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...
April 19, 2024 - Shooting and landing a pair of African Pompanos (in 10 minutes or less) - Spearfishing Key Largo
This Spring day in April started out slow but ended up being one of my best days when I happened across this pair of African Pompanos in uncharacteristically shallow water. This video is practically unedited as the title suggests. Spring time is definitely THE time for AP's in the upper keys.
April 19, 2024 - Shooting and landing a pair of African Pompanos (in 10 minutes or less) - Spearfishing Key Largo
This Spring day in April started out slow but ended up being one of my best days when I happened across this pair of African Pompanos in uncharacteristically shallow water. This video is practically unedited as the title suggests. Spring time is definitely THE time for AP's in the upper keys.
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 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...
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...
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...
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....
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...
Seas: 2-3 feet (Sat) 1-2 feet (Sun) Winds: 10-15 S/SW (Sat) 10 S-SE (Sun) Viz: 10-15 feet (Sat) 40-50 feet (Sun) Temp: 82 F (Sat) 82 F (Sun) I had been looking forward to this weekend for months. My first weekend of diving and spearfishing since last December . Unfortunately it started going a little awry about a week ago when my wife gave me the news that she and my daughter wouldn't be coming along due to some last minute sports team issues. I'm not sure, but it seems that organized sports...
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...
Winds: 8-10 West Seas: 2-4 feet Surf Temp: 83 F Viz: 10-15 feet Today we went to some of our closer spots, due to the lack of visibility at our offshore patch reefs. Visibility was minimal to nil at most locations deeper than 15 feet. To make matters worse, we missed the tide and were only able to shoot fish for about an hour and a half. The entire days catch amounted to 1 grouper and 1 hogfish. I was glad to finally catch a grouper. It seems like Jewfish (Goliath Grouper) have moved in and...
Winds: 5-10 SSE Seas: 1-2 feet Surf Temp: +/- 73F Viz: 15-30 feet Finally, we get to start out a new year of diving and spearfishing! We had been waiting for a few days of calm winds for the water to clean up. We had been putting up with 20-25 mph winds and dirty water for almost 2 weeks until last week.
Seas: 1-2 feet Winds: 5-10 NW Temp: 72 F Viz: 50-60 feet I've actually been slacking off on the blogging as of late. I went out on two winter dives that I didn't blog about right away so I am cramming in both of them in one sitting. I am still going to keep them as separate entries, for the sake of maintaining the conditions separately, but just know that I have written both of these in one sitting, and for that I apologize. I make no excuses for my laziness :).
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...
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