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
Results 121 - 140 of 144
Gallery Spotlight
March 20, 2005 - Saved this one from the bull sharks.
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 past weekend, I finally got to go to The Blue Wild dive expo. After 3 years of everybody telling me about it and not being around to get to go to it, the stars finally aligned and I was able to check it out. Unfortunately, it meant missing out on 5-10mph winds and less than 1' seas inside the reef, but there were other reasons I couldn't get out this weekend, so I figured I would take advantage to check it out and possibly win something from the raffle to boot (I won't keep you in...
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.
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...
{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...
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.
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...
Seas: 2-4 feet Winds: 15-25 E/SE Viz: 8 feet Temp: 84F Well, this weekend really blew (literally)! I pulled in Friday night to the sound of wind chimes that were more hanging on for dear life than playing the soothing sounds of a tropical breeze. The winds were considerably stronger than the 10-15mph winds the forecast called for and we of course hoped that it would settle down by morning to see if we could head out in search of clean water. As I awoke on Saturday and stepped outside however,...
Sat 8/4 Winds: SE 10-15 Seas: 2-4 ft Surf Temp: 81 F Viz: 20-30 ft We headed out this morning after missing the early morning low tide to see if we could find some mangoes at the reef. At first sight, it didn't really seem to be too rough, but first impressions are sometimes wrong (really wrong). The water was choppy and extremely sloppy. We hadn't even made it into Hawk's channel and the water was already throwing 3-4 waves at us. We rough it and continue on. We got to our first spot to find...
Winds: 10-15 E Seas: 2-3 feet Surf Temp: +/- 82F Viz: 5-10 feet Got a little bit of a late start on Saturday. Thinking high tide was coming early in the morning, we decided to target the afternoon low tide. Unfortunately the charts were off by a couple of hours and in addition to passing up high tide for no good reason, we ended up swimming against an outgoing tide for about an hour and a half before getting a break. The viz was terrible at its best and most of the time you couldn't even see...
Seas: 1-3 feet Winds: 15-20 SSW Temp: 85 F Viz: 10-45 feet This weekend we tried to head out for some more of what we found last week and even though we did have some fun, we weren't able to find the schools of bigger fish that we were hoping for. We had to head very far east to find any visibility but when we jumped into the water in about 43 feet, we found some very nice diving for a while. We dove the area for about 45 minutes, but after only getting a single cero mackerel, we figured we...
Seas: 1-2 feet Winds: 5-10 S Temp: 82 F (drastic thermal clines) Viz: 25-30 feet Saturday had us up well before dawn as we decided to go out for dolphin first thing with the promise of extremely calm seas and next to no wind for a good part of the day. We were loaded up and on our way out of the marina just as the sun was rising. With 1-2 foot seas as far as the eye could see, we made excellent time heading out into the blue water. We decided to go out in our own boat because the seas were so...