There is a BIG difference in LF hunting just casually if you see one and than LF hunting because it's a tournament, etc
If you are just starting out, then get a 2.5ft butt to tip, with a 6 inch 3 pronger. It's easy to carry underwater, easy to reboard the boat ladder and easy to giant stride/back roll off the boat and the short length won't get in the way. You can one online ~$30 from Florida Scuba divers at
POLESPEAR PARALYZER
As you get more experience, and enter a tournament you should move up to a 42 inch pole with 12 inch 3 pronger. The reason why is because when you do the tournament, you've probably done alot of research and are only going to a handful of divesites that are only loaded with lionfish and you really won't move more that 30 feet from where you hit the sand. In this case it will be 10-30 lions clustered together. You will waste so much time and gas if you just shoot the lions, one by one and bag them individually. Typically I will shoot one, keep it on the spear, shoot 2-3 more stacked on the spear and finally put all 3-5 LF's into my zookeeper all at once. You also will be diving with 2 zookeepers each dive and typically float one up when it gets full and start filling the 2nd one till out of gas.
Just like dive equipment, don't try to force your equipment to do things it's not best at doing. You don't use a putter to hit a golf ball off the tee and you don't use a driver to putt on the green (even though both would work). Take the right gear down for the dive you are about to do.
View attachment 574617