Posts by Nate

Nice save Marco

Good idea Hau, nice tutorial.. and pictures.

Man o wars are everywhere right now, I got stung 3 times yesterday. Be careful guys

They seem to hang around the same area for a bit, he was still there (assuming it was the same one) when Steven and I dove again on Sunday. We didn't see him in the water, but as we were approaching the spot a manta jumped clean out of the water, twice. So big, impossible to mistake it for any other flying ray.

Nice porgy

I'd love to get finalcut pro, it's just hard for me to justify the price at the moment. If I shoot in 60fps instead of 48, would it be smoother? Division wise, 30fps (iMovie setting) is achieved evenly from 60fps because it's an even factor... opposed to trying to get 30 fps out of 48fps.

I've got a bunch of clips from the past year or so that I haven't edited, so I put together a few. Some of the footage is from my go pro 3 black, it came out a bit choppy due to Imovie eliminating every 3rd frame to compress it to the 24 fps export setting, if anybody knows a way around that I'd love to hear it.

I believe his wingspan was somewhere between 5 and 6 ft. Hard to tell, but definitely over 5 ft. The way he came out of the murk was really cool, wish he'd come at the beginning of the dive so I could have been a bit more casual and let him approach me.

This is really really cool Jon, good on you.

Dove with Steven in Miami yesterday afternoon after work. In the water around 3:30, out at dark. Vis ~20ft in 40-45ft of water. Steven saw a Manta ray in the first 5 minutes, I've never seen one so I looked for it in the same place he saw it, and finally caught a glimpse. Such cool creatures. Ended with a hog and a mangrove.
manta - YouTube

Thanks Judah. I tried smoked ducks this past trip actually. My brother is working a job for a catering company, he's developed some serious skills with a smoker. He smoked a few ducks and a goose while I was home. He used pecan wood, 200* for about 3.5 hours give or take. It came out excellent, nice and pink.

So sad, he's built some of the most eye catching guns I've ever seen. Thoughts to his family

It's that time again, figured I'd bump this thread and make it 3 years running. Sadly, due to work restrictions, I was only able to get away for 2 weeks this year, as opposed to a full month. It was kind of disheartening, but I took it upon myself to pack as much duck hunting into a 2 week period as humanly possible.. and by my standards, I'm fairly certain I succeeded.
I flew out of Ft. Lauderdale on New Year's morning, touched down in Baton Rouge around 4pm and hit the ground running. Most people who know me will vouch for the fact that I'm not much of a planner. I'd rather wing it and fly by the seat of my pants. With so little time this year, I went against my own grain.. I had the entire 2 weeks planned out by the day, some down to the hour, after all I've only got 14 days. The first thing on the list was a 5 day trip out to the camp with my dad and one of my best friends whom I hadn't been able to hunt with since high school due to his deployment. We headed out the following morning, set up everything for the morning hunts that were to follow and found a nice little spot to try and catch some evening duck action. We managed a few birds over the next 5 days, but certainly nothing to write home about. I had a blast nonetheless, it was nice to be hunting with my dad after not seeing him for a year, and seeing the look on my buddy's face when he finally managed to knock his first bird down was priceless.
After returning home, the next leg of the trip was a couple mornings in Mississippi with my brother. He had to work the morning before we left, not wanting to waste a sunrise, I decided to grab my bow and see about a deer. All I saw that morning was does, none of which I was willing to settle on so early into my trip. My bro picked me up that afternoon and we headed towards the Mississippi state line. These mornings were cold. I'm a bitch when it comes to cold, I call anything below 70* cold.. but when I say it was cold, I mean it was freaking cold. Sub 20* temps, 20+mph winds, and being inevitably soaking wet.. both mornings I was questioning my sanity while thinking about my warm bed. All of the doubt and discomfort dissipated immediately at first light. When the birds started raining in, it might as well have been sunny and 75* I've said it in previous posts on this thread, and I'll say it again.. hunting with my brother is the best thing ever. I look forward to it all year, and sadly it was only for 2 mornings this season, but the mornings hunting with him are always the highlight and this year was no different.

After the Mississippi trip, I made a few more trips with my dad and a couple friends out to the camp. Our Louisiana season was very very slow this year, the birds just weren't there. We had fun nonetheless. With only a couple days left of my trip, I let the arrow fly on a doe one evening to put some venison in my parent's freezer. The morning after, while sitting in the duck blind, I heard something tromping through the muck behind me. When I turned to look, there was a 7 point that was obviously wounded. Somebody had shot it low on the front shoulder, completely missing the vitals, but he wasn't going to survive in the thick muck. Having nothing but #2 duck shot on me, I gave him 2 quick rounds behind the shoulder and put him down. He was still coherent when I got to him, and the dispatch was anything but pretty. There was no way in hell I could drag him 200yds through the mud back to the boat, so I quartered him up right there, removed the backstrap and packed it to the boat. With season closing, you can never have too much meat in the freezer.
I brought my GoPro with me this year, determined to get some decent shooting footage. Having the camera on my head was driving me crazy, so that all went out the window fairly quickly. The little bit of footage that I did get was too dark to make much of anything out. I decided to play around with the timelapse setting on the go pro. I took these 2 videos at a 2 second interval, sped up to 30fps, making 1 second of the video equivalent to 1 full minute of real time. In the first one, you can see some nutria playing around on the left side, then one comes flying by right in front of the camera. The second video of the moonrise is my favorite. At one point the sky color changes drastically. I believe it's because as the sun set it obviously got darker, but with the moon being so bright, once it got to a certain height the sky was actually brighter than it had been in the minutes leading up to it. While this video was rolling, I made the most beautiful shot of my 13 year duck hunting career. Sadly, it happened so fast that the bird wasn't caught on the time lapse.
I recommend watching in HD.

Louisiana Swamp Sunset - YouTube

Louisiana Moonrise Time Lapse - YouTube

My parents had been keeping my dog Gus for me for the past 4 years, as I can't have dogs in my apartment. He died on me a couple weeks before I was able to make it home. Seeing my parent's house without a dog wasn't natural, it just didn't feel right. Coincidently, a buddy of mine has a chocolate lab with great bloodlines that had just had her first litter. He cut me a great deal on his last remaining female. I gave her to my parents, mom named her Ellie. I've got my dad working her on obedience, and I'll be moving back to Louisiana just in time to start her retriever training. She'll be working next duck season, and I can't wait.

You sure you can load that? I'm not loading it for you.

I've had it happen several times, most often on easily spooked fish.. muttons and porgies.

Thanks for posting this Stick em, I really enjoyed it. The landscape in the background of the first pic is amazing. One day your daughter will look back and really appreciate growing up in an outdoor environment, I know I do.(although it looks like she does already :)) I'm sure you get your fair share of game up that way, moose, elk, deer, sheep? I'd love to see more.

All of those "longer" guns are actually pretty short when it comes to actual band stretch. You'd be doing yourself some injustice by getting any of the guns you listed IMO. For the area you dive (I dive the same), it's hard to beat a 110-120cm railgun. You can get one for the same price, perhaps cheaper than some of the guns you listed. It will have more band stretch at around the same overall gun length, and you won't have to upgrade as your experience level progresses. If I had to do it all over again, I'd get a 120cm rob allen with a reel and call it a day.

Quote from kwtony

I use the Merou Tuna, and also the Omer Pelagic both hold a massive amount of line and have silky smooth drags.

The drag on the Merou is absolutely amazing. By far the best drag system that I've seen on any reel that I've held in person.. coming from somebody who's a fan of a freespool drag. After taking the drag knob apart to see how it all worked, I was amazed how simple it actually is. Simple but very well thought out and executed IMO. The only qualm I have with them is the mounting bracket. I'm not quite sure why it's shaped the way it is. On the last gun I built, I dremel'd the 'wings' off the bracket and used the open spaces in the center of the bracket to mount it flush to the stock. There's just barely enough clearance over the top of the screw heads to not interfere with the spool as it spins.

Quote from Dude george

Tony do they still make those reels? I did a search and came up with no joy.

There's a guy in San Diego making replicas of the original Potts reels. All the reviews that I've read say that it's just as well built and reliable as the originals.
Here's the guy's YouTube channel, http://www.youtube.com/user/slider3344/videos
858-775-4100, contact number as of a year ago.

That Ermes reel is gorgeous, looks well engineered. There's a potential problem that can come from stacking the line perfectly on the spool as the mechanical line guide on that reel will. I was talking with greekdiver once about reels while he was letting me check out his Abellan, he explained that he had almost lost it once when the reel locked up because the line had been stacked perfectly parallel like that. The line has the potential to dig deep into the spool when pulled hard, because the line can slip down between the perfectly stacked wraps and seize the reel up. I went home and unspooled my reel, respooling it with more criss crosses in the spool. I'm not sure of the probability of such a thing happening, but I'd like to try avoiding losing my gun at all cost.

It was a 1, great deal either way. Thanks