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...
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.
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.
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...
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...
This past weekend, I finally got to go to The Blue Wild dive expo. After 3 years of everybody telling me about it and not being around to get to go to it, the stars finally aligned and I was able to check it out. Unfortunately, it meant missing out on 5-10mph winds and less than 1' seas inside the reef, but there were other reasons I couldn't get out this weekend, so I figured I would take advantage to check it out and possibly win something from the raffle to boot (I won't keep you in...
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 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...
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,...
Seas: Sat - 1-2' Winds: Sat - 5-10 SW Viz: Sat - 15-20' Temp: Sat - 84 F I can't say I wasn't a little worried since the week before I finally get away for some time off after months of dealing with work responsibilities and a host of other distractions was more than a little frought with high winds and rain that pretty much kept most of South Florida under constant siege from foul weather. I had been looking forward to this week with so much anticipation. The Summer up to now has pretty much...
Seas: 0-2 feet Winds: 5-15 S/SW Viz: 45 feet Temp: 83 F This past weekend the forecast was once again looking abysmal. The campground dolphin fishing tournament was even postponed because the outlook was not very good at all. The forecast was calling for 2-4' seas inside the reef and 3-5' seas beyond the reef with 15-20 knot winds out of the S/SE (which usually means the seas will build even higher than the forecast) on Saturday with slightly calmer wind and seas on Sunday. The drive in on...
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...
Winds: 10-15 E Seas: 2-4 feet (sloppy) Surf Temp: +/- 80F Viz: 15-50 feet (depending on location) We decided to play the tide game today and actually won! The last couple of weeks we were either busting our humps because we got to our spots too early (running into strong tides), or missed the boat altogether and still end up busting our humps in order to catch some fish in spite of missing the slack tide (this of course precludes the fact that we would still run offshore to some of our patch...