wow, guess I suck! after 12yrs of spearfishing on 3 continents I have NEVER submerged with more then one shaft.
never use a line for bottom fish? wow, all the grouper I shot with a line gun must have been confused. they all made it back to the boat!
huh, almost all my grouper were taken with meatl tubed guns. well it that's to noisy I won't even get into your use of scuba....
yup. guess I just suck!
If you are trying to say "USE OF SUBA" as trying to say you only free dive that is cool. Free diving is the best way to shoot big fish. Scuba does scare away the fish. YOU sound like a fire truck underwater with scuba. All the fish can hear you for hundreds of yards before you even see them
A lot of my friends free dive and I do sometime but I am not as good at they are. I can shoot 40=50 feet but they can free dive to 80 feet or more, cruise the bottom and shot a big fish (only free shaft) run the fish down and then bring it up...
For free swimming fish we all use line guns.. (watch Ocean Hunter on ESPN On Sunday Mornings) BIG line guns. I have met those guy a few times at DEMA and boat shows.
Of the several hundred friends who are experienced who shoot grouper in my area NONE of them use a line gun on grouper for every day hunting. NONE! The ONLY person would be a first time hunters or someone who never learned right. Maybe one out of a hundred would use a metal gun.
There are NOT many people who shoot like we do here in Florida on this board.
Go to Spearboard.com to see what we do here in Florida every weekend.
I will give you some reason why someone at our level would NEVER use a line gun to shoot while on scuba un less more then 150 feet. IF you are smart you will listen.. IF you still want to go on shooting the way you do that is fine. Because you have been shooting the way you do for 12 years is not my fault. If you only shoot one or two fish a dive then doing what you do is GREAT! But to shoot at the level me and my friends do you can NOT shoot the way you do.
Some reasons.
1. To shoot the really big fish in our area you have to swim as high as you can off the bottom. YOU will NEVER even see big fish if you swim along the bottom. Every now and then a dumb one will come check you out but NOT often. We are talking Blacks and Gag's... WE all know how dumb red grouper all. If I can stay 40 feet of the bottom that is good. When I locate the big guy I want I will follow him to he turns and looks up. They always turn only one way.. As you should know. I will get over the top and and let my breath out and slowly sink. If you breath in he will spoke and be gone.
When I get 15 to 20 feet away since I do NOT have a line I can shot and stone him.
(With my gun which I built I can shoot as far as 30 feet away shooting down and I have hit and stoned big grouper from over 20 feet away shooting while stringing a fish on the bottom. My gun is longer then most free shafts and design I came up with locks the shafts in the barreal longer and tighter for a much straighter shot)
ON a 20-30 pound grouper the spot I hit is about the size of a golf ball. Try hitting a golf ball from 15-20 feet with your line gun.. L.O.L.
Now a new diver might screw up and go down and get the fish.. BIG MISTAKE!!
As soon as it is clear he is either stoned or not going far I swim up about 20 feet up and make about a 60-100 foot circle. I reload my gun while at the greatest distance from the shot fish. Just the click of the band going into the gun or the shaft locking in the gun will spoke a big fish.. (why we do not use metal for big grouper)
Now when I come back about 1-2 minutes later all the other bigger grouper will be looking at the fish I just shot. (CAN NOT DO THAT with ONLY one shaft) The shot fish brings the big fish out and they are looking at the shot fish which makes my job a little eaiser dropping on the big fish. I now shoot the largest fish in the group. I now drop to the bottom and string my fish.
The problem is once I drop to the bottom they all scatter. I know I will have to travel at least 50 feet down the ledge before I come accross more of the bigger fish. I do not shoot grouper under 10 pounds ever if I can help it. Maybe hogs down to 2 pounds and the same for mango's.
In a area with hogs and dumber grouper I can shoot a fish, string it and be loaded to shoot the next fish in about 10-20 seconds. TRY THAT WITH A LINE GUN! YOU waste so much time getting the line out of the rocks, fish of the shaft, wrapping the line. I would have shot at least 3 more fish while you are screwing around with your line. Your stringer would look pretty sad at the end of the day on our boat.
Most of our diving is what we call bounce diving. We almost never anchor. I will run accross a spot and see it on the bottom machine. I will whip the boat around and jug the spot. In less then 60 seconds the divers is dressed and rolling over the side. If no fish he will pop up in 5 mnutes or less. If fish he will be up in 15-30 minutes. You make sure the boat stays away from the diver because in 80 feet of water the outboards make a ton of noise on the bottom and spoke the fish and piss of the diver.
About 50 percent of the fish we shoot come from virgin spots we found for the first time that day. I find at least 5 new spots a day which is why I have over a 1,000 spots.
On a good ledge the diver will come up with anywhere from 3-10 nice grouper and other fish on that bounce dive.
We will hit at least 20-30 ledges in a day which is the secret to getting big fish and a lot of them.
We also do NOT like to take but a few fish off a single ledge. I will Also NOT come back and shoot that ledge for 2-3 months even if there are a lot of fish on the ledge.
I have over a thousand dive sites out of my area running as far as 200 miles off shore.
We normally will have about 150-300 pounds of grouper and other fish at the end of the day between the two of us. We shoot until sunset which is after 8:00 P.M. in the summer and hit the dock about 10- Midnight. WE leave before sunrise.
IF you count just the trophies 3 feet or higher and the other fancy awards for shooting fish I have over a hundred of them. We shoot thousands of pounds of fish a year. The gold and diamond award I wear around my neck is from being the diver of the day in the St. Pete Open where 325 of the best of the best shooter's competeted that day. I won with the 379 pounds of Jacks I shot in a little over 2 hours. Between the three of use we had a 1,000 pounds (gutted weight) of Jacks we turned it that day of of MY boat.... My fish and all the rest were sold and the money given to chairity.
It sounds like you ONLY dive on charter trips which is WAY different from what we do.
I do not do that becuase they always but more the one diver in. WE never have more then one diver on a spot unless we are in the middle grounds where we will put two in a a time if we are diving the slow commercial boat. (travel at 8 knots)
I have booked a few large boats to go spearfishing for my spearfishing club but we all know it is for fun and if we get some nice fish it is lucky.
I am just telling you what I and hundreds of my buddies who all own our own boats have been doing for over 30 years almost EVERY week of the year. I have well over 5,000 dives doing this and we all do hundreds of dives a year. (living in Florida is the BEST!)
My advice is for the new guys if they want to learn the right way to shoot lots and lots of BIG fish..
The biggest thrill is dancing with the man in the gray suit while diving!! If you have any experience you have done that a few times. I have about 10 times over the years. I love it... Kind of like a bull fighter's thrill I guess.?
Good Hunting to all!
