Posts by Reefchief


    Steven, dont we all know that rule already and feel that we will follow it as we know the consequences of not doing so? On land don't we all say that we know our bodies and our limits and have the experience to turn the dive when we should. That we will above all else follow the "don't stay under water longer than you should" rule. No fish is worth it etc etc. If so, I find myself trying to understand how can this still happen? If I am one fish away from forgetting, ignoring, or not feeling what is often my only line of defense against this happening I feel like there are adjustments to be made.


    That rule has until now given me what I thought was legitimate confidence in diving how I dive. What happened has left me wondering if my confidence is hubris, and if my hubris is causing me to do things with confidence I shouldn't. The answer for me has already been yes, and I have already learned. Maybe everyone else is going to just keep diving how they were. But for me this was a wake up call.


    As I understand it, this dive was after a morning of fishing. I was fishing that weekend and it was surface of the sun hot. None of those things that you listed apply to a first dive after a day of fishing. I wonder if this was a factor in tipping the scales on that day.



    I don't think anyone wants to hash and probe for the sake of it. But I think for many of us here this tragedy hit so close and was so shocking that we can't help but want to understand and analyze the situation in an effort to learn and make sense of what happened. Now may not be the time. But at this point the only positive thing that can ever possibly come from this situations is learning from it.


    This has already caused me to take a serious look at my own diving and how I can improve my own safety. Until this week, diving buddy-less with a boat following after a long day of fishing was the most common of practices for me. But a number of things will be different for me the next time I get in the water. I also plan on investing in a FRV.

    Yeah Frank I usually dont mind or even notice the fish on there, but that big cuda from 2 weeks ago felt like a sea anchor.


    Chase, Frank(hardline) beachdives with me and my banksboard and gets to hear me complain about how impossible it is to even shoot a fish without it yanking my gun from my hands on really nasty days. His lifeguard can doesn't suffer from the same issue. Ive missed quite a few nice fish because my float was pulling on my gun on beachdives. In the future on less ideal days I will probably switch over to a torpedo and just deal with having to carry all the shit to and from the beach like Frank does.


    The banks board is great for storing gear and its vital during lobster season beach bug dives. Its also great as a kickboard to swim faster against currents on the way out or in.


    You should coil your line between dives especially with a banks-board it will kill 90% of those problems. It also has the added bonus of putting your float right near your head instead of 50+ feet away. The only times it really messes me up is when I dont have the line coiled and see a fish, or the wind is blowing so hard the board drifts really fast while im on the bottom.

    Guilty as charged! Although I actually run away so frank cant put fish on my stringer! :laughing3:


    Yes Dans floatline spool is genius, I need to make me one of those. Although I find the stringer is what ends up getting tangled with everyone elses stuff not so much the spool (when Im using one).

    My guess would be that the power required to operate something that vibrates hard enough to be felt through a wetsuit is far beyond the capabilities of a watch battery. This is why I think vibration is mainly seen in devices large enough to have a large rechargeable battery.

    This new speardiver suit is terrible. Ever since I got it big fish wont leave me alone. I just want to dive in peace!






    Ive also gotten more compliments from people about this suit than any others. :cool2: My only problem now is its becoming too warm to wear and I will soon lose this amazing suit juju! I need a steamer ASAP.

    Lots of good points here. In my experience it seems like 2 floatlines can be managed decently well between the divers in close proximity but beyond that things start to tangle all the time unless each person is spooling their line. Last week 3 of us were diving in shallow water very close together very close to the anchored boat with floatlines and it was a pain in the ass. In the future I might switch to a reel in those instances to avoid problems, but I wouldn't dive deep with a reel for the exact reasons Dan is describing, nor would I drift dive without one for the other reasons he mentioned.


    Dan is right about the safety difference in a reel and a floatline is visibility of the diver, On a day with big rolling seas a floatless diver is completely impossible to spot from the water, and almost impossible even from the boat.


    I tend to cover a lot of ground diving. I do a lot of swimming and exploring and following fish. It works great for catching fish but can be kind of a safety hazard as I too often venture too far from the boat. I try to stay close but a fish or beautiful reef line is always calling me.


    A few weeks ago on the way in from a day of diving we decided to hit a few really shallow coral heads that sometimes hold hogs. I removed my floatline since we were just going to hit a few heads expecting only hogfish and continue on home. I jumped out and started following a fish in one direction, another buddy jumped out and went a different direction with the boat following him, and before I knew it the boat had absolutely no idea where I went. When I looked up to get a bearing on the boat and realized we were too far apart and I didnt have my floatline, I put my gun up in the air and kept waving it around. The boat eventually came back and said they thought I was 100% the other direction and the only reason they saw me was because I was holding my gun up when they were scanning for me. This isn't a situation a person should purposely put themselves in, but when and if it does happen the big yellow/red float is a great beacon.


    Yet another positive aspect of a float is that if you did get legitimately lost, immobilized somehow, hurt etc, you have a float to hold onto until rescue comes. Like the guy from PR that smashed his face with his gun and drifted away. Imagining myself lost at sea with nothing but my fat ass for buoyancy is 100x more frightening then having a big float to hug.

    Hint Hint bring me some cudas to eat frank im starving since last week.;)


    Like frank said, I spent most of my day being outsmarted by a 30" plus Cubera and then looking for him without success. First 5 mins in the water i missed a very close shot that he seemed to matrix around. I left when frank called me over, got the grouper, and returned to see him slip into a hole, chased him around and saw him flashing in the hole a few more times but held off pulling the trigger before he finally left and never came back. Saw some other epic fish that wouldn't even let me think I had a chance including a monster 20ish lb YJ cruising with a bull shark of all things.

    Viz was very nice again today off hollwood. Surface conditions were a small chop building as the day went turning into North to south whitecaps by 3pm. Vis was about 50ft in 20-40ft.


    Despite NOAA and the weatherman and every fisherman I know telling me today was gonna suck my buddy Jimmy and I decided to chance it. Ended up paying off big time with totally manageable current viz and seas. And we came home with a nice cooler full of fish. First grouper of the season for my buddy. And my I think PB hog. Will post a better report in my thread later after I eat all these fish.


    YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :thumbsup2: :laughing: :rofl: :yay: :yaydance: :rolleyes4: :thumbsup5: :toast2: :fanwave:


    Sorry, let me be a little more verbose. I have a 75ft riffe i paid a ton for and its my go to line whenever im diving shallow. Despite the price I was planning to go to the blue wild this year just to buy a longer one of these lines at hopefully a discount (like I did last year). Its the best floatline ive used bar none and ive used nice tubestyle floatlines, nice roballen polypro floatlines, this beats them all. Its not the floatiest stuff in the world. But its very resistant to tangling, its feeling in the hands is awesome, its abrasion resistance has been great in my experience although I don't beat my floatlines up too badly. Its a nice solid cord that wants to be straight. Ill be buying a bunch from you as soon as its available. I dig the red/white color scheme, highly visible, I think orange/white would be cool too.


    Old school guys like me hold the gun upside down by the handle and make a stroke with both hands finishing with the right handle attached to the body close to the waist and the speargun attached to your body. I use the left hand to compensate as I never learnt to do it without pinching my nose.


    This is me a couple years ago in a 80' dive off La Parguera, Puerto Rico. Camera: Rodolfo Abrahams "El Asesisno". :)


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fk1yVvz6CKE


    Im not much of a deep diver but I tried this technique after seeing videos of divers doing it and I prefer it to everything else. I find that holding the gun upside down by the handle feels streamlined, unaggressive, gives me good leverage over the gun as im swimming with the handle hand, and gives me a really good starting point to turn the gun in whatever direction I want. Since the shooting hand is already on the handle you just need to spin the gun around and extend it. When I dive just holding the barrel which I sometimes do, I often find myself reaching around for the handle when I want to shoot a fish. Sometimes I will let go of the gun for a moment and use both hands for an extra boost and then grab it and attach it to my body as marco said.

    Yea he was a big one. I got reaaaally lucky with the glove bite. He put a hurting on my pretty much perfect before this knife. I have a new respect for them and will go right for the jaw muscle from now on.


    Not yet Nate still gotta ballast it and then finish it (sanding and oil) also trying to get Judah's build caught up so we can use them to chase around the groupers in May. I thought about taking it and ballasting but there was enough stuff on the boat without it lol.

    Awesome pics dude! And I actually have a fish! A rare sight. Turned out to be a pretty nice day despite some pretty rough seas in the morning that flattened out as the day went on. From the boat the viz looked stunning. In the water it was nice and blue but a bit silted out from the wave action. I spent a lot of time looking for muttons in the muttony area's and eventually came across a very nice one that I proceeded to scare off with a horrible whiffed shot. Then I spent a long time wishing he would come back checking the same area lol. Besides that I took a hog and the biggest trigger i've ever shot. He almost got a piece of me but luckily missed (bit my glove while I was securing him). that would have turned it into a horrible day. I also ripped my footpocket half way through the day but was able to keep diving. Time for a new pair of shoes!

    I believe the handle is the one used by a number of mfgs. Its a pretty nice handle I like it a lot. Not sure about the barrel/muzzle on the other guns. But there are def differences between the Speardiver gun and other offerings, such as the Speardiver small id bands. Speardiver wishbone line. Choice of stainless/carbon speardiver shafts. Speardiver synthetic shooting line bungee (lasts forever) with Pigstail snap/swivel. And a stainless steel trigger, looking at the Hammerhead speargun it appears to have a plastic trigger.