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 ESE 5mph 1-2' 40' 81F This past week started out looking very bleak. Storms rolled through the middle keys pretty much all day Monday and Tuesday with torrential downpours and winds in excess of 30mph. It was so bad in fact that...
Wind Seas Viz Temp NW 5-10mph 1-2' 20-25' 75F The winds had been incessant all through April and as May came around there was no end in sight. Throughout the month, everyone was landlocked and cabin fever was setting in with the fishermen I knew (and...
no matter how many times I thought we had reached the end of the reef, there would be another patch just at the edge of visibility. Even so, we weren't discouraged (not too much anyway) and kept going. I had actually made my deepest dive of the day to...
was next to no viz at Sombrero light which was only 5 miles offshore (and is a tourist mecca for its regular extended visibility). Discouraged, we kept hoping that the winds might lay down enough for a trip that might still give us a chance to find what...
We continued to hit spot after spot, moving on relatively quickly either because of the scarcity of fish or the minimal visibility. On or about our 4 stop (I'd lost count by now), we finally came into some fish. Nothing of any size, but at least we were...
fun, we weren't able to find the schools of bigger fish that we were hoping for. We had to head very far east to find any visibility but when we jumped into the water in about 43 feet, we found some very nice diving for a while. We dove the area for...
shallow which we know is occasionally visited by bull sharks and unfortunately for me, today was not an exception. The visibility here was not much more than about 8 feet so we had to wait for fish to move in close before shooting. After coming around...
couple of weeks) tropical storms and hurricanes wreaking havoc with the seas and weather. After having one of the best visibility summers I can remember, it has all come to a crashing halt! From what I could see, the viz was about 6 inches because the...
to civilization when we found that the majority of our spots to the south of our location were almost completely without visibility. Usually, we get variations of 2 colors of water around here, blue and green. Today we had a shade of green that was so...
that produce a decent catch for us (at least historically). Just to make matters worse, in addition to the overall crappy visibility we have been experiencing, there is a tropical wave over Puerto Rico that is supposed to be smack dab in the middle of...
It takes so much longer to clear up the after effects of some bad weather. We have only been able to dive with visibility in our shallower spots (15-20 ft). Luckily, we were able to shoot up some decent size mangoes in a shallow patch reef. After that,...
8-10 West Seas: 2-4 feet Surf Temp: 83 F Viz: 10-15 feet Today we went to some of our closer spots, due to the lack of visibility at our offshore patch reefs. Visibility was minimal to nil at most locations deeper than 15 feet. To make matters worse, we...
Type:
Article
Author:
Bob Diaz
Category:
SpearBlog 2006
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Gallery Spotlight
July 8-12, 2013 - There's something missing in these pics... oh yeah, ME!
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.
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...
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...
{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.
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.
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: 1-3 feet Winds: 15-20 SSW Temp: 85 F Viz: 10-45 feet This weekend we tried to head out for some more of what we found last week and even though we did have some fun, we weren't able to find the schools of bigger fish that we were hoping for. We had to head very far east to find any visibility but when we jumped into the water in about 43 feet, we found some very nice diving for a while. We dove the area for about 45 minutes, but after only getting a single cero mackerel, we figured we...
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 load up my site with blogs and pictures that have entertained me (and hopefully some of you) tremendously along the way. I have looked forward to my Summer escapades chasing mahi, snapper, grouper, hogfish and facing sharks and goliaths every...
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...
Winds: 5-10 West Seas: 1-2 feet Surf Temp: 83 F Viz: 10-20 feet Another day of picture perfect weather that doesn't provide perfect conditions. It takes so much longer to clear up the after effects of some bad weather. We have only been able to dive with visibility in our shallower spots (15-20 ft). Luckily, we were able to shoot up some decent size mangoes in a shallow patch reef. After that, we got a little excited and thought that some of our deeper patch reefs might have cleared up....
I had to write about this weekend even though I wasn't the one that got to go spearfishing. I didn't get to record the conditions, although I know they were great. The water was still a little cool (around 76 F), but it was warm and clear out and the winds had laid down. My brother-in-law and a friend of ours decided to take advantage of a couple of days off down in the keys. They were going to try for some dolphin or blackfin tuna in the mornings and then try to get in some spearfishing at...
Seas: 2-4' Winds: 10-20 ESE Viz: 45-50' Temp: 81F So we head down this weekend without too much in the expectation department since it had been raining with 20-40 mph winds almost incessantly the entire week. While at work on Thursday, I take a quick glance at the forecast to see there was still a small craft advisory in effect and a call for 2-4' seas on Sat increasing to 3-5 on Sunday. Heading home from work Friday in what seemed like my umpteenth torrential downpour this week, I'm not too...