Conch Garden and the Drop off

Filed under Spearfishing Gear, Spearfishing Photos by admin on November 14, 2010 at 12:21 pm {no comments}

Some decent weather and decent fish this week. Went out Wednesday with Catherine and Andy, and visibility was pretty good. We dove a lot of shallower stuff due to the ripping current. Mutton snappers are here again, we shot 4 or 5 of them. Andy had the biggest one which was probably around 8 pounds. I shot a couple reds and also a few hogfish. Couldn’t really find the black groupers. I was starting to feel like I was getting good there for a bit getting a black every trip for a while, but now it’s been a few times out and I haven’t gotten any. We did some drifts in a grass area I call the conch gardens- there are conchs every where. There are also lots of hogfish and the occasional mutton snapper. I cut up up a small cero mackerel and we watched a jewfish and nurse shark argue over who gets it. We finished up on the bar where Andy shot a big mangrove maybe 5 pounds and both grabbed a trigger fish.

The next day Lou, Catherine and I went out and we did great. Well Lou did great. Pretty much for every fish I shot he shot one of the same species twice as big. We did some shallow stuff for a bit. There were groupers in shallow water but they were very spooky. We also ran into a nice school of yellow jacks. We both popped a nice one but staying with the theme of the day Lou’s fish was bigger. Catherine followed us on some drifts, I shot a small grouper, small mutton, decent hog. Then Lou did a drift and shot a fat grouper and big mutton. We finished the day by going out to the deeper water and we found some stuff. I could not believe how awesome the stuff I found on the drop off was, less then a half mile from spots I have dove a dozens times. A ledge starting at 70 feet quickly coming up to 50 feet with swiss cheese bottom and tons of fish. I was off my game a bit and blew shots on two nice groupers in a short period of time. Lou and I both shot dog snappers, he got another nice mutton and I shot a big yellow jack all in the space of 30 minutes, it was great. After that with the winds picking up and the day getting late we headed in.

Clear Water , some new gear

Filed under Spearfishing Gear, Spearfishing Photos by admin on August 16, 2010 at 12:14 pm {2 comments}

Finally some clear water, blue water has pushed in onto the reef and Catherine and I have gone out in it. Two half day trips this week, once just me and her and one time Andy was able to come with us. All the extra daylight in the summer, allows for leaving at one in the afternoon and still having enough time to get a good swim in.

The issue is the lack of fish, and my lack of ability to shoot the ones I do see. It seems like spearing comes in waves, sometimes you can’t miss and sometimes you can’t even get close. The ripping current on the reef doesn’t help, but there have been a few times it’s been 100% user incompetence. But that’s fishing. Andy on the other hand can’t seem to miss and pulled a nice grouper and other fish out of spots where I saw nothing. On the upside the clear water and ripping current has been great for finding new spots. I have marked 6 or 7 new spots in the past couple days. I get stuck in a rut diving the same thing over and over again, and frankly fish move and some of my spots that are awesome in the winter don’t have any fish on them now.

I spent part of the day drifting in the water 80-120 feet deep with flashers out, and my big gun but nothing showed up. Zero, nada not even some triggers or cero mackerel to practice on. Just 100 foot of vis totally devoid of life.

I have splurged on some new gear. I am one of the cheapest people in the world, and I don’t like to buy stuff usually. It seems like most people like to buy stuff, I am the opposite. When I buy stuff most of the time it just makes me mad that whatever it is doesn’t seem to be worth the money. I often look at things and think “I can’t believe that piece of crap costs that much”. I also never eat out, because whenever I do I get mad because I always think I am paying way too much for something I could have just made myself.

Anyways after months of diving with cressi fins with cracked blades and ripped foot pockets I bought some new fins. I have been kind of skeptical about the whole fancy fins thing. I find that spearfishing, or any sport whose main participants are young men who tend to have a little bit of money, it’s very easy to pay way too much for gear. I’ve seen the carbon blades, fiberglass blades etc. I was going to just buy a new pair of Cressi HF but they jacked the price on them up to $150, they were $100 when I bought them a couple years ago. So I said what the hell and bought a set of nemo pockets and blades, they cost a bit more but they weren’t crazy expensive. The first set came and they were way too small, even though they were the same size as my cressis. So I sent them back and got one size up.

The next size up fit fine and boy are they great. I can’t really describe the way they feel when I kick but all I can say is it’s better. They just feel better, snappier, I really don’t know how to describe it. I am actually super happy with them. I got medium stiffness, I am dying to try the stiff fins but didn’t want to get stuck with something I couldn’t dive with.

The other purchase was the Olyumpus E-pl1 camera with an underwater housing. It’s not quite our dream camera but since it costs half as much we had to take it. As much as I love our little lumix fx35, it’s a pretty weak little camera. E-pl1 has a huge sensor, shoots in raw, it basically blows away the fx35. The video on e-pl1 is the same size as the lumix, in pixels but the quality blows it away. The videos from the e-pl1 look almost 3d, they look like real HD video. The only issue so far with it is the weak auto focus. The auto focus is not that fast, and seems to only focus on one point instead of multiple points, but hey it’s half the price. Check out these pictures, I don’t think there’s any question about how awesome this camera really is. There is a lens you can get for the camera which is supposed to improve the auto-focus on the videos but its like $700 which is actually more then the camera cost.

Weather has been bad, but got a new gun

Filed under Spearfishing Gear, Spearfishing Reports by admin on July 24, 2010 at 11:41 am {no comments}

Well, Brian is visiting and he brought my new gun. The water and wind have totally sucked pretty much all month. I got out a couple days in the middle of the month but it has now been windy for like 2 weeks straight. Not like 15 knots windy, where you can still go but it’s just kind of uncomfortable. It’s been more like 20-25 knots, sometimes up to 30 knots every freaking day. Then this past weekend we were going to be hit by a tropical storm, the day the storm was supposed to hit was the nicest day almost all month, of course I had no plans to go out, because what type of idiot would go out on his boat when a TROPICAL STORM is about to hit.

So mostly the conditions during Brian’s visit have sucked. We got out to the reef for a little bit the first afternoon he was here, and braved the seas and crap vis for bit. We left at like 3 in the afternoon as soon as his flight got here, because hey tomorrow there is supposed to be tropical storm so get out while we could. Brian shot a nice trigger and a couple snappers before the wind drove me in. We tried going to Cotrell and backcountry stuff today and that was like milk, less then 8 feet of vis.

I guess on the upside Brian brought my new gun and it is a beast. Is it too much gun for the Keys? Maybe sometimes. It shoots the same size shaft as my 130cm rabitech and overall is only an inch or two bigger but boy does it look bigger. It’s teak, with an enclosed track and is currently loaded with 5/16 KJ shaft from Florida Freedivers. I want to scale the shaft down to the 7.5mm the same size I shoot now, but haven’t gotten the shaft yet. I am going to try shooting it a bit with the heavier shaft and see how that plays out. I was worried at first how it feels in the water because it looked so much bigger then my rabitech. This was extra worrisome because I had Brian make the gun substantially longer then the original version, and if it was too long now , I would have really felt like a real dickhead. Frankly, once it’s in the water aiming it doesn’t seem any different. Sure its harder to drag from behind you then the rail gun, but the smaller version of this gun was hard to drag through the water as well.

I have only practiced shooting the gun a couple times and both times it hit exactly what I was aiming for. I found this pretty interesting because generally when I use a different gun I can’t hit the broad side of a barn with it for awhile. This gun, I just picked it up and plugged two fish. One was a small chub was at about the max distance the gun could shoot with a single wrap. I think this gun is going to kick ass on the bar when this weather clears up. I think that this gun is going to be awesome for wahoo, or any day when the vis is 50+ feet. It might kind of suck for the shallows and dirty water though. But I can bring my rabitech for that.

Which means, oh no, I am going to be one of those people who brings two guns. I understand why people want to bring two guns and that’s fine in a big boat. But on my boat that can kind of be a problem. You figure 4 guys, now you have 8 guns laying around all over. Kind of gets out of control. I actually dove with a guy one time who brought like 3 or 4 guns, it seemed like kind of over kill. Right now I just bring my rabitech with two shafts, one with a single wrap, one with a double and use which ever is better for the situation. Now am going to have to bring two guns, maybe. Or maybe I will just use this big wood gun all the time, regardless of the situation like I do now with my rabitech.

New gun more clear water

Filed under Spearfishing Gear, Spearfishing Photos by admin on April 21, 2010 at 2:31 pm {no comments}

Went out on the water for a couple days this week. My friend Brian is visiting and was lucky on the weather, after the week or so of very windy weather, the wind died the days after he got here. He brought me a new gun but I will talk about that later. We had some good to very good visibility this week. The vis on the reef line was mostly very good south of Key West but I was told by some other people who were out that the vis was bad west of western dry rocks.

First day we went, it was Cal, Brian and Luis. We tried to freedive the vandenburg but it was a mess out there. We got there early and had just enough time to get in the water before every scuba boat in Key West showed up. We had fun diving on it anyway, I made it almost to the deck before my float line ran out. If there is any current 80 feet of float line is only good for around 60 foot dives. Cal threw on a tank and went down and shot a mutton real quick before we left. As we were leaving some guys who looked like they were dressed as astronauts showed up. They had double tanks on, pony bottles and hoses sticking out in every direction, it was amazing.

We went in and hit the reef. I shot a 6# mangrove which might be one of the biggest I ever shot. I think I shot a bigger one in the gulf last June but I didn’t weigh it. I know 6# is not that big but it kind of is for mangroves on the Atlantic side of the Keys. Cal shot a 3# yellowtail. We thought it was bigger but it’s still one of the larger yellowtail that has been shot on our boat. I usually don’t weigh snappers but I am going to start just out of curiosity to see if we get any bigger ones. Luis saw a monster king fish but could not get close to it. There were some amberjacks around but now that the water is warmer and they are smaller, I have stopped shooting them. The big schools of Yellow jacks have also dispersed. Now when we see them they are usually in groups or 1-3 and are spooky. We got a few anyway but not they were not big like they were a month ago.

Cal threw my mask over board and then I tried wearing Luis’s backup mask but it didn’t fit me right and I had issues with it. Having the right gear really makes or breaks the day. Luis almost lost a fin and went nuts trying to dive for it with no fins on.

The next day Luis, Brian, Andy and I went out. The vis was more variable and we dove in 20-80 feet of vis throughout the day. We hit some ledges and picked up some snapper and I shot a small king fish but it tore off. We trooped around it bit and found very clear water in front of Key West. We shot some snappers and hogs but nothing that big or exciting. On one ledge we could have got the boat limit on black grouper if the season was open. We dove on the wreck in 80 feet of water, Andy shot a AJ and two monster jewfish came up off the wreck to try to eat it. Luckily they backed down once they were 10-15 feet from the surface.

I got a shot on a big king and blew it, I had one band loaded and thought I could just hit with one band, of course as soon as I got close it moved out a bit and I lost the shot.

Which brings me to my new Mastropietro gun, which Brian made for me. I have to admit I have always been skeptical of high end spearfishing gear. Sometimes you get what you pay for but in some things, especially things involving extreme sports where the primary buyers are young men, you can pay WAY more then what you get. Now after using this gun for a couple days I think I am sold on the whole enclosed track wood gun thing. He made the gun with an auto line release, so that you don’t have to play with the line release before each load. The shaft just clicks smoothly into place with almost no effort. The track holds the shaft in place and eliminates a lot of user error. The shaft can not flop out of alignment, the mono can not wrap around the shaft or get under it, like it can with a rail gun. I know that the track is supposed to be more for shooting accuracy, but being able to load quickly and easily is almost just as important to me. Any cheap rail gun will shoot straight if the bands are tied right, in my opinion and I wasn’t missing many fish with the rabitech. The Mastropietro gun is a bit shorter then my rabitech, and it took a little getting used to the way it tracks through water, but all in all it has been awesome. I have not shot any big fish with it yet, but I have shot through 7# mutton at the far end of the mono. I think the gun may shoot a bit low with three bands loaded on it but I have to test it more. The only thing left to test is longer range on bigger fish, which will be on May 1st the opening of grouper season. The Mastropietro gun shoots with a double wrap about a foott further then the Rabitech with a single wrap. I have taken the double wrap off the rabitech recently because frankly it was not needed to shoot ajs, yjs and cobia. I will see if the shorter guns range is enough, frankly I don’t think I’ve shot fish at the end of the double wrap on the rabitech, but I know I shot some a few feet past the range of a single wrap. I am hopeful the new gun will work just fine but it may be a bit short.

Half Day, Nice Permit

Filed under Spearfishing Gear, Spearfishing Photos by admin on March 18, 2010 at 1:56 pm {no comments}

Well we finally got a little break in the weather and and was able to go out for a half day. The rain finally stopped around 1pm and we where headed out by 2pm. Kind of awesome to have a boat in a slip in Key West. The relatively short drive to the fishing grounds means you can hit the water at a moment’s notice and still have decent time. I went on Andy’s boat along with Luis and Cal. We headed out to areas where we saw the cobia the other day. Kind of a long run for a half day, but we all had been dying to get back out to that area to see if the cobia were still there.

When we hit the rocks we were excited to be able to see bottom; there was 30 or so feet of visibility. Pretty much all this past week the snorkel boats had been reporting that visibility was less then 20 feet, some days less then 10 feet. No cobia at all. We did run into the usual reef species: yellow jacks, mangroves, triggerfish, amberjack and I shot a big permit. I usually don’t take permit, in my opinion they are not that great to eat and although they are legal to spear in federal waters, I just don’t really want the hassle of explaining that to the FWC. This one was big though and I couldn’t resist. I am going to try smoking some of the meat and see how that is.

Everyone had gear break or lost. Luis broke a fin right off the bat, Riffe fins, his Riffes broke exactly like my Riffes did before. Cal had his shooting line break and lost a shaft to a yellow jack. I hit Luis’s float line with the engine and broke it. Myself and Andy were freezing, Cal was warm in his 5mm suit. I keep saying I am going to buy a 5mm suit, but then I tell myself it’s about to get warm and then it doesn’t get warm.

Cal had a reef shark attack his float and try to take some snapper from him.

Well we finally got a little break in the weather and and was able to go out for a half day. The rain finally stopped around 1pm and we where headed out by 2pm. Kind of awesome to have a boat in a slip in Key West. The relatively short drive to the fishing grounds means you can hit the water at a moments notice and still have decent time. I went on Andy’s boat along with Luis and Cal. We headed out to areas where we saw the cobia the other day. Kind of a long run for a half day, but we all had been dying to get back out to that area to see the cobia were still there.

When we hit the rocks we where excited to able to see bottom, there was 30 or so feet of visibility. Pretty much all week this past week the snorkel boats had been reporting that visibility was less then 20 feet, some days less then 10 feet. No cobia at all. We did run into the usual reef species yellow jacks, mangroves, triggerfish, amberjack and I shot a big permit. I usually don’t take permit, in my opinion they are not that great to eat and I although they are legal to spear in federal waters, I just don’t really want the hassle of explaining that to the FWC. This one was big though and I couldn’t resist. I am going to try smoking some of the meat and see how that is.

Everyone had gear break or lost. Luis broke a fin right of the bat, riffe fins, his riffe’s broke exactly like my riffes did before. Cal had his shooting line break and lost a shaft to a yellow jack. I hit Luis’s float line with the engine and broke it. Myself and Andy were freezing, Cal was warm in his 5mm suit. I keep saying I am going to buy a 5mm suit, but then I tell myself its about to get warm and then it doesn’t get warm.

Cal had a reef shark attack his float and try to take some snapper from him.

Spearfishing Float Lines

Filed under Spearfishing Gear by admin on September 2, 2008 at 8:27 pm {no comments}

Floats lines are great, don’t let anyone tell you different. I learned about float lines by reading about them on spearboard. No one I met in real life used a float line, so it I had to learn about it on my own.

Anyways something I noticed pretty early on is that if you shoot a fish and don’t kill it, it tries to run away pulling your spear with it. This isn’t much of problem when you are in shallow water and the fish are not that big. It becomes a problem when you farther underwater and the fish is larger, because the fish will take your gun.

To offset this you can use a reel or a float line. I haven’t used a reel so I can’t really comment on them that much, except that they look cool and it’s probably a lot nicer than swimming around with 80 feet of rope and float pulling behind you. Yes it does it seemed kind of crazy to me to tie a whole bunch of rope to my spear gun and then swim around with the rope and a float dragging behind me. But it does work and it’s pretty standard for many of the better spearos to use some sort of float line set up.

Both the Reel and the float line allow you to control bigger fish without losing your gun, and both will allow you to give more play to fish that might rip off if you put full pressure on them. In most cases whenever I shoot a mackerel I let go of my gun and let it swim, I hold the float line in my hand and let it slide through my fingers as necessary as the fish runs.

A plus for the float line is that other people can see right where you are. This is very helpful when its is choppy because it easy to lose track of diver in these conditions.

Being one of the cheapest people on earth, when I reached the point where I knew I needed either a float or a reel, I went with float line. Reels cost a few bucks and I was able to make a ghetto float line for like $20. My first float line was a bunch of poly rope and a used boat bumper. Although it worked for my purposes initially I quickly upgraded.

The poly rope works ok, but I found I prefer the float line Florida Free divers sells. The boat bumper compresses as it gets pulled underwater, once I saw a jack, not even a big one like 15#, pull the bumper under water and start swimming away with an expensive spear gun in tow, I knew the boat bumper had to go.

So now I am using spongex buoys floats, I got them at Cudjoe Sales, a commercial fishing store. They will ship stuff if you want to buy a set of these floats, they are around $8-$12 each. Here is there website http://www.cudjoesales.com/. These won’t compress and seem to be perfect for not huge fish, which is mostly what I shoot.

There are a bunch of manufacturers that make way more tech and way more buoyant float systems, of course they cost a lot more.

Last time I was out , I saw some large pelagic fish and I have been kind of thinking that getting a more substantial float might be a good idea. I know it would be overkill 99% of the time but that 1% is what will count.

Update

Read about these places online that sell foam filled float lines

http://www.memphisnet.net/product/3799/rope_braided_foamcore

http://www.nylonnet.com/merchandise/?top_cat=96&cat_nav=120&sub_cat=135&cat=135

They are used for making nets, and they sell them for cheap like $30-$40 for 300 feet. Thats like $10 a float line. I think they would be totally effective unless you are shooting something like large tuna.

Update 2

I actually ordered 300′ of polyfoam line from this website http://www.wallacecordage.com/polyfoam_floatline.htm it was shipped quickly and with shipping it was a little over $30. I comes in black only though. It shipped really fast and looks good but I haven’t tested it in the water so I guess we will see.

Ebay Rubber

Filed under Spearfishing Gear by admin on September 2, 2008 at 7:54 pm {no comments}

Hurricane Gustav just went past, and there are possibly 2 other hurricanes on their way into my area. Although it doesn’t look like we will be hit directly with any of the current storms, we have been having winds up to 40 knots. I really don’t think there will be much spear fishing for awhile, you probably can’t see your hand in front of your face on the reef. Starting to get a bit stir crazy, so I am going to take a break from working and mess with this blog a bit. (more…)

Rabitech Hunter

Filed under Spearfishing Gear by admin on August 27, 2008 at 12:40 pm {no comments}

My girlfriend loves her Rabitech Hunter. It shoots good, loads good , trigger mech seemed good for awhile but we have have had issues with it. According to Rabitech the Hunter is susceptible to getting sand in it. Now we don’t shore dive so our exposure to sand is very limited but we still experience the “sand effect”. The shaft won’t lock into place when the gun is dry. Fortunately we tend to use spear guns wet so this isn’t that big of deal but its still in issue. It’s like magic, the shaft won’t lock into place, then I spray some water in the trigger and it locks in like butter.

Rabitech Apex

Filed under Spearfishing Gear by admin on August 27, 2008 at 12:39 pm {one comment}

The Rabitech Apex trigger and handle are in the same league with the Aimrite in my opinion and both are superior to the Rob Allen and Rabitech Hunter trigger, also in my opinion. Of course you pay a lot more for the Apex or the Aimrite, so it is relative. The handle on the Apex is sort of odd shaped and from what I hear isn’t supposed to be as comfortable if you have large hands. I don’t have large hands and it feels fine to me. There is a new style handle coming out for the Apex that supposedly addresses some of these issues. The trigger mech has plenty of room to rig the gun with heavy mono and the rail on the barrel is deep and holds the shaft in place well. This is kind of important to me because I am often loading the gun while trying to keep my eye on fleeing fish. I currently have the Rabitech Apex with an open muzzle. There is some debate on muzzles but I feel that the closed muzzle will always add a little drag to shaft. Although people disagree with that I don’t see how pulling the loop of mono through the hole can not add a little drag.

Rob Allen Caranx

Filed under Spearfishing Gear by admin on August 27, 2008 at 12:39 pm {no comments}

Everybody loves Rob Allen spear guns, all over the place you see awesome spearos with Rob Allen guns etc. I think they are probably the best deal for the money. Although for the price I think they are around the same price as the Rabitech Hunter guns, not sure which would be the better deal. Anyways my experience with the Rob Allens is they shoot great but I didn’t like the trigger mech that much. I had issues with the spear not locking into place sometimes. They also have no loading butt on the handle. I thought that a butt would make it more comfortable to load without a wetsuit, but it was the opposite. The Rob Allen was actually more comfortable without any padding. But the downside was when just wearing a lycra the gun would sometimes twist, or slide down my chest while loading.

Also the Rob Allen shafts rust in pretty short period of time, even if you rinse them a lot. They still work fine they just don’t look at nice. Probably a quick scrubbing with steel wool would sharpen it up.

UPDATE

There was something wrong with the trigger, florida free divers sent me a new trigger mech free of charge and now the shaft locks in like butter. Also the rusty shafts were part of a defective shipment of shafts. I have since got a bunch of RA shafts and they don’t rust, well a little at the tip but hardly at all.

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