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...
April 19, 2024 - Shooting and landing a pair of African Pompanos (in 10 minutes or less) - Spearfishing Key Largo
This Spring day in April started out slow but ended up being one of my best days when I happened across this pair of African Pompanos in uncharacteristically shallow water. This video is practically unedited as the title suggests. Spring time is definitely THE time for AP's in the upper keys.
April 19, 2024 - Shooting and landing a pair of African Pompanos (in 10 minutes or less) - Spearfishing Key Largo
This Spring day in April started out slow but ended up being one of my best days when I happened across this pair of African Pompanos in uncharacteristically shallow water. This video is practically unedited as the title suggests. Spring time is definitely THE time for AP's in the upper keys.
{sigplus link=goprohero2 index=1} {/sigplus}I finally jumped on the HD bandwagon and bought myself a Hero2 HD digital camera by GoPro. These little beauties have been around for quite a while now so hearing about them isn't exactly news. But since I finally got around to purchasing one for myself and it happens to be that the Hero2 is the biggest leap in performance that they've given these cameras since their launch, I figured I would put in my 2 cents worth.
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...
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...
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...
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.
Seas: 1-3 feet Winds: 10-15 S/SE Viz: 45 feet Temp: 84 F Don't get me wrong. Regardless of my title for this article, I wouldn't trade the worst weekend in the keys for one sitting at home. And it wasn't the weather or the fishing but the fact that my ear has pinched up on me for 2 straight weeks making it extremely difficult to dive as long or as deep as I want to, so it's pretty frustrating (and painful). On the up-side though, for the first time that I can remember in my years of...
Seas: 0-2 feet Winds: 5-15 S/SW Viz: 45 feet Temp: 83 F This past weekend the forecast was once again looking abysmal. The campground dolphin fishing tournament was even postponed because the outlook was not very good at all. The forecast was calling for 2-4' seas inside the reef and 3-5' seas beyond the reef with 15-20 knot winds out of the S/SE (which usually means the seas will build even higher than the forecast) on Saturday with slightly calmer wind and seas on Sunday. The drive in on...
This was an abosolutely beautiful weather weekend (If you're into flying kites, wind surfing, sailing or getting seasick). I really shouldn't be so facetious in print. Of course, the name of the site isn't windsurfing.com or crappyweatherlovers.com so I guess anyone who's not paying attention, gets what they deserve.
During the weekend of August 25, 2002, my brother-in-law and I were diving some ledges that we hadn't dove on in 1-2 years. We had passed by these ledges the weekend before, and saw some snapper and grouper, but we had missed the tide, so we couldn't dive. We decided to come back first chance we had the following weekend. We got there a little before slack tide Saturday morning. We jumped in and started looking for some of our favorite quarry, Mangrove Snapper and Black Grouper. On our first...
Winds: 10-20 East Seas: 3-5 feet Surf Temp: 84 F Viz: 5-10 feet Saturday was not too much fun. The seas were extra sloppy and the viz was not what I would like to see, even on the worst days. It didn't stop us from shooting our fill of mangroves, but it wasn't without it's effort. One of the spots we hit was only about 18-20 feet deep and we couldn't see the bottom much less the fish. We've gotten used to shooting in the low viz but its still difficult to do. You have to pick out the best of...
Seas: 2-4 feet Winds: 10-20 SSE Temp: 84 F Viz: 3-50 feet We decided to get in the water for some bugs on opening day since we didn't do mini season last week (actually it was the 2nd year in a row that we don't do it). Little did we know what we were in for that opening day. We headed out early to try and beat some of the spot squatters that wait for day break on the water (because you're not allowed to night dive for lobsters in the keys). We were a little surprised by the lack of boats that...