We get to one of our spots and at first the water looks deceptively clean from the boat as we peer into it. We see some snapper swimming around so we gear up quickly and jump in hoping to make this a short trip with a full bag limit. Unfortunately upon...
to see if we can land a few more fish to fill our bag limits for the day. So we head out to Hawk's channel to dive for some snapper and more hogfish. This trip came up almost empty with only 2 hogs to show for our effort. I had spotted two 8lb muttons...
in the end as the fish seemed to be a respectable 14-16lb specimen. The day proceeded slowly with a couple of hogfish and snappers being bagged (not by me) as we worked the heavy seas for hours all the while looking for more grouper. It wasn't until we...
bottom coming up at me like I hadn't seen all Summer. Even though the only fish we found here were some larger schoolmaster snapper, it was great to drop and swim around the boom to see if anything larger would show up. When we had pretty much decided...
with the entire family on board, we decided to head out West without hesitation hoping we could find more of some of the snappers we had found a few weeks ago (even though that wasn't even all that much). We had hit a few spots back then that had some...
all it was still a great day (no matter how horribly I was shooting) as my friend Adrian ended up with about a 10# mutton snapper as well as a 24" red grouper (he's really annoying that way ;). We held off on cleaning fish that day because the women...
That's not to say my re-entry wasn't without it's sting... At the next stop, my brother in law shoots one of the nicest snappers we've seen in weeks (at least in our cooler) and I come up with a big goose egg. We move on and at the next spot, I decide...
to the West was especially dirty. First stop, #58. A nice shallow warm up dive (only about 20 feet) that usually holds snapper with an occasional whopper thrown in for good measure. We swam around #58 and after not being able to find the main landmark...
shot but I got the fish so I was still stoked. As I'm dispatching the fish and reloading my gun, I notice a legal mutton snapper has let his curiosity get the better of him and has moved in close to investigate what all the commotion is about. Those of...
that shot on the big one. The fact is that if it weren't for that very reel, I would have lost my personal best Mutton Snapper that I shot on my first Summer dive of 2010 (see May 22, 2010 - It's about time). But this new reel is the epitome of form,...
Grouper since the limit is now only 1 Black/Gag per person (and we weren't targeting Red Grouper in this depth) and a few Snapper but the water was clean and we figured this was our last stop on this whirlwind tour before heading home so we were really...
less clean due to the constant wave action against the nearby rocks. There I saw a legal Black Grouper as well as a Mutton snapper that was probably about 10lbs, but missed the former and couldn’t close the gap on the latter to take a shot. Nonetheless,...
heading West chasing fish, clean water and open spaces with limited success. We hit a couple of spots with big numbers of snappers, but not very many were of any considerable size. We were able to pick out one or two good sized fish but never seemed to...
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...
The summer had been busier than I would have liked this year and I honestly hadn't had as many opportunities to post much less given much thought to writing a new SpearView, but after having time to really reconsider, I realized that I had actually had multiple opportunities to try out new equipment this year (not all of it successfully). Further to that point, when I took the PFI Freediver course back in March I had decided to invest in a new mask and ended up deciding on the Omer Zero Cubed...
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 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.
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...
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.
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...
Winds: 10-12 South Seas: 2-4 feet Surf Temp: 83 F Viz: 10-15 feet Today started out a little slow, but we were rewarded for our continued effortrs by bagging some of our favorite and recently absent quarry, Black Grouper. Not just a Black, but a big Black , at least for this area (34 inches). We haven't bagged a specimen like this for more than a few years (actually, since 2001 ). We actually bagged more grouper today than we have for the past couple of weeks. The big one from above, another...
Seas: 1-2 feet Winds: 10-15 E/SE Viz: 15-25feet Temp: 82F The winds continued to to calm down today so we headed out to see if the viz had improved as well. We headed west today hitting some spots in about 25-35' hoping we could run into some more large mangroves. It was just 2 of us today (my brother in law and me) so the limit would only be 10.
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.
Seas: 2-3' Winds: 15-20 NE dropping to 10-15 SE in the afternoon Viz: 30-35' Temp: 82F "Third time's a charm", or so I thought... as I headed down for another shot at what would hopefully be my first "full" weekend of the Summer. With the boat in tow after working on it during the week to resolve fuel flow problems caused by the introduction of ethanol into our fuel supply (Thank you, big oil) I call ahead to have a friend turn on our A/C so temperatures are tolerable for our arrival. I get a...
Seas: 1-2 feet Winds: 5-10 NE Temp: 77 F Viz: 50-60 feet I had been watching the forecast for the past week to see if today would be the day that I get to jump back in the water for the first time since Labor Day. Last week, it was blowing a solid 30mph all over South Florida so I was a little concerned. I was hoping it would die down early and long enough to let the water clean up and get a shot at some dive time. After watching the forecast winds decrease every day over the past 3-4 days,...