Well, this past weekend was supposed to signal in the start of my Summer with beautiful skies, calm winds, light seas and clean water. But as you should already have surmised from the lack of weather conditions at the top of this article (don't worry,...
I also purchased a new gun. I wasn't really in the market for one, but this one fell into my lap so to speak. We were at the cleaning station one afternoon when we start talking about guns with a couple of the other fishermen. One thing led to another...
July 7, 2009 - After a couple of days of putting off cleaning fish we finally ran into some good ones. Unfortunately, one of them was a bull shark. Check out the blog
July 7, 2009 - After a couple of days of putting off cleaning fish we finally ran into some good ones. Unfortunately, one of them was a bull shark. Check out the blog
to another year of phenomenal diving and spearfishing and wish the same for all my brethren. Here's to a year of calm seas, clean water and bountiful catches!
that may be with me. This kit has enough items in it to let me do anything from repair spearguns to make new slings to clean fish (after making sure they're of legal size) without depending on anyone else to supply anything at all. Luckily, Carlos' boat...
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, when I saw...
hanging around for a good part of the day. We ended up taking a chance and going out around 10a to see if the water was clean close by and if the current wasn't too bad (since high slack wasn't until 1p) so we could do a couple of drifts and try to pick...
week or two. As we headed out, we were very encouraged by the clarity of the water and how it appeared to be getting even cleaner as we headed further out from shore. By the time we got to our first spot, the water appeared crystalline and everyone was...
talking about what spots we might want to hit today. Once everybody was up, we geared up and headed out. We found very clean water on our way out, so we were very hopeful that we would at least be able to spot the fish assuming they were there. We hit...
We were a little surprised by the lack of boats that were out that morning but headed out anyway. The water didn't look too clean, but we figured if we looked around, we would be able to find some clean water somewhere. Unfortunately for us (but I guess...
Seas: 4-6 feet Winds: 15-20 SSW Temp: 85 F Viz: 25-50 feet After a week of East winds (and the wind was still blowing), the clean water finally got pushed far enough West so we could try to hit some of our spots in that general direction. We headed out...
add a few fish to our catch for the weekend since we didn't get to go out Saturday afternoon. We headed out in search of clean water only to find that the storms from the previous day had stirred up the seas a little and finding some clean water was...
wind had actually switched back to a SSW direction. We had been hearing that the temporary switch to the E wind had already cleaned up the viz as far as Islamorada, but it apparently didn't last long enough to push the clean water down to Marathon. We...
the area. During the time I was looking for the mutton, I kept hearing my brother-in-law's gun go off and I assumed he was cleaning up with the hogs that I was seeing in the area but was passing up on in the hopes of finding this mutton. I ran into a...
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...
{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...
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...
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...
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....
I realized recently that I had overlooked the fact that I had purchased and used some new SpearGear at the beginning of the Summer of 2011 and hadn't gotten around to posting about it (here or in SpearGear). This article is going to be one that definitely crosses over between SpearViews and SpearGear because of the fact that I do own it but I definitely think it's worthy of a review as well. In the end, SpearViews won the coin toss deciding where I would put the article (especially after I...
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...
Winds: 10-15 SE Seas: 2-4 feet (sloppy) Surf Temp: +/- 80F Viz: 25-60 feet Saturday was pretty much a wash for me due to the fact that I had to pull an all nighter on Friday and didn't get to show up on Saturday until about 3:30 in the afternoon. But after downing 6 or 7 beers and laying down early to get a full night's rest that night, I hoped Sunday was the beginning of a better weekend. Unfortunately, I was wrong, my brother-in-law was sick with a flu so it made it a little hard to get him...
Well, this past weekend was supposed to signal in the start of my Summer with beautiful skies, calm winds, light seas and clean water. But as you should already have surmised from the lack of weather conditions at the top of this article (don't worry, I recorded them at the bottom), it didn't. I mean, I did get to take the day off from work and take a nice leisurely drive down to the keys with everything in tow. Unfortunately, that's where the fun started and ended. As I'm driving down and...
Seas: 1-3 feet Winds: 15-20 SSW Temp: 85-88 F Viz: 10-45 feet This weekend started out with more of the same as the past few weeks as far as the viz went. We dove on Saturday. We were able to limit out, but it took a few spots and a fair amount of work. We just haven't had any luck with the clarity over the past 4 or 5 weeks and it seemed like we were in for more of the same since the wind had actually switched back to a SSW direction. We had been hearing that the temporary switch to the E...
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...
Seas: 4-7' (some 8') Winds: 15-25 SE Viz: 10-15 Temp: 86F I've always told people that even the bad weather is better in the keys. Well it would seem that Mother Nature is determined to test my resolve on my declaration this Summer. This has been without a doubt the Summer plagued with the worst weather and viz that I can recall. There have always been times of bad weather as is the case anywhere you go and anytime of the year, but this year the wind hasn't let up long enough to allow the viz...
Seas: 2-4 feet Winds: 10-20 SSE Temp: 84 F Viz: 3-50 feet We decided to get in the water for some bugs on opening day since we didn't do mini season last week (actually it was the 2nd year in a row that we don't do it). Little did we know what we were in for that opening day. We headed out early to try and beat some of the spot squatters that wait for day break on the water (because you're not allowed to night dive for lobsters in the keys). We were a little surprised by the lack of boats that...
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