take at least one or two of them out as I typically do when I find these nuisances on our local reefs. I hate unloading my speargun into these relatively small prey, so often I will just stab at them with my gun. Interestingly enough, I'm fairly...
One of the few usable clips from our outing for the opening of the Atlantic Grouper season 2017. Definitely demonstrates why you should always be checking your surroundings. Enjoy! Check out the blog. {igallery...
us that the much maligned and often overlooked boat trailer is just as vital a part of your spearfishing outing as any speargun. Remember to give your trailers the TLC they need and deserve to keep you safe on the road when your heading out or coming...
we would see here. While I'm grabbing the nurse shark (yes, with my hands) and I surface, I hear my brother in law's speargun go off but based on the little life we'd been seeing, I figured he shot another porgy or a snapper. I surface with the shark...
to shoot through, my brother-in-law offers me the shot because he was worried that he would bend his spear on his new Wong speargun with a shot in such close quarters (and that would make two spears he had bent). I had been able to straighten (a very...
the only way to even spot her was through a hole that I couldn't even get my shoulders into much less my head and a 100cm speargun. So she was spared yet again. It was getting late and the sun was low in the sky but we decided to make one more drift to...
she's a keeper... On my next (and last) drop, I work to get into the best position possible to line up the light and speargun as quickly as possible because by now, I'm practically spent but determined to land my first grouper of the summer. I drop, and...
getting off a shot. Needless to say, a couple of expletives were shouted underwater as I ascended and discharged the speargun. Having a little renewed hope, I reload (with two slings this time) and scan the reef one more time. On this pass I run into...
blue water spearfisherman used to very commonplace utilitarian devices that are now found on just about any size speargun. I myself used to think that reels were nothing more than a whole lot more line to deal with or get tangled up with after taking a...
closer proximity to the fish when she attempts her break. As I drop to the bottom and watch for any movement, I hear a speargun fire on the other side of the rocks I was watching. I come over the top of the reef to see Adrian making for the surface and...
15 feet away next to another ledge. Hey, as long as it gets in the boat! So I drop one more time to recover the entangled speargun and we're off again. Only one more Grouper left in our bag limit and we were pretty determined we would fill it. Luckily...
the sling in the cocked position to prove it. As with any sling, there is a considerable difference in power from a speargun but this sling design lets you load up with a more powerful band than you might otherwise be able to use with a traditional...
cleaning, fixing and replacing everything from the boat to every last spearpoint and nicked or weathered slings on every speargun. At least we made good use of the downtime and the fact is that you can never over-check your gear. It's what you depend on...
if only Damien and myself had gone so I was glad to have him along. He subsequently ordered himself a brand new 55" Wong speargun that he brought along for his first spearfishing dive. Considering we were going blue water and he had never been...
This year at The Blue Wild I was fortunate enough to meet Mike Hickey. I know of Mike from his appearances on Speargun Hunter on the Outdoor Channel with Sheri Daye. Mike was orginally a guest on the show and in later seasons participated as an...
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....
I finally bit the bullet and decided to sell my No-Ka-Oi. It had gotten next to no use in the time I had owned it and it seemed a shame to have it just sit there so I Ebay'd it. With the funds from that sale, I invested in a gun that is a little more...
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...
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...
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....
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.
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.
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 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: 5-8 feet Winds: 20-25 ESE Temp: 78 F Viz: 5 feet We pulled in late Friday night after a brief (who am I kidding?) legal discussion of highway driving with a friendly Monroe County Sheriff's Deputy. According to friends that arrived before us, the winds picked up around 9p. There weren't too many storms, but the winds didn't let up all night. Up before the crack of dawn Saturday morning, we found the conditions had actually deteriorated even more from the night before. High tide was too...
So it's March 17th, St. Patrick's Day and everyone is excited to don their green garb and partake in their green libations. But green's just not my color today, I'm just too blue to be green. You see, blue doesn't just depict my mood because I haven't been able to dive since that memorable Saturday after Christmas when I was able to make that awesome day trip to Bimini . No... blue depicts much more than that. It exemplifies the dichotomy of my feelings, the bi-polarization of my emotions as...
Winds: 10-15 SE Seas: 2-4 feet (sloppy) Surf Temp: +/- 80F Viz: 25-60 feet Saturday was pretty much a wash for me due to the fact that I had to pull an all nighter on Friday and didn't get to show up on Saturday until about 3:30 in the afternoon. But after downing 6 or 7 beers and laying down early to get a full night's rest that night, I hoped Sunday was the beginning of a better weekend. Unfortunately, I was wrong, my brother-in-law was sick with a flu so it made it a little hard to get him...
I guess it all started about 4 weeks before when I get the call from my most adventurous spearfishing bud Carlos, asking if I was up for a 5 diver, 4 day trip to Andros in the Bahamas. Being the expert that I am on the Bahamian islands, I immediately ask "Where?". After a few minutes of discussion and a quick Google Maps lookup, I realize that this is no ordinary trip he's contemplating. Andros is the largest island in the Bahamas but is the least densely populated and most of the island is...
This story just goes to show that sometimes you get lucky, and you don't even know it until everything has happened. It was late in August, 1999. We were spearfishing a ledge that we visit from time to time. Usually we find a fair amount of grouper there. But we also know that this late in the summer, we sometimes get a little something extra... a shot at some Cubera Snapper. We don't get to see a lot of these during the peak summer months, so we make extra efforts to come here in the later...
Well, the FWC met for 2 days on June 8th and 9th, 2011 and not only had a changing of the guard with a new chairman and vice chairman, but made quite a few other decisions. Most importantly for Florida spearos and fishermen are the changes in the Permit, Florida and African Pompano bag, size and gear limitations. You might need to take your Captain's course to be able to identify the new Special Permit Zones (SPZ's) that they have apparently approved wherein anglers (both rod/reel and spear)...