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...
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Gallery Spotlight
June 10-12, 2021 - 6th Annual Pirate Trip
After Covid-19 restrictions last year, everyone was itching to get back in the water this year. As always, an amazingly fun trip with lots of meat in the freezer to show for it!
After Covid-19 restrictions last year, everyone was itching to get back in the water this year. As always, an amazingly fun trip with lots of meat in the freezer to show for it!
After Covid-19 restrictions last year, everyone was itching to get back in the water this year. As always, an amazingly fun trip with lots of meat in the freezer to show for it!
A short vid from our Summer 2019 Bahamas Pirate Trip of the quickest landing of a #50 black grouper I've ever had. Proof that it only takes one fish to make the spearinglife spearfishing trip! Thanks to the pirate crew for making every year an adventure!
The Summer of 2025 had been especially slow from a spearfishing perspective for me. I will typically be gifted with at least one mentionable fish from my spearfishing ventures each Summer in Key Largo. This year, I was really starting to give up hope on my perennial "mentionable" fish. Luckily for me, perseverance can pay off and on a lazy Sunday morning when I almost decided to stay on the dock, I got my gift! On my first spot of the day and only the second drop of the day, I was able to land my personal best (in Key Largo) Mutton Snapper, weighing in at almost 14.5 pounds!
A short vid from our Summer 2019 Bahamas Pirate Trip of the quickest landing of a #50 black grouper I've ever had. Proof that it only takes one fish to make the spearinglife spearfishing trip! Thanks to the pirate crew for making every year an adventure!
The Summer of 2025 had been especially slow from a spearfishing perspective for me. I will typically be gifted with at least one mentionable fish from my spearfishing ventures each Summer in Key Largo. This year, I was really starting to give up hope on my perennial "mentionable" fish. Luckily for me, perseverance can pay off and on a lazy Sunday morning when I almost decided to stay on the dock, I got my gift! On my first spot of the day and only the second drop of the day, I was able to land my personal best (in Key Largo) Mutton Snapper, weighing in at almost 14.5 pounds!
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 multi-purpose (at least that is how I convinced myself to get it :). I was extremely torn among 3 choices. I was considering the Euro 120, 120x and 130. After a couple of weeks of deliberation and a lot of flip-flopping, I decided on the Euro 120....
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.
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...
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...
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...
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 underwater videographer. Mike is the USA distributor for FreeDivers ( FreeDivers USA ) spearfishing equipment. I came across his booth and after a great conversation about spearfishing, we started discussing the rising cost of spearshafts specifically....
Winds: 0-5 Seas: Less than 1 foot Surf Temp: 87F (about 15f colder in the thermalcline) Viz: Varying from 6-25 feet Well, it's happened again... I went diving for lobster during mini season in Miami and have lost about 95% of my hearing in my right ear. Let's see how long it lasts this time (last time in 1999 it lasted about 2 weeks). I definitely won't be going out this weekend, so I guess its a honeydew weekend (Honey, do this, Honey do that :). I hope anyone that gets to go out bags their...
Well, another year has come and gone. Some changes have been implemented for us spearfishermen this year, not the least of which is the closing of all shallow water grouper from Jan 19, 2010 through April 30, 2010. If you want to read more about the reasons behind the closing, check out this article . In future years, the closing is scheduled to begin Jan 1 (instead of 19th like this year). The closing includes pretty much every grouper species with the only exceptions being the Snowy, Warsaw...
Wind Seas Viz Temp 15-25 ESE 4-5' 30-40' 81F Once again, the most anticipated weekend for Florida spearfisherman rolls around and this year I actually got to plan some time off and hit it for a few days in a row. I hadn't had many opportunities to dive this winter (with the windiest winter I can recall) and even on those few occasions I did get to go, it just didn't live up to expectations. I was so excited to finally get back in the water this year for a full weekend of diving and...
Winds: 8-10 South Seas: 2-3 feet Surf Temp: 82-83 F Viz: 20-35 feet (variable with the tideline) This weekend started out pretty nice. The weather was agreeable on Saturday to the tune of mild winds and very tolerable seas. On Saturday, we were able to head out to some of our offshore patch reefs 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...
Winds: (Saturday) 2-5 Variable Seas: (Saturday) 2-3 inside the reef, 2-3 outside the reef Surf Temp: +/- 84 F Viz: 25-30 feet Unfortunately, due to some mechanical difficulties, we were only able to dive Saturday morning, but the morning was very nice. High tide was at about 10:30am, and we were about an hour early. We fought the incoming tide for about 30 minutes before it started to slacken up. After that we got a good 45 minutes of slack tide, where we were really able to make up some...
Seas: 1-3 feet Winds: 5-15 ESE Temp: 80 F Viz: 40-50 feet offshore To say that I was looking forward to this weekend after the past few we have had would seem totally redundant. The last couple of weekends have been abysmal at best. But luckily for me, this weekend has let me make up for the past few (from a spearfishing perspective) and this blog will have me at my usual loquacious self with a little more verbal ammunition than I have had recently. Like last week, I want to talk about the...
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