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...
any fish from the surface. We picked off a few more here and tried heading a little more west to see if the water would clean up, but it didn't. By now we've traveled about 13-14 miles so we decided to cut our losses and head back east to some shallower...
out Saturday for a late morning patch reef dive so we could kill time until the 4:30p high slack tide, hoping it would be clean. We headed to a spot that had been productive recently in about 30 feet of water. Upon getting there we found minimal viz and...
Mackerel at the end. We also had one last bit of excitement this weekend while we were finishing up all the dirty work of cleaning fish and picking up the site before leaving. We usually leave a rod in the water while we are cleaning fish since there...
(if I do say so myself :) and we had the headliner fish of the day in the cooler. Obviously the rest of the day was spent cleaning fish, socializing (this is what you call drinking when you want it to be socially acceptable) and cooking later that...
perfect it was. We had mild winds and seas and luckily those winds laid down early enough in the week so as to let the water clean up. We started out a little early this weekend to try and beat the holiday traffic. A couple of friends had reported to me...
little unloading and setup for our first full weekend before hitting the sack around 3am. I was up early anyway and started cleaning up and laying out some of the items that we stored all winter in the RV's storage compartments. My brother-in-law rolled...
water. We made it as far as Haulover cut and decided to get in the water. I rigged up and jumped in. The water was fairly clean and I started to see some limited life so I followed some smaller fish around looking for some decent spots that may hold...
got everyone on the boat we headed out just about 11:00a so I headed for some of the closer spots that would hopefully be clean at high tide. I got to the first spot only to find there wasn't much other than some small hogs wandering around. So after...
but I sure wish I could have dove that morning high tide. I can't help but think that the water would have been somewhat cleaner (besides, I prefer fishing high tides anyway). The one fish there seems to be an ample supply of this summer is the hogfish....
year. We did prevail however and got all setup with a little time left for a dive on Saturday. We headed out looking for clean water because we knew that we had missed the tide. Things didn't look too promising at first, but as we headed further...
we get to start out a new year of diving and spearfishing! We had been waiting for a few days of calm winds for the water to clean up. We had been putting up with 20-25 mph winds and dirty water for almost 2 weeks until last week. We headed out just...
deserved (overdue) servicing time during this past off-season. And even though my guns look great now, I sure hope I haven't cleaned the fish-mojo out of them :)! What can I say, the only person more superstitious than a sports fan (that I am), is a...
out and around you, the viz was probably 60-70 feet. But when looking down, you could see a clear division between the clean blue water and the silty green water below. It was interesting to move from 60-70 feet of viz at the top down to 6-7 feet of viz...
too much. Unfortunately we weren't seeing the same size mangroves that we were running into last weekend. That, and upon cleaning our catch from the first day, we noticed that a lot of the fish were no longer carrying roe. As long as they are spawning,...
to show for it after going 32 miles offshore. 1100 feet deep and not a single dolphin to jump in on. The sad part was how clean the reef was as we passed over it on our way offshore. We passed over some reefs in about 30-40 feet of water and I swear I...
is that the best day of the past few weekends has been Sunday and in efforts to take full advantage, we end up rushing to clean fish and just don't have time to stop and take pics. We didn't really slaughter them this weekend, but we did have some...
to slap you broadside as they were to come right at you. After a short jaunt, we decided that without any guarantee of clean water offshore, it was not going to be worth the punishment. Oh, well time to fix everything that's broken on the boat...
the surface of the water, she clouded up the hole! After verifying we thought it was legal, we kept waiting for the hole to clean up, but the current was really starting to kick up. I finally decided to take a blind shot in the hole, and BAM! I got her!...
I'm not going to lie to you, I got a little lazy and didn't track any of my weather stats this weekend. Diving, cleaning fish and cooking start to take their toll on you and you get to the point where all you want to do is get some sleep instead of...
Type:
Article
Author:
Bob Diaz
Category:
SpearBlog 2006
Results 81 - 100 of 109
Gallery Spotlight
July 14-15, 2012 - That was nearly a $600 grouper...
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...
{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.
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...
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.
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...
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...
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: 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...
Wind Seas Viz Temp 10-25 ENE/Variable 3-4' 5-15' 78F In South Florida, probably one of the most anticipated and planned spearfishing outings (aside from those that take you to major global destinations) is the trip we make on or about May 1 of each year for the re-opening of Grouper season. It doesn't always fall on a weekend but when it does (like this year), the planning begins early. The season closure has barely taken effect on January 1, and we already start talking about how many grouper...
It's not often that my blogs deviate from my favorite hobby, but my thoughts lately have been with friends and family that have been dealing with loss of one kind or another during the holiday season. This holiday season in particular seems to have been especially laden with loss for many that I care about. A few years ago, I lost my dad close to the holidays so I feel like I can relate to my friends and loved ones that lose people close to their hearts during the time of year when pretty much...
Winds: 0-5 Seas: Less than 1 foot Surf Temp: 87F Viz: 20-25 feet Considering we had a hurricane pass through the area within the past 7 days, the water was not too bad. Viz was a solid 20-25 feet in most of the areas we dive. The fish were there, but nothing in the monster range. We had a solid day of shooting mangoes. The water was extremely flat so even my kid got to swim along with his old man while the rest of the family was on the boat. As my son gets older, I only hope he takes a healthy...
Seas: 5-7 feet Winds: 15-20 SE Temp: 74 F Viz: 30-35 feet I decided to make an overnight trip this weekend and take a Monday off for the heck of it. I was hoping to be able to get into some snapper since the forecast had the weekend winds dying down (and hopefully the seas as well). Unfortunately, as you might have noticed from the stats above, neither of those things happened. The viz was awesome, but you had to weather some serious seas to fish it.