made the blunder in our favor.. advantage Team Breathtaking! As we head out deciding which cardinal to take in search of clean water because it's so late, we notice the radio is all a-chatter with tons of johnny-come-lately fisherman (a group we are...
after last week's results and obviously his enthusiasm went unrewarded. Unlike last week where we ended up regretting not cleaning our daily catch, we figured it was safe to assume that our bounty of 2 would not slow us down too much on Sunday...
mahi, dolphin|limit=1} All I can say is two things... "What a great day!" and "Damn, I wish we hadn't put off cleaning Saturday's catch...". It was a ton of work, but a ton of fun too and the exhaustion you feel is that satisfied exhaustion of having...
like women hoard pairs of shoes) I had some problems being the driver, navigator and spotter. The water was actually fairly clean (at least 30' viz) even though the winds were easily in the 15-20mph (WNW) range. It got a little choppy once we got out...
holiday toasts people have made over the past couple of weeks... Here's to the beginning of another year with calm seas, clean water, safe dives, straight aim, long breath and of course Big Fish!
must have been hundreds of them! Once we got back and refueled the boat, it was time to head out beyond the breakwater and clean our fish. Luckily I've done it once or twice before and was able to dispatch the cleaning duties relatively quickly, even...
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...
day frenzy. Come Saturday morning, we had a number of choices for activities to perform. There were boats to be worked on, clean water to search for and new territories to be explored. Luckily for me, we didn't tackle them in that order. We decided that...
close for the upcoming mini season, (where the viz ranged from 1-5 feet) we decided to venture out to see if we could find clean water beyond the reef line. As we cross Hawk's Channel, we are greeted by constant 5-6' seas but apparently my friend's...
the forecast called for and we of course hoped that it would settle down by morning to see if we could head out in search of clean water. As I awoke on Saturday and stepped outside however, it really didn't look like things were going our way. In spite...
boat. Saturday didn't hold any surprises either. We took off around 10a and headed to the reef line. We arrived to find semi clean water at the first couple of spots (#67 and #25). #25 is a spot that we found a couple of years ago with another dive...
to get out for some more long awaited dive time. We stayed out west on Friday because we thought we had our best chances for clean water. We don't exactly get an early start as has been our habit this past week. We get underway around 10a and head...
ice trips so many times before it becomes old hat. So even though we got a late start we head out to see if we can find some clean water. The seas didn't seem to be much more than 2-3' so we figured it was now or never. Our first stop, #58 (Ole...
the usual suspects so we can decide what we would do today. After a little discussion, we decided to head West to see if the clean water had continued to be pushed in that direction by the wind and tides. We hit some regular spots as well as doing some...
was another beautiful morning with 5 mph winds out of the East and dead calm seas. For the third weekend in a row, the water cleaned up beautifully as we passed Hawk's Channel and the blue water was in clear view. {phocagallery...
by noon, we would have enough time to check out some of our closer haunts during slack. As we headed offshore, the water cleaned up beautifully once again (just like last week) as we passed Hawk's Channel. Even at 30+ mph and in over 35' of water, the...
Type:
Article
Author:
Bob Diaz
Category:
SpearBlog 2010
Results 41 - 60 of 109
Gallery Spotlight
June 9-12, 2018 - Grand Cay - 4th Annual Pirate Trip
March 4, 2023 - Key Largo African Pompano - Sailfish visitor
A video from a dive last week in Key Largo where my throw flasher proved to be exceptionally effective, so effective in fact that it brought in a special visitor that I never even saw until I was reviewing the video back at home! Stoked to check a fish off my bucket list with a beautiful 25lb African Pompano!
March 4, 2023 - Key Largo African Pompano - Sailfish visitor
A video from a dive last week in Key Largo where my throw flasher proved to be exceptionally effective, so effective in fact that it brought in a special visitor that I never even saw until I was reviewing the video back at home! Stoked to check a fish off my bucket list with a beautiful 25lb African Pompano!
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....
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....
{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.
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.
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.
Seas: 1-2 feet Winds: 5-10 NE Temp: 77 F Viz: 50-60 feet I had been watching the forecast for the past week to see if today would be the day that I get to jump back in the water for the first time since Labor Day. Last week, it was blowing a solid 30mph all over South Florida so I was a little concerned. I was hoping it would die down early and long enough to let the water clean up and get a shot at some dive time. After watching the forecast winds decrease every day over the past 3-4 days,...
Winds: 5-10 south Seas: less than 1 foot Surf Temp: 78F Viz: 25 feet As far as the above water weather, it would have been hard to do much better than this weekend. The winds were next to non-existent and we experienced seas of less than a foot up to 7 miles out and could see it was flat as far as the eye could see. It definitely made for a quick trip out to any of our spots offshore. The only real issue was the haze from the brush fires in the Everglades that made the entire sky look like we...
Seas: 2-3' Winds: 15-20 NE dropping to 10-15 SE in the afternoon Viz: 30-35' Temp: 82F "Third time's a charm", or so I thought... as I headed down for another shot at what would hopefully be my first "full" weekend of the Summer. With the boat in tow after working on it during the week to resolve fuel flow problems caused by the introduction of ethanol into our fuel supply (Thank you, big oil) I call ahead to have a friend turn on our A/C so temperatures are tolerable for our arrival. I get a...
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 west Seas: less than 1 foot Surf Temp: 79F Viz: 35 feet Thank goodness that weathermen (or weatherpersons, don't want to be sexist) don't know shit from shine! The weather reports for this weekend would have had you believe that it wasn't even worth going out this weekend, but this was one of the nicest calmest days, in recent weeks. As we headed out the flag on the campground pole was barely flapping so we hauled ourselves out to some of our favorite closer spots and jumped right in.
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...
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