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!
More things for you to see...
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!
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....
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...
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.
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 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.
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....
Seas: 1-3 feet Winds: 15-20 SSW Temp: 85-88 F Viz: 10-45 feet This weekend started out with more of the same as the past few weeks as far as the viz went. We dove on Saturday. We were able to limit out, but it took a few spots and a fair amount of work. We just haven't had any luck with the clarity over the past 4 or 5 weeks and it seemed like we were in for more of the same since the wind had actually switched back to a SSW direction. We had been hearing that the temporary switch to the E...
Seas: 1-2 feet Winds: 10-15 E/SE Viz: 15-25feet Temp: 82F On Friday once again, the winds and seas were cooperative and allowed us to get out for some more long awaited dive time. We stayed out west on Friday because we thought we had our best chances for clean water. We don't exactly get an early start as has been our habit this past week. We get underway around 10a and head southwest. We stop off at #67 to find that the water still hasn't cleaned up this close to home yet. In addition to...
Winds: 5 west Seas: less than 1 foot Surf Temp: 79F Viz: 35 feet Thank goodness that weathermen (or weatherpersons, don't want to be sexist) don't know shit from shine! The weather reports for this weekend would have had you believe that it wasn't even worth going out this weekend, but this was one of the nicest calmest days, in recent weeks. As we headed out the flag on the campground pole was barely flapping so we hauled ourselves out to some of our favorite closer spots and jumped right in.
Seas: 2-3 feet Winds: 15 E/SE Viz: 15-25feet Temp: 82F Well the winds finally laid down enough for us to give it another shot. We've been dealing with 3-5' seas inside the reef for 4 days now and when we haven't been getting the crap beat out of us by the seas, we've been pretty much bored to death. You can only make ice trips so many times before it becomes old hat. So even though we got a late start we head out to see if we can find some clean water. The seas didn't seem to be much more than...
Seas: 1-2 feet Winds: 5-10 E Viz: 40-50 feet Temp: 80 F Well, the weather finally held up until I got down there and what weather it was this weekend! Saturday and Sunday had 5-10mph winds out of the West and a mild 1-2' seas as far as the eye could see. We only hoped that the change in the wind from the East last week to the West this week wouldn't wreak too much havoc with the fishing. We had heard that those that were dolphin fishing earlier in the week were having no luck in close and only...
Winds: 5-10 SW Seas: 1-2 feet Surf Temp: +/- 80F Viz: 25-60 feet After pulling my 4th all-nighter in as many weeks, I decided to take a day off and take the family down to the keys a day early and hopefully take advantage of a long weekend (little did I know that TS Fay would have something different in store for us). We put the boat in around 9:30a with the expectation of an 11:30a slack high tide. By the time we fueled up and got everyone on the boat we headed out just about 11:00a so I...