One of the few usable clips from our outing for the opening of the Atlantic Grouper season 2017. Definitely demonstrates why you should always be checking your surroundings. Enjoy! Check out the blog. {igallery...
us that the much maligned and often overlooked boat trailer is just as vital a part of your spearfishing outing as any speargun. Remember to give your trailers the TLC they need and deserve to keep you safe on the road when your heading out or coming...
we would see here. While I'm grabbing the nurse shark (yes, with my hands) and I surface, I hear my brother in law's speargun go off but based on the little life we'd been seeing, I figured he shot another porgy or a snapper. I surface with the shark...
to shoot through, my brother-in-law offers me the shot because he was worried that he would bend his spear on his new Wong speargun with a shot in such close quarters (and that would make two spears he had bent). I had been able to straighten (a very...
the only way to even spot her was through a hole that I couldn't even get my shoulders into much less my head and a 100cm speargun. So she was spared yet again. It was getting late and the sun was low in the sky but we decided to make one more drift to...
she's a keeper... On my next (and last) drop, I work to get into the best position possible to line up the light and speargun as quickly as possible because by now, I'm practically spent but determined to land my first grouper of the summer. I drop, and...
getting off a shot. Needless to say, a couple of expletives were shouted underwater as I ascended and discharged the speargun. Having a little renewed hope, I reload (with two slings this time) and scan the reef one more time. On this pass I run into...
blue water spearfisherman used to very commonplace utilitarian devices that are now found on just about any size speargun. I myself used to think that reels were nothing more than a whole lot more line to deal with or get tangled up with after taking a...
closer proximity to the fish when she attempts her break. As I drop to the bottom and watch for any movement, I hear a speargun fire on the other side of the rocks I was watching. I come over the top of the reef to see Adrian making for the surface and...
15 feet away next to another ledge. Hey, as long as it gets in the boat! So I drop one more time to recover the entangled speargun and we're off again. Only one more Grouper left in our bag limit and we were pretty determined we would fill it. Luckily...
the sling in the cocked position to prove it. As with any sling, there is a considerable difference in power from a speargun but this sling design lets you load up with a more powerful band than you might otherwise be able to use with a traditional...
cleaning, fixing and replacing everything from the boat to every last spearpoint and nicked or weathered slings on every speargun. At least we made good use of the downtime and the fact is that you can never over-check your gear. It's what you depend on...
if only Damien and myself had gone so I was glad to have him along. He subsequently ordered himself a brand new 55" Wong speargun that he brought along for his first spearfishing dive. Considering we were going blue water and he had never been...
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...
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....
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...
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...
to do this. A normal joe like myself can do it, and do it well, if you have just a couple of things (besides a speargun:). 1. The desire to do it well. I often meet people who say they want to start spearfishing. But a lot of these people don't want to...
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=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.
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 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.
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...
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...
Well, thanks to Tropical Storm Cindy and Hurricane Dennis, my vacation this year pretty much sucked! Not only did the weather not cooperate, but I also had a congested ear which kept me from diving 2 of those few days that were actually worthwhile. Basically, the only day we shot anything worth mentioning, was the day they announced the mandatory evacuations for visitors. I won't even mention the actual conditions, because they were abysmal. The winds were kicking about 10-20 (depending on the...
Well it's hard to believe but another year is in the books. 2011 definitely passed in the blink of an eye. I guess it's true what they say... time does go by faster as you get older. I think it's yet another application of Einstein's theory of relativity. I believe that it goes by faster as you get older because the amount of time that passes is shorter relative to your age. When you were 10, a year was 1/10th of your life. At 50, it's a mere 1/50th so relatively speaking it's a hell of a lot...
Sat 8/4 Winds: SE 10-15 Seas: 2-4 ft Surf Temp: 81 F Viz: 20-30 ft We headed out this morning after missing the early morning low tide to see if we could find some mangoes at the reef. At first sight, it didn't really seem to be too rough, but first impressions are sometimes wrong (really wrong). The water was choppy and extremely sloppy. We hadn't even made it into Hawk's channel and the water was already throwing 3-4 waves at us. We rough it and continue on. We got to our first spot to find...
Some things are just worth doing again and again. For us, that thing is our annual Pirate Trip to Grand Cay. For 4 years now, we've been lucky enough to be able to pull off epic annual trips to the Bahamas for the sole purpose of spearfishing. Our first trip was to South Andros , and as epic as that trip was, since venturing out to Grand Cay on our second trip, we keep getting drawn back. Maybe it's the accessibility, maybe it's the environment, maybe it's just a great time! Sometimes, the...
Winds: See report below Seas: See report below Surf Temp: +/- 85F Viz: See report below Well, our vacation was a little less than cooperative this year. Both mechanically, and meteorlogically. The weather started out fantastic. July 3-7 (the weekend), was actually extremely favorable. Winds 5-10, Seas 1-3, Viz was in the 20-50 foot range, depending on the particular location, but overall, very favorable. Unfortunately, Sunday had to come... It started to rain on Sunday night, winds picked up....
I am still pretty much out of commission. My hearing has returned (most of it anyway), and most of the ringing is gone. I did get to go out this weekend. Unfortunately, I was only driving. But the conditions were as follows: The winds were gusting up to 35 MPH, and storms kept moving up from Key West through the lower and middle keys. It didn't make for a nice weekend for the land lubbers, but you could see bottom from the boat in water as deep as 25-26 feet. Considering the storms, the water...