that he had some spots in 50-60 feet but I didn't want to hit the deep water right off. After bagging a couple of nice snappers we moved on. The highlight for me was when we jumped in a spot that started out in about 45 feet and sloped down into 55-60...
in and see what they would see (and shoot). As we have recently, we would find some spots holding large numbers of small snapper that we didn't really want to shoot with an occasional brute rolling through that would hopefully give us a shot. After...
the rock to see who's home. Unfortunately,, I didn't find any lobster, but to my surprise, I did find the 3 or 4 missing snapper. They were all in a small nook in the ceiling hiding out (I assume hoping I would tire of looking for them and move on). It...
at this time that I look in the direction of my brother in law and he points at the bottom to show me a beautiful Mutton Snapper swimming along the sandy bottom. I immediately begin to reload as we give chase. Even from 35-40 feet away, this fish looked...
arose to considerably more wind than the past few days, we decided to head out anyway and see if we could bag our limit of snappers from one of our closer spots (seeing as we knew what the seas would be like). Only the two of us were up to the challenge...
around 10a with a plan to be back close to home in time 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...
again and headed home with the fish. After two dives that day, we decided to simplify the menu to just the staple fried snapper and forego any appetizers. Good thing too, cause I was beat. Sunday was a bit lazy as we all seemed to have slept in a...
up avoiding (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...
we didn't spend too much time in our efforts for dolphin. The good news this weekend is that we finally found some decent snappers. At about our 3rd spot, we ran into a school of some very nice sized mangrove snappers. By about 1p, we had our limit in...
to make an overnight trip this weekend and take a Monday off for the heck of it. I was hoping to be able to get into some snapper since the forecast had the weekend winds dying down (and hopefully the seas as well). Unfortunately, as you might have...
once the spawning begins. When we got there at about 10:30am, two of us jumped in to check it out. There were thousands of snappers at this spot, all of them very decently sized (1-3 lbs) with the random heifer (3-4 lbs) in and among the masses. There...
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: 1-2 ft Surf Temp: 83...
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 where they should be when they aren't spawning. Lots of good structure and good size holes have proven to be...
came and went somewhat uneventfully. 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...
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 don't scout very much in...
and shoot up the mangoes with enthusiasm. We hit a couple of our favorite patch reefs and shot about 24 of the beautiful snappers, all in a very respectable size range. However, just as the dive was coming to a close, and just when you think they are...
experience today, we were buzzed by not one, but 2 bull sharks. Both of them were in the 7-8 foot range. We lost the snapper, but fortunately that was all.
at least one spot that would let us bring home some meat. Our first stop was The Clumps. This spot typically holds mangrove snapper, and not even typically this early in the Summer, but it was the first area we had been able to make out any shapes on...
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...
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...
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....
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 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=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.
Seas: 3-5 feet Winds: 20-25 S/SE Viz: 20 feet Temp: 81 F The forecast for the long weekend was promising, at least for Saturday. S-SE winds at 5-10 knots with seas 1' inside the reef and only 1-3' outside the reef, phehomenal. The outlook wasn't as great for Sunday and Monday, but we hoped one good day would be enough and besides, we usually get the hell outta Dodge early on holidays to beat the traffic so Monday didn't even really count, so we were hopeful as we pulled in Friday night and I...
Winds: 10-15 SSW Seas: 2-3 feet Surf Temp: +/- 82F Viz: 20-25 feet First weekend back and it was both hard work and fun. It took us a little longer than usual to setup this weekend because we went back to our old campground this year and we are on somewhat smaller sites compared to last year. We did prevail however and got all setup with a little time left for a dive on Saturday. We headed out looking for clean water because we knew that we had missed the tide. Things didn't look too promising...
Seas: 6-8 feet (Sat) 2-4 feet (Sun) Winds: 15-25 S/SE 10-15 E/SE Viz: 40 feet Temp: 84 F This was almost my second week without an update, but a very interesting thing happened this past week. I found out I have a fan (and no, not a facebook fan)! Don't worry, I won't let the celebrity of it all go to my head and anywhere you want to put my Internet Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame will do (maybe somewhere between the Dancing Baby and iCarly :). Not wanting to disappoint my now growing...
Winds: Variable direction (mostly northerly) 20-30 mph Seas: 1-3 near land and structures 3-5 inside the reef Surf Temp: +/- 78 F Viz: 10-25 feet Not exactly what I call ideal conditions, but you could get in the water. The water was chilly, for South Florida, anyway. You could acclimate to the water temperature, but after a while you needed a break. Viz was variable, depending on the tide, with low tides being the worst. It wasn't the typical rainy Memorial Day weekend by any stretch. The...
Seas: 4-6 feet Winds: 15-20 SSW Temp: 85 F Viz: 25-50 feet After a week of East winds (and the wind was still blowing), the clean water finally got pushed far enough West so we could try to hit some of our spots in that general direction. We headed out with 5 divers that morning hoping to find that clean water we had heard about from other fishermen and we weren't disappointed. The clarity was absolutely amazing in many of our spots from 25-35 feet deep. Unfortunately, the numbers of fish...
Winds: 5-10 South Seas: 1-2 feet Surf Temp: 84 F Viz: 25-40 feet This weekend was one of the nicest weather weekends we had seen in a while. The fact is that it was so nice that we took the opportunity to take the whole family out to Sombrero Reef and was it beautiful! The water was so crystal clear that the pictures you see here for this weekend at the reef were actually taken from above the water! If it wasn't for a few ripples on the surface, I think anyone would have been hard pressed to...