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...
looking bottom. These areas of deep cracks and ledges stretched on for at least 1/2 mile. I finally ended up getting that grouper in the picture for this week in about 30-35 feet of water. As we kept going we ended up in about 42 feet of water where I...
We ended up swimming around for over an hour and I only took 2 shots. I hit on both, one a hogfish and the other the grouper in this week's picture. After that we kept looking for a while and finally ended up moving on. I only took one other shot in...
headed west and others we had marked previously) and gather up a few more mangoes, but more importantly, a couple of nice groupers. One a red grouper that my brother-in-law shot and the other a black that I had to wrestle out of a hole in about 35 feet...
way or another. One good thing about Saturday's dive (at least for me) was that I was able to land a very nice size black grouper. She was in a hole that most people would pass on by, due to the fact that it appears to be very small from the outside....
an hour of arriving at the spot with our catch! We stopped at 3 other locations on the way in looking for other quarry (grouper, mutton and hogfish) and were able to bag a few hogs for dinner too! We made a second trip out later that afternoon to look...
temperature too. We didn't catch a whole lot, but at least we got back in the water. Just the usual suspects today, black grouper and mangrove snapper. Still, it felt good to get back in the water after the last few weeks. Sun 6/24 Winds: East 5 Seas:...
right in. We didn't shoot tons of fish in the way of numbers, but everything we shot was very good size. We were seeing grouper everywhere. There were multiple fish in almost every hole we peeked in. We had a very productive day and so did our hook and...
really wasn't enough to catch our breath. All in all, we ended up having a good day, albeit a little tired at the end. The groupers seem to be happy in shallower water for now (at least until the water warms up past 80F), and the snappers are right...
They came back in during the afternoon and hit some closer spots. They shot some nice snappers and a couple of grouper too. Day 2 started out well enough too. They decided to stick to the guns today, so they started hitting some of our favorite local...
got our first hog of the day and the mutton that I am holding here. We ended up with a few hogs, a couple of muttons, a red grouper and a nice dog snapper. As we moved around we found more of the same, good looking fish places, but not a lot of fish. We...
to take more advantage of the tide (or lack thereof), but we were able to jump in and shoot a few mangoes and a couple of groupers too. We headed out to some patch reefs in about 35 feet of water, but found no life. It was just as well, cause we were...
slow, but we were rewarded for our continued effortrs by bagging some of our favorite and recently absent quarry, Black Grouper. Not just a Black, but a big Black, at least for this area (34 inches). We haven't bagged a specimen like this for more than...
want to move in close enough to shore to clear up our patch reefs. As testament to my earlier statements about Goliath Grouper, we hit one of our long time grouper ledges only to find that what appears to be an entire Goliath Grouper community has moved...
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 moved out the...
until middle to late June most summers. One thing that I have noticed this year is the incredible number of Goliath Groupers that we are running into. So much so, that I honestly believe they are running out our regular Black and Grey Grouper quarry. I...
they are starting to do so in smaller numbers. We were able to limit out on some nice size mangoes and bag a few hogs and a grouper as well. If the weather holds up for a couple of more weeks, we should be able to start cleaning up with some larger...
as we have noticed that the fish seem to get a little scarce once the tide actually switches. We're seeing a lot more grouper this year, which is very encouraging. It really makes the increase to 24" in the size limit (about 2-3 years ago) worthwhile....
Wind Seas Viz Temp E-SE 18-24mph 4-6' 5-15' 79F The excitement for grouper opening started a few weeks ago when my brother in law and I started discussing our plans. There was talk of scouting on Sunday and taking Monday through Wednesday off to...
A short vid from our Summer 2019 Bahamas Pirate Trip of the quickest landing of a #50 black grouper I've ever had. Proof that it only takes one fish to make the spearinglife spearfishing trip! Thanks to the pirate crew for making every year an adventure!
A short vid from our Summer 2019 Bahamas Pirate Trip of the quickest landing of a #50 black grouper I've ever had. Proof that it only takes one fish to make the spearinglife spearfishing trip! Thanks to the pirate crew for making every year an adventure!
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...
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 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....
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 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...
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....
Winds: 8-10 South Seas: 2-3 feet Surf Temp: 82-83 F Viz: 20-35 feet (variable with the tideline) This weekend started out pretty nice. The weather was agreeable on Saturday to the tune of mild winds and very tolerable seas. On Saturday, we were able to head out to some of our offshore patch reefs and shoot up the mangoes with enthusiasm. We hit a couple of our favorite patch reefs and shot about 24 of the beautiful snappers, all in a very respectable size range. However, just as the dive was...
Seas: 5-8 feet Winds: 20-25 ESE Temp: 78 F Viz: 5 feet We pulled in late Friday night after a brief (who am I kidding?) legal discussion of highway driving with a friendly Monroe County Sheriff's Deputy. According to friends that arrived before us, the winds picked up around 9p. There weren't too many storms, but the winds didn't let up all night. Up before the crack of dawn Saturday morning, we found the conditions had actually deteriorated even more from the night before. High tide was too...
Winds: 5 west Seas: less than 1 foot Surf Temp: 79F Viz: 35 feet Thank goodness that weathermen (or weatherpersons, don't want to be sexist) don't know shit from shine! The weather reports for this weekend would have had you believe that it wasn't even worth going out this weekend, but this was one of the nicest calmest days, in recent weeks. As we headed out the flag on the campground pole was barely flapping so we hauled ourselves out to some of our favorite closer spots and jumped right in.
Wind Seas Viz Temp NW 5-10mph 1-2' 20-25' 75F The winds had been incessant all through April and as May came around there was no end in sight. Throughout the month, everyone was landlocked and cabin fever was setting in with the fishermen I knew (and liquor stores were running low). So as the forecast for Memorial Day kept looking so good, there were 3 factions: 1) those that didn't believe it (Memorial Day historically has bad weather), 2) those that would sell their Grandmothers to get out...
Winds: 0-5 Seas: Less than 1 foot Surf Temp: 87F Viz: 50-100 feet If I had to pick a weekend to be able to begin diving again, this was it (I figure somewhere around 70% of my hearing has returned)! There was literally no wind and minimal seas to deal with. The viz was absolutely incredible, as we were moving at 35 mph and spotting fish as we passed over different patch reefs. We had an incredible time of it. The only downside was an inadequacy in the headcount department. We limited out on...
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...
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