 feet (maximum) Surf Temp: +/- 80F Viz: 25-40 feet Another beautiful weekend in paradise. The winds were mild and the temperatures hot! We dove some of our preferred patch reefs this weekend. We knew it was still a little early to catch those large mangroves we love so much, but we just couldn't resist. We only took a few, but they were choice! We even got a couple of nice mackerels. As long as you arrived before the tide line, the water was pretty clear... green,...
Seas: 1-2 feet Winds: 5-10 SSW Temp: 85 F Viz: 10 feet We took off this morning a little early to see if we could jump in the water a little before actual high slack tide just to see if we could take advantage of some cleaner water. To our joy and surprise, we were able to jump in an hour before the slack tide and make way through a couple of spots with a little better clarity than we had for the past couple of days. I was able to shoot a few nice sized hogfish and a couple of decent mangroves...