all signs to the contrary. Waking up at 4:45a on Friday, I head outside to hitch up and load up the boat for the trek to Marathon. All signs pointed to the weather being more of the same with the wind picking up well before dawn (which is never a good...
For the past 20+ years my family and I have been heading down to Marathon during the Summer months for the purposes of spearfishing and family weekends. Over the past 15+ years since owning my web site, these Summers have offered me the opportunity 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...
Wind Seas Viz Temp 5-10 WSW 1-2' 15' 88F This past weekend the weather was still beautiful (beautifully HOT) as it has been for weeks now with mild winds and calm seas. But this week we were met with green, dirty water in almost every direction. In...
Wind Seas Viz Temp 5-10 SSE 1-3' 25-55' 85F Many times I get asked the question, "How many fish have you lost to sharks?" and I always find it interesting how people that don't dive or spearfish frequently automatically associate what we do with sharks...
and temperature but even these were not producing bait much less our target species. We ended up about 25 miles south of Marathon without so much as a flying fish to show for our efforts. Finally after spending all this time searching, we came across a...
law showed a Sunfish that weighed about 200 lbs floating around (they don't swim very effectively) about 24 miles South of Marathon in water that you couldn't even find a ripple on much less any kind of waves (24 miles off!). Needless to say, I was...
morning, unloading and picking up the boat at the ramp, it was time to pack up for an overnight trip to the campground in Marathon! Honestly, it was only out of hating to disappoint my daughter that I found the energy to drive down to the keys on...
at the first couple of spots (#67 and #25). #25 is a spot that we found a couple of years ago with another dive buddy from Marathon. Since we found it, it has usually produced decent to very good sized mangroves on a regular basis. The problem is that...
nature kept slapping me in the face with reality. The winds were incessant. Every flying sign and flag between Miami and Marathon appeared as though they were made of wood as they stood at attention in 20-25mph winds (with higher gusts). But I was...
close, knowing that this tended to be a time when we ran into some of the more predatory inhabitants of the waters off Marathon key. As we were swimming along with the boat nearby, we noticed that schools of rather large tarpon were jumping out of the...
My final dive of 2011 out of Miami and my first time ever seeing a Ribbon Fish (had to look that one up). I got a little tired of seeing this as one of my only 480p videos on the channel so I remastered it in 4K. Original footage is 1080 so there was a little upscaling involved, but I think it was worth it.
My final dive of 2011 out of Miami and my first time ever seeing a Ribbon Fish (had to look that one up). I got a little tired of seeing this as one of my only 480p videos on the channel so I remastered it in 4K. Original footage is 1080 so there was a little upscaling involved, but I think it was worth it.
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.
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.
{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...
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....
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...
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...
Seas: 2-4' Winds: 10-20 ESE Viz: 45-50' Temp: 81F So we head down this weekend without too much in the expectation department since it had been raining with 20-40 mph winds almost incessantly the entire week. While at work on Thursday, I take a quick glance at the forecast to see there was still a small craft advisory in effect and a call for 2-4' seas on Sat increasing to 3-5 on Sunday. Heading home from work Friday in what seemed like my umpteenth torrential downpour this week, I'm not too...
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...
So for the third year in a row, we begin to plan our annual guys spearfishing trip to the Bahamas in April via What's App. The group is put together and the messages start to fly with talk about the great trip we had last year and how everyone can't wait for this one. There's talk about new gear and new training tools and regimes, but the one thing that we knew wasn't going to be different was the destination. It was an immediate and unanimous decision to re-visit Grand Cay near Walker's Cay...
Seas: 2-3 feet Winds: 15 E/SE Viz: 15-25feet Temp: 82F Well the winds finally laid down enough for us to give it another shot. We've been dealing with 3-5' seas inside the reef for 4 days now and when we haven't been getting the crap beat out of us by the seas, we've been pretty much bored to death. You can only make ice trips so many times before it becomes old hat. So even though we got a late start we head out to see if we can find some clean water. The seas didn't seem to be much more than...
Winds: See report below Seas: See report below Surf Temp: +/- 85F Viz: See report below Well, our vacation was a little less than cooperative this year. Both mechanically, and meteorlogically. The weather started out fantastic. July 3-7 (the weekend), was actually extremely favorable. Winds 5-10, Seas 1-3, Viz was in the 20-50 foot range, depending on the particular location, but overall, very favorable. Unfortunately, Sunday had to come... It started to rain on Sunday night, winds picked up....
Seas: 1-2 feet Winds: 10-15 E/SE Viz: 15-25feet Temp: 82F On Friday once again, the winds and seas were cooperative and allowed us to get out for some more long awaited dive time. We stayed out west on Friday because we thought we had our best chances for clean water. We don't exactly get an early start as has been our habit this past week. We get underway around 10a and head southwest. We stop off at #67 to find that the water still hasn't cleaned up this close to home yet. In addition to...