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...
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...
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.
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 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.
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...
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...
Winds: SE 5 Seas: 1-2 ft Surf Temp: 84 F Viz: 40+ ft This weekend was absolutely incredible for diving! As we headed out Saturday morning, we were running over areas that we can never recall being as clear as they were this day. There were times when the water actually seemed to sparkle. Driving down Friday night, I noticed the horizon was dotted with the anchor lights of dozens of night fisherman. The general area and proximity led me to believe that they were all bottom fishing for mangroves...
Seas: 1-2 feet Winds: 5-10 SSW Temp: 85 F Viz: 10 feet We took off this morning a little early to see if we could jump in the water a little before actual high slack tide just to see if we could take advantage of some cleaner water. To our joy and surprise, we were able to jump in an hour before the slack tide and make way through a couple of spots with a little better clarity than we had for the past couple of days. I was able to shoot a few nice sized hogfish and a couple of decent mangroves...
Seas: 1-3(am) 3-5(pm) Winds: 10-20 ENE (am) 20-25 ENE (pm) Viz: 30-50' Temp: 81F This week's forecast was calling for a fairly typical Memorial Day weekend, rainy and windy. But what were the chances that those charlatan voodoo witch doctors (more commonly known as meteorologists) would get it right this week? I've lost count of the number of times the meteorological evangelists promised wonderfully light winds and calm seas only for me to make the hike and arrive to find weather conditions...
Seas: 1-2 feet Winds: 5-10 SSW Temp: 85 F Viz: 30-60 feet When I arrived Fri night we started talking about what we were going to do the next morning and figured that this weekend we would pull split duty. One group would head offshore to go for dolphin and the other would hit the patch reefs and go for some of the more local fare just in case the offshore outing wasn't as productive as one might like. So the offshore fishing crew headed out before dawn. I heard them setting up in the wee...
Even though I have had a few chances to take the boat out this winter, my spearfishing frustrations continue. The past couple of weekends have given me a chance to take the family out for wonderful days out on the boat, but being the only spearfisherman on the boat presents constant challenges. I did dive this past weekend, but there wasn't much to be seen and when I started to scout for some new locations (since I never dive in Miami and fishermen hoard their spots like women hoard pairs of...
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 maximize our time on the water. We would connect with our friends Lazaro and Chris and we were hopeful that we would have a good opening like last year. As usual, we talked timing, accommodations and weather forecasts. After talking about it for about...
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