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...
with 30 of them spent fighting the outgoing tide. We saw more than a few nice hogs but we also kept seeing numerous black grouper so we both passed up on hogs we might have otherwise shot in the hopes that we wouldn't be giving up that one shot on the...
Pirate Trip 2022 - Great Harbour, Chub and North Bimini
Another overdue cut from our 2022 Spearinglife Pirate Trip to Great Harbour. We ended up visiting multiple locations, like Chub, the Gingerbreads and North Bimini, but as usual, the trip was epic! Another year where I'm the only one with a camera, but like I tell my fellow pirates... I do what I can! Hoping to publish an extended version with some fun we had back at the rental with a big Lemon shark and a useless Sharkbanz shark repellant, but this cut will have to hold us over until then. Keep living life on a single breath!
Pirate Trip 2022 - Great Harbour, Chub and North Bimini
Another overdue cut from our 2022 Spearinglife Pirate Trip to Great Harbour. We ended up visiting multiple locations, like Chub, the Gingerbreads and North Bimini, but as usual, the trip was epic! Another year where I'm the only one with a camera, but like I tell my fellow pirates... I do what I can! Hoping to publish an extended version with some fun we had back at the rental with a big Lemon shark and a useless Sharkbanz shark repellant, but this cut will have to hold us over until then. Keep living life on a single breath!
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...
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...
This year at The Blue Wild I was fortunate enough to meet Mike Hickey. I know of Mike from his appearances on Speargun Hunter on the Outdoor Channel with Sheri Daye. Mike was orginally a guest on the show and in later seasons participated as an underwater videographer. Mike is the USA distributor for FreeDivers ( FreeDivers USA ) spearfishing equipment. I came across his booth and after a great conversation about spearfishing, we started discussing the rising cost of spearshafts specifically....
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=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...
Unfortunately, right after starting this conditions journal, I have experienced a small setback. I am suffering from an inner ear problem which currently prohibits me from spearfishing. I will probably be out of commission for a couple of weeks (at least). But I guess it's worth it. I'm pretty stone cold deaf in my right ear, and the ringing is enfuriating. Hopefully I will be back in the water soon.
Seas: 6-8 feet (Sat) 2-4 feet (Sun) Winds: 15-25 S/SE 10-15 E/SE Viz: 40 feet Temp: 84 F This was almost my second week without an update, but a very interesting thing happened this past week. I found out I have a fan (and no, not a facebook fan)! Don't worry, I won't let the celebrity of it all go to my head and anywhere you want to put my Internet Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame will do (maybe somewhere between the Dancing Baby and iCarly :). Not wanting to disappoint my now growing...
Winds: 10-15 E Seas: 2-4 feet (sloppy) Surf Temp: +/- 80F Viz: 15-50 feet (depending on location) We decided to play the tide game today and actually won! The last couple of weeks we were either busting our humps because we got to our spots too early (running into strong tides), or missed the boat altogether and still end up busting our humps in order to catch some fish in spite of missing the slack tide (this of course precludes the fact that we would still run offshore to some of our patch...
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 able to get in a dive along with another family day at Boca Chita. My nephew had never been to this nice island in the middle of Biscayne Bay (I confess, I hadn't been there before this past winter either) so it was nice to have him experience it...
Well I finally thought the time was right and stepped up to buy myself a GoPro camera a couple of weeks ago. I waited for the launch of the Hero2 because I was following the specs for this new model prior to the release and I was very interested in some of them specifically. The new model has a considerable list of new features that make it so much better for the money (even though, now you can pick up the regular Hero for almost $100 less). Among the new features are:
Seas: 3-8 feet Winds: 10-35 SSE Temp: ?? F Viz: ?? feet Thanks to the system that would become TD4 this weekend in the Gulf of Mexico, the weather turned to crap mid morning Saturday and got progressively worse throughout the day and into the night. We did get one break in the weather around 3:30p and headed out to see how badly the viz had gotten. Drifting with the tide and with minimal viz of only about 8 feet we were actually still able to shoot a few hogs and pick up 5 bugs too in about an...
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