the campground by the 7 mile bridge (the dots) that has some great ledges that have been excavated by a slew of Goliath Grouper that have resided there over the years. We can usually find some nice hogfish and grouper (provided we can get the shot on...
that way), a terribly shallow spot that we usually hit for lobster (in season of course) and hogfish with an occasional red grouper thrown in for good measure. Unfortunately the water here looked like split pea soup and after giving it a solid looking...
pulls ahead of me (about 30 feet) when all of a sudden I see a mottled black shape swimming along the bottom. It's a black grouper and it's a beauty! Even from this distance I new this was a great fish. So I grunt through my snorkel trying to get my...
went by with nary a fish on the cleaning table. By that time I'm thinking "No problem", I'll surely get to go shooting once grouper opens on the first of May (Double HA!). Grouper opening comes and goes and the only thing I've been wet with is sweat...
out in February to scout some new spots in the Miami area to see if I can find some good Hogfish and Mutton spots (since Grouper is closed) or maybe even get out for some more bluewater action. I've been hearing some good reports about Sailfish and Mahi...
during a time when I could take advantage of it). Even though I wanted to dive before the end of the year and the close of grouper (which happens on Jan 1), I decided this would be a good way to get everyone excited about going on the boat and it would...
than other years in the past. Even though it started out pretty strong this Summer (even without the presence of large groupers), it really seemed to lighten up around mid-July when the water just wouldn't warm up like it usually does and with the added...
hold anything worthy of chasing or mentioning so we kept moving West. After hitting a few spots, we had a Black and a Gag Grouper, a couple of muttons and about 15 Mangroves in the cooler. We had lost a couple of other grouper at one of the spots so we...
to 30 feet deep and a little less clean due to the constant wave action against the nearby rocks. There I saw a legal Black Grouper as well as a Mutton snapper that was probably about 10lbs, but missed the former and couldn’t close the gap on the latter...
in law calls for me to head over to his side of the boat. There, about 45 feet away straight down is a very nice black grouper, but before we could even breathe up to make a dive on her, she starts swimming away. She wasn't swimming at a very hurried...
both of us having trouble equalizing as well. While we're doing this for him, my brother in law spots a very respectable grouper and apparently has a miracle cure in his equalization problem while he dives on it and shoots it. While I'm happy we landed...
further west with the water getting cleaner as we went. At one of the first spots we get to, we give chase to a very nice grouper (we won't go into why we had to chase it here, to avoid any undue embarassment to any guilty parties... Adrian) that holes...
down in the keys shooting fish when we're getting MMS messages from my brother in law with pictures of his 16lb Black Grouper while we're both at work (way to rub it in bro). And while I didn't have a really good answer (mostly because I agreed with...
area is pretty much fished out and after this dive, I believe it. The bottom we found was perfectly suited for snapper and grouper with plenty of large holes and a lot of relief from the bottom for all kinds of fish to take up residence, but we found...
year has gone by altogether too quickly. Unfortunately for me, I didn't get an opportunity to dive in December before the grouper closure on January 1. The winds picked up the week before Christmas and didn't let up (actually haven't let up) so December...
Seas: 1-2 feet Winds: 10 S/SE Viz: 35-50 feet Temp: 86 F All summer long, we've been suffering a grouper recession of sorts. This year was the first year of an experimental close on all shallow water grouper in Florida waters. Unfortunately, along with...
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...
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.
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=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...
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...
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: 1-2 feet Winds: 10-15 E/SE Viz: 15-25feet Temp: 82F The winds continued to to calm down today so we headed out to see if the viz had improved as well. We headed west today hitting some spots in about 25-35' hoping we could run into some more large mangroves. It was just 2 of us today (my brother in law and me) so the limit would only be 10.
I guess it all started about 4 weeks before when I get the call from my most adventurous spearfishing bud Carlos, asking if I was up for a 5 diver, 4 day trip to Andros in the Bahamas. Being the expert that I am on the Bahamian islands, I immediately ask "Where?". After a few minutes of discussion and a quick Google Maps lookup, I realize that this is no ordinary trip he's contemplating. Andros is the largest island in the Bahamas but is the least densely populated and most of the island is...
Seas: 2-6 feet Winds: 15-25 E/SE Viz: 8 feet Temp: 84F This past weekend we were visited by what started as tropical depression three and ultimately grew into tropical storm Bonnie. Although the storm itself was ultimately 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. By Friday morning, the...
Winds: See report below Seas: See report below Surf Temp: +/- 85F Viz: See report below Well, our vacation was a little less than cooperative this year. Both mechanically, and meteorlogically. The weather started out fantastic. July 3-7 (the weekend), was actually extremely favorable. Winds 5-10, Seas 1-3, Viz was in the 20-50 foot range, depending on the particular location, but overall, very favorable. Unfortunately, Sunday had to come... It started to rain on Sunday night, winds picked up....
Winds: SE 5-10 Seas: 1-2 ft Surf Temp: 81 F Viz: 20-30 ft This weekend we found a strange phenomenon in the water (at least it was weird for us). As we rode out to some of our spots, the water appeared to be practically crystalline. But when we jumped in the water we found a rather odd themalcline. When diving in about 30 feet, we found the bottom 5-6 feet to not only be warmer, but extremely dirty. The other odd thing about this phenomenon was that the water was extremely warm by comparison....
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