but I was down there and he gave me the shot, so I took it. We finished off the day at a very beautiful reef where I lost 2 groupers in the maze of caverns that this reef concealed. Luckily, I hadn't even wounded them, so they should be there for the...
but I could still see the bottom so I wasn't too discouraged. I had been a little disappointed that I had not spotted any grouper on this reef (other than a 50-60lb Goliath I followed around a little bit). The tide had slacked up considerably so I...
didn't hold a lot of fish. I did manage to bag a couple of nice mangroves and gave my brother in law a hand with a black grouper that had picked a pretty good hiding spot. We headed back to the campground around 4:30p to make sure we had enough time to...
finish out the dive on this reef by finding about a 12 pound grouper that thought he could out run me and hide in a brain coral (but he was wrong). We were able to take some Underwater Pics of the fish since the water was so beautiful.We went out for a...
in the morning, we headed out in the afternoon to look for some other species that might complement our catch (specifically Grouper and Hogfish). We caught the afternoon low tide and started drifting some ledges for a while. We were able to round out...
same spots). We came into some nice hogs at these spots (the nicest of which I shot at the last spot) as well as a black grouper but the disappointment of the afternoon was my missed opportunity on a nice mutton snapper. I was checking the perimeter of...
shooting is a process that can really take it out of you by the end of a day. Luckily today, we hit one of our traditional grouper ledges before high slack to see if we could finally land another grouper (seeing as we have only landed one all week). We...
Our goal was to hit some offshore spots for snapper and hopefully head back closer to home for some hogfish and hopefully grouper. Unfortunately, I am sure we are all familiar with the best laid plans of mice and men and what happens to them. Anyway, we...
out in the open, but decided to peer under and in to see if anybody was home. I was able to see a good size squared off grouper tail just before the whole ledge got stirred up. We ended up working the ledge for a good while because the two goliaths that...
had me feeling the after effects once again. Before I got back in the water, my brother in law shot a beautiful 28 inch Red Grouper. At our second to last spot, where I was feeling like I could dive again, we ended up with a few very nice Cero Mackerel...
After waiting the storm out, we decided to stay closer to home and try to hit high slack for some hogfish and (hopefully) grouper. We were able to hit a couple of spots before the tide switched and already had some hog and mangroves in the cooler when...
We did alright on this dive (as you might have seen in the pics) but the highlight for me was when I spooked a 16lb black grouper out of a steel drum and didn't get a shot off at her. I know, so far not much of a highlight until I swim over to one of...
We swam along for a while passing over a large number of lega but small mangroves and hogfish. Pretty much all the grouper we saw were juveniles and well under size, but there were a number of them too. After about 30 minutes in water we each had one...
a hogfish worthy of chasing down. When I do start to get position on this hog, I completely overlook a nice size black grouper that was hiding off to my right. I couldn't turn around to get an angle on the black so I don't give up the bird in the hand...
relief (in the 1-2 foot range. The last time we got some decent fish here, I bent one of my Euro shafts on a decent black grouper in a tight hole (amazing how they can always find a way to bend a shaft in a hole they have no right fitting into). As soon...
the ledge from the front and believe I see her towards the back so I head around that way. There were also some Goliath Grouper hanging around and in the ledge so I wanted to be sure about any shot I made. After finding her hiding spot, I go down to...
just clear it every 10 seconds or so. I get in the water and as soon as I clear my mask the first time, I spot a nice black grouper just starting to move away from me. I take the long shot, and hit him right behind the gill plate. He takes off and...
handed out by yours truly. So a little disappointed but no less determined, we finish up our shallow dive with a couple of grouper and a few really nice hogs (the nicest one is in the back row of the pic for this week). We always have to catch a few...
identify you any sooner than you could identify them. The only ones that were extra spooky because of the viz were the groupers. They would barely give you a look and boom! they would head up current where I couldn't follow. I did end up with a couple...
find the larger ones on this day where we were looking. We came across a large number of decent size hogs and borderline groupers. Luckily a couple of them were more than borderline (as you can see in this weeks pics). All in all Saturday ended up very...
My final dive of 2011 out of Miami and my first time ever seeing a Ribbon Fish (had to look that one up). I got a little tired of seeing this as one of my only 480p videos on the channel so I remastered it in 4K. Original footage is 1080 so there was a little upscaling involved, but I think it was worth it.
My final dive of 2011 out of Miami and my first time ever seeing a Ribbon Fish (had to look that one up). I got a little tired of seeing this as one of my only 480p videos on the channel so I remastered it in 4K. Original footage is 1080 so there was a little upscaling involved, but I think it was worth it.
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.
{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.
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 4th of July holiday I was able to break in my hawaiian sling made by HawaiianSling.net (Ray Uppstrom). I had purchased this quite some time ago in preparation for a trip to the Bahamas and I finally got to try it out in the waters around Cat Cay, South Bimini. This isn't your normal hawaiian sling. The design is completely unique and interesting in its approach compared to traditional slings. This sling is much more akin to a bow and arrow than it is to a regular sling and it looks...
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.
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.
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...
Seas: 2-4' Winds: 10-20 ESE Viz: 20-45' Temp: 78F It was a little upsetting for me to realize as I sat down to compose this week's blog that I hadn't even gotten around to composing my usual "Foreward" blog at the beginning of this year. It was even sadder for me to think that it was because I hadn't been in the water since December 26. So in efforts to combat my sadness and keep up my word count on my blogs (like anyone else is counting - or even reading) this one turned out a little long...
Winds: (Saturday) Southerly 30-40 (with incessent rain) Seas: (Saturday) Extreme chop, 5-6 (for as far as the eye could see) Surf Temp: (yeah, like I was going to find out) Viz: (Not sure, but if I had to guess, 2-3 inches) Another weekend of crappy weather. This seems to have been going on forever now. Winds were blowing 30-40 mph almost straight out of the south. The seas were milk. We had whitecaps in the marina! Needless to say, all we did was fix the boat (from last week's difficulties),...
Winds: 10-15 SE Seas: 2-4 feet (sloppy) Surf Temp: +/- 80F Viz: 25-30 feet On Saturday we started out like we normally do, procrastinating about where to make the first dive. We headed out to one of our reliable spots and were able to get into a couple of decent sized mangroves before they thinned out and we moved on. From there we decided to head to a spot that has recently been a little active with bull sharks. Little did we know how active it had become. In the first 45 minutes of the dive...
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...
Unbenknownst to us, this would be our final weekend in the keys for this summer! Saturday allowed us to pick up quite a few bugs to stock our freezers, and it was a good thing too, because Hurricane (at least it was at that time) Ernesto had other things in mind for us. Once we got back from gathering yet a few more bugs on Sunday, we got the word about Hurricane Ernesto. After the two storms we experienced last year we decided to turn tail and get the heck out of Dodge. We made the decision...
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