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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 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.
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...
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 4th of July holiday I was able to break in my hawaiian sling made by HawaiianSling.net (Ray Uppstrom). I had purchased this quite some time ago in preparation for a trip to the Bahamas and I finally got to try it out in the waters around Cat Cay, South Bimini. This isn't your normal hawaiian sling. The design is completely unique and interesting in its approach compared to traditional slings. This sling is much more akin to a bow and arrow than it is to a regular sling and it looks...
Well it's hard to believe but another year is in the books. 2011 definitely passed in the blink of an eye. I guess it's true what they say... time does go by faster as you get older. I think it's yet another application of Einstein's theory of relativity. I believe that it goes by faster as you get older because the amount of time that passes is shorter relative to your age. When you were 10, a year was 1/10th of your life. At 50, it's a mere 1/50th so relatively speaking it's a hell of a lot...
So for the third year in a row, we begin to plan our annual guys spearfishing trip to the Bahamas in April via What's App. The group is put together and the messages start to fly with talk about the great trip we had last year and how everyone can't wait for this one. There's talk about new gear and new training tools and regimes, but the one thing that we knew wasn't going to be different was the destination. It was an immediate and unanimous decision to re-visit Grand Cay near Walker's Cay...
Seas: 5-7 feet Winds: 15-20 SE Temp: 74 F Viz: 30-35 feet I decided to make an overnight trip this weekend and take a Monday off for the heck of it. I was hoping to be able to get into some snapper since the forecast had the weekend winds dying down (and hopefully the seas as well). Unfortunately, as you might have noticed from the stats above, neither of those things happened. The viz was awesome, but you had to weather some serious seas to fish it.
Seas: 2-4' Winds: 10-15 SSE Viz: 30-45' Temp: 84F After having endured 11 straight days of high wind and rough seas which rendered only 1 barely worthwhile dive for me, this past week was my brother in law's shot at an extended diving stay. Luckily for him, the weather was perfect for 4 days in the middle of the week (starting the day after I left). His picture updates of the phenomenal conditions and catch all week while I was incarcerated at work were giving me mixed feelings of envy and...
Seas: 0-2 feet Winds: 5-15 S/SW Viz: 45 feet Temp: 83 F This past weekend the forecast was once again looking abysmal. The campground dolphin fishing tournament was even postponed because the outlook was not very good at all. The forecast was calling for 2-4' seas inside the reef and 3-5' seas beyond the reef with 15-20 knot winds out of the S/SE (which usually means the seas will build even higher than the forecast) on Saturday with slightly calmer wind and seas on Sunday. The drive in on...
Sat 8/4 Winds: SE 10-15 Seas: 2-4 ft Surf Temp: 81 F Viz: 20-30 ft We headed out this morning after missing the early morning low tide to see if we could find some mangoes at the reef. At first sight, it didn't really seem to be too rough, but first impressions are sometimes wrong (really wrong). The water was choppy and extremely sloppy. We hadn't even made it into Hawk's channel and the water was already throwing 3-4 waves at us. We rough it and continue on. We got to our first spot to find...