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...
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.
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.
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....
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...
Seas: 1-2 feet Winds: 5-10 E/SE Viz: 35-40 feet Temp: 85 F This past week was Lobster mini season and even though I did not participate, I did have some friends that took their perennial vacation to hunt those highly coveted bugs. According to their accounts, there were a lot less hunters in the water this year. But luckily for those that were willing to take the time to do it, there were plenty of lobsters to be had by all. We had been observing a huge population of lobsters in every nook and...
Winds: 5-10 variable Seas: 1-2 feet Surf Temp: +/- 80F Viz: 15-25 feet T his weekend the water was fairly clean in spite of the fact that we had a whole bunch of rain during the week. Too much fresh water usually clouds the viz and makes the water cool (it did do that). We missed high tide by about 1 1/2 hours on Saturday morning, but were able to swim right through to low tide by moving around so the current didn't affect us as much as it could in the wrong spots. We really racked up the...
The What'sApp chat group for this year's "Guy's Fishing Trip" actually started out as a discussion for a possible trip to Bimini in Dec of 2015 before the end of the year. I was stoked. Last year's Bimini Christmas was a blast and I couldn't wait to get back. Unfortunately, weather and responsibilities kept us from successfully making the trip. Gladly though, chatter started up again in February about this year's second annual Summer trip (which is now considered a tradition - at least by me)....
Winds: 5-10 SSE Seas: 1 foot Surf Temp: +/- 76F Viz: 25-35 feet After receiving a late Saturday afternoon call, and some frantic packing of all my stuff, I was waiting at the marina for my friends at 7:30am to do some more diving in Miami. We headed out of Matheson Hammock marina towards Fowey Light early enough to pass about a dozen boats making bait (what's that stuff used for again?). The seas were completely flat as far as the eye could see, and the best I have seen in Miami for quite some...
Winds: 5-10 variable Seas: 1-2 feet Surf Temp: +/- 73F Viz: 20-35 feet We decided to get an early start this year, and the weather shaped up for a few days so we went out on Saturday. We only went down for the day, but it turned out to be a good one. Things started out a little rough, but you know how it goes when you go out for the first time of the year. Practically everything went wrong. It started out with my forgetting the key to the lock hitch on my truck (I was supposed to tow the boat...
Winds: 15-20 SouthWest Seas: 5-6 feet Surf Temp: 84 F Viz: 20-25 feet This year's mini season was a little different for us since we went down to the keys to find our bugs. We usually stay close to home to go bug hunting for these two days, but the last couple of years had been a little more than disappointing so we decided to shake it up a little. We did end up bagging our limit, but with the limit in Monroe county being half of the Dade limit, it sure didn't add up to much! We didn't worry...
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