Things that are supposed to happen...
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.
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...
{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...
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....
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...
Winds: 5-15 South Seas: 3-4 feet Surf Temp: 84 F Viz: 20-35 feet This weekend we finally started to find some cleaner water without having to go too far offshore. For the past few weeks, the real clean water was unfortunately a little deeper than we are accustomed to diving. But over the past week, it seems as though the blue water has moved in a little closer to shore and started to give us a break on viz. We were actually able to spot and follow most of our prey without having to commit to...
Seas: 1-3 feet Winds: 10-15 S/SE Viz: 45 feet Temp: 84 F Don't get me wrong. Regardless of my title for this article, I wouldn't trade the worst weekend in the keys for one sitting at home. And it wasn't the weather or the fishing but the fact that my ear has pinched up on me for 2 straight weeks making it extremely difficult to dive as long or as deep as I want to, so it's pretty frustrating (and painful). On the up-side though, for the first time that I can remember in my years of...
Winds: (Saturday) 2-5 Variable Seas: (Saturday) 2-3 inside the reef, 2-3 outside the reef Surf Temp: +/- 84 F Viz: 25-30 feet Unfortunately, due to some mechanical difficulties, we were only able to dive Saturday morning, but the morning was very nice. High tide was at about 10:30am, and we were about an hour early. We fought the incoming tide for about 30 minutes before it started to slacken up. After that we got a good 45 minutes of slack tide, where we were really able to make up some...
Seas: 1 feet Winds: 5-10 E/SE Viz: 50-60 feet Temp: 80 F The weather had been holding up all week and the forecast from NOAA indicated the weekend would be more of the same, so I had been anxiously waiting all week for Friday to come along. After a long week of meetings at work (which sometimes felt like they would never end), there were times I couldn't wait for the weekend but Friday was finally here and I was ready for a good day. As far as work days go, Friday was as good as one could...
Winds were 2-5 out of the East. Seas were for all intents and purposes flat. Unfortunately, in the area of Marathon and Big Pine Keys, the water was extremely dirty. Actually, it looked to me like an algae bloom. The temperatures have been inordinately high lately and with a little bit of rain, these things can happen. In depths as shallow as 25 feet, the bottom was nearly unidentifiable. You could still spearfish, you just had to use a lot more bottom time just in the hunt. You also had to...
Seas: 5-8 feet Winds: 20-25 ESE Temp: 78 F Viz: 5 feet We pulled in late Friday night after a brief (who am I kidding?) legal discussion of highway driving with a friendly Monroe County Sheriff's Deputy. According to friends that arrived before us, the winds picked up around 9p. There weren't too many storms, but the winds didn't let up all night. Up before the crack of dawn Saturday morning, we found the conditions had actually deteriorated even more from the night before. High tide was too...