Wind Seas Viz Temp 5-15mph SSE 2-3 SE Swell 40-50' 86F The past couple of weekends were plagued with algea blooms and low viz thanks to the higher surf temps and a West wind that always seems to wreak havoc for us. But right around Wednesday of this...
Wind Seas Viz Temp 5-10 WSW 1-2' 15' 88F This past weekend the weather was still beautiful (beautifully HOT) as it has been for weeks now with mild winds and calm seas. But this week we were met with green, dirty water in almost every direction. In...
Wind Seas Viz Temp 5-10 SSE 1-3' 25-55' 85F Many times I get asked the question, "How many fish have you lost to sharks?" and I always find it interesting how people that don't dive or spearfish frequently automatically associate what we do with sharks...
Wind Seas Viz Temp ESE 5mph 1' 40' 85F After almost another week of typical Florida Summer weather with afternoon thunder storms a possibilty on any given day, the wind started to lay down around Wednesday and the forecast really started to shape up...
Legend: Mooring Special Zone NO Spearfishing NO Lobstering Sanctuary Archaeological Preserve No Fishing or Spearing D: Depth R: Relief Site ID / Reef Name Material / Description Lat & Lon D R Outbound 136' Trawler 25 13.01, -79 07.73 Ball Buoy Reef 1...
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...
Seas: 1-3 feet (Sat-Thu) 2-4 feet (Fri-Sat) Winds: 5-10 S/SW 10-15 S/SW Viz: 5-20 feet 40 feet Temp: 85 F jellyfish jellyfish squish squish squish oh if i were to be granted just one wish that currents were weak and water was warm so you and your...
boats, lost divers (most of them rescued successfully) and sadly at least 2 deaths that I was aware of just in the Florida Keys. I guess for the number of people that participate the incidents are relatively few, but still way too many in my opinion. I...
Seas: 2-3 feet Winds: 10-15 S/SE Viz: 50+ feet Temp: 84 F After spending nearly a week in Cat Cay, most people would have been satisfied to get home and vegetate for the rest of the weekend. But truth be told, I've never been lumped in with "most...
Preface: This is a particularly long blog that I wrote for reasons of personal recollection and has very little spearfishing content. What can I say? Ownership has it’s privileges. My first crossing to Bimini, Cat Cay to be specific, and what a day we...
Seas: 2-4 feet Winds: 10-15 S/SW Viz: 30 feet Temp: 79 F SUMMER IS FINALLY HERE! Finally a weekend that wasn't under the guise of some kind of work, whether paycheck related or otherwise. Of course it wasn't all honeymoon for me either, at least not at...
This past Saturday we decided to take the boat out one last time in Miami before the summer started (and along with it my main diving season in the Keys). My nephew decided to come along with us for his first ride on the boat so I figured we might be...
ineffectual, the build up for it was of monumental proportions. As usual the weather forecasters declare doomsday in the Florida Keys during the week as their forecasts had the storm building to over 50mph and traversing right through the middle keys....
I wasn't really prepared to do or record this when it happened, but while offshore doing some Mahi fishing off of Key Largo in July '23, we had a bull mahi that would not leave and would not take a bait no matter what we did. Since we never leave home without our spearfishing gear, I suited up and what happened next was.... well, that's why you watch the video.
I wasn't really prepared to do or record this when it happened, but while offshore doing some Mahi fishing off of Key Largo in July '23, we had a bull mahi that would not leave and would not take a bait no matter what we did. Since we never leave home without our spearfishing gear, I suited up and what happened next was.... well, that's why you watch the video.
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....
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 weekend of March 27 th & 28 th I took the Level 1 Freediving course offered by FII (Freediving Instructors International) at their Headquarters in Pompano Beach FL. FII was started by Martin Stepanek, a multiple time freediving world record holder. The Level 1 curriculum is taught over a 2 day course. The first day is classroom and pool based and spans almost 9 hours. This course is designed for beginning freedivers and is supposed to get novice divers to a depth of 66 feet.
{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.
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...
{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...
Winds: (Saturday) Variable 15-20, (Sunday) Variable 5-10 Seas: Light chop, 2-4 inside the reef, 5-7 outside the reef Surf Temp: +/- 85F Viz: 10-15 feet At least we were able to salvage Sunday out of this weekend. Saturday afternoon wasn't too bad, but the boat didn't want to cooperate, so we spent most of our afternoon working on it. It rained most of Saturday and well into the night. Sunday, we awoke to clear blue skies and calmer (not calm) seas. We headed out for a morning dive, and came...
Seas: 2-3 feet Winds: 5-10 SW Temp: 82 F Viz: 10-15 feet This was a real good news/bad news weekend which sort of makes it a fitting sequel to last weekend. Fact is, the viz was even worse this weekend and it got worse from Saturday to Sunday as well. We headed 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...
Seas: 3-5' Winds: 15-25 SE Viz: 10-15 Temp: 86F This week I was hoping for something a little extra. At the start of this weekend I hadn't shot a grouper yet all summer and I was hoping I would get the first one in spite of the fact that the weather forecast was pretty horrible and I was only going to get to dive Saturday because we had to get back home early this weekend to make it in time for a friend's daughter's birthday. So with little time and an unfavorable forecast, I was going to see...
Seas: 1-3' Winds: 10-15 ESE Viz: 45'+ Temp: 82F In spite of the lack of a blog for last week, it was actually a good hunting weekend as we found big mangroves on the patch reefs for the first time this Summer. In fact, I shot what was probably one of my biggest mangroves yet, weighing in that 6-7lb class. I didn't think it merited a blog though, since I got it on a make up shot because my brother in law had missed it and we wanted to make sure it didn't hightail it out of the staghorn before...
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...
During the weekend of August 25, 2002, my brother-in-law and I were diving some ledges that we hadn't dove on in 1-2 years. We had passed by these ledges the weekend before, and saw some snapper and grouper, but we had missed the tide, so we couldn't dive. We decided to come back first chance we had the following weekend. We got there a little before slack tide Saturday morning. We jumped in and started looking for some of our favorite quarry, Mangrove Snapper and Black Grouper. On our first...