acclimated to the water , the reef and the company while I followed the others around for a while. They bagged a 20" hogfish and a 23" Mangrove after which we moved on. We made a stop by Whistle Buoy in about 65 feet at which point they told me to gear...
before heading out around noon. The winds had laid down just a bit so we stayed closer to home looking for lobster and hogfish because we had friends coming over for dinner. So today was more of a meal hunt than a trophy hunt. We did limit out on...
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 the catch a little...
down to inspect the open areas to see if anything was sitting out in the open. I was only able to observe a decent size hogfish hovering by the ledge, but decided to leave it alone since my target really was a grouper. I descended to the ledge with the...
for high slack tide. 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...
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 too. At one point we were in an area that is particularly shallow which we know is...
(at least at first). We hit 3 or 4 different areas during that couple of hours and only ended up with a few snappers, hogfish and mackerel to show for it. The last shallow spot we ended up in had us running into 3 bull sharks. Luckily we didn't have any...
and head out afterwards. 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...
so we jumped in and got underway. 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...
old college try, I decided to move on to another spot as the tide was still just trickling in. The second spot yielded more hogfish with at least a couple of a nicer size and one (yes, one) lobster. I found it hard to believe that I had only found one...
one is in the back row of the pic for this week). We always have to catch a few hogs for dinner because pan-fried whole hogfish filet has become the new favorite item on Chez Bobby's menu among the women in our group, but I digress. So we head out to...
cleaner (besides, I prefer fishing high tides anyway). The one fish there seems to be an ample supply of this summer is the hogfish. Only a few of really considerable size, but tons of legals. We try to be as picky as we can given the supply and only...
with some good size cracks for hiding, but to no avail. There were no fish here with the exception of a couple of legal hogfish that we did end up taking and one nice size cero mackerel that I couldn't get a shot off on. We moved on and continued to...
yet, but it looked promising. 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...
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 for more grouper and...
Sunday was a beautiful day of both diving and spearfishing. We were able to not only bag our limit on the mangoes, but on Hogfish too! We haven't had an opportunity to do that much lately. It's nice when you just get to enjoy the scenery and shoot stuff!
Type:
Article
Author:
Bob Diaz
Category:
SpearBlog 2006
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Gallery Spotlight
May 23-26, 2014 - Memorial Day - Remembering the people we should and celebrating the liberties they give us
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....
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....
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...
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.
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...
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...
It's not often that my blogs deviate from my favorite hobby, but my thoughts lately have been with friends and family that have been dealing with loss of one kind or another during the holiday season. This holiday season in particular seems to have been especially laden with loss for many that I care about. A few years ago, I lost my dad close to the holidays so I feel like I can relate to my friends and loved ones that lose people close to their hearts during the time of year when pretty much...
I got an email from my brother in law and at first reading, I wasn't really sure why he sent it to me or why I should pay extra attention to it. The email had a link to an article on the FWC site about a Pompano and African Pompano video workshop that the FWC was scheduling. We don't get a lot of Permit family fish because they are protected in state waters and we don't do a lot of federal water spearfishing, so at first glance I thought, "Who cares..."
I am very excited to have another year of spearfishing and freediving just about ready to begin. Last year we were able to get a couple of winter dives in with some pretty decent results , so we hope to do even more of that this winter. As soon as the weather permits, we will be donning our wetsuits and jumping in for some fun getting back into shape for the summer ahead.
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...
UPDATE: An article related to my story below was published in the April 2007 issue of Florida Sportsman. I post it here for the sake of any nay-sayers or persons who may be thinking that some of my descriptions or even the existence of Big Mo may be exaggerated or even fictitious. I invite you to read my story below and then enjoy the article as well. This story is true, and while actually pertaining more closely to my brother-in-law, is one that I was in the water for and probably closer to...
Wind Seas Viz Temp 5-15mph SSE 2-3 SE Swell 40-50' 86F The past couple of weekends were plagued with algea blooms and low viz thanks to the higher surf temps and a West wind that always seems to wreak havoc for us. But right around Wednesday of this week, the wind started to turn more Southerly with an occasional Easterly influence so we were hopeful that it would be enough to clean up the water in time for the weekend. We got some conflicting reports about viz from friends, but luckily we...