Dangers of spearfishing on AIR. Help/advice needed

[pensacolaracer]

welcome to the "dark side". Don't let the folks who bitch and complain about spearing on Scuba get to you. They are always gonna be there complaining no matter what. They call it unsporting. My reply to that is "If you think it is unsporting, why are you using a spear gun when you free dive, thats unsporting... oh, you use a pole spear, that unsporting too... you should only use a knife... what do you mean you used a boat to get to the dive site, thats unsporting".... I could go on and on.

I think it is great that you are on here asking questions and since you told us to fire input at you, I will. If you have to ask the question, you are NO WHERE near ready to shoot a big reef donkey. I have shot many big Ling Cod, Cabezon, Hogfish, Grouper, Permit, Cuda, etc... and of course, AJ. And to this day, when I line up the gun on a 40 pound AJ, my heart starts beating fast as I know what is about to come once I pull the trigger.

For SCUBA diving, bouyancy control is EVERYTHING. If you don't have that, you have nothing. As a new diver, gettiing it under control, much less mastering it can take a good amount of time and diving. Once you add the added task loading of spearfishing to that, if you dont have your bouyancy mastered, you are a recepie for disaster.

I would suggest working on the diving basics... sure take your gun, but keep the shots limited to smaller fish until you have the dives required to be absolutely confident in your bouyancy no matter what is going on. Once you are ready to shoot the big AJ, you will know... and it will be a rush once you pull the trigger, I can guarntee that.

 

[RonFrank]

Chill on the Spearfishing and learn to dive. Once you have 50 dives or so then you can start multitasking. You have plenty of time! :cool2:

 

[manni-yunk]

its not usuall to spearfish with scuba because its not sporting old chap.

most divers are not in the killing fish brigade.

thanks for editing your post.


you asked if constantly changing depth was good and the answer is ..no.

BS..Absolute BS.

Plenty of us spearfish on air.....all the time.

Speak for yourself. Its extremely common . It is the "freediving" guru's that generally frown upon it - that and the treehugging side of scuba divers. Scuba and spearfishing is MUCH, MUCH more sporting that commercial fisheries (where most get their fish) or even ,most types of rec fishing (which I did/do for the last 20 year).


The insinuation that perhaps spearfishing on scuba is somehow illegal, is ABSURD. This isnt the caribean. He is in VA.

 

[Lsufootballfan]

its not usuall to spearfish with scuba because its not sporting old chap.

most divers are not in the killing fish brigade.

thanks for editing your post.



you asked if constantly changing depth was good and the answer is ..no.

Don't come to Louisiana then....That's how we roll here in the bayou state. Shooting a 100+ pound amberjack without scuba would be suicide. Look up the Helldivers out of New Orleans. They consistantly dive to 200 fsw to shoot the big boys. Try doing that without scuba.

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Kind of off topic, but I hear of people keeping a line of fish down with them and continue hunting... I suppose where you do this matters ( what kind of life is down there) but does anyone have experience doing this?

That's how we fish. Dispatch the fish with your knife, string them on a stringer and attach it to your BC. Keep fishing until it's time to come up. The only time we surface with after shooting a fish is if the fish is just to big to haul around.

 

[Hank49]

its not usuall to spearfish with scuba because its not sporting old chap.

most divers are not in the killing fish brigade.

Most divers that are logged onto the underwater hunting forum on here ARE into killing fish. That's pretty much the reason they're here.

 

[jebsurf]

And I've been told to NEVER freedive after being on air. Right........?...

 

[Hank49]

Correct. Free diving with residual nitrogen in your tissue is not a safe practice.

 

[neildoo]

Kind of off topic, but I hear of people keeping a line of fish down with them and continue hunting... I suppose where you do this matters ( what kind of life is down there) but does anyone have experience doing this?

I am curious about this also and what I think bloaf was asking maybe I'm wrong is does this cause problems with predators such as sharks by having the stringer of dead fish with you?

 

[RickyF]

Sharks are not much of a problem in the Virginia Beach area, but yes it raises the pucker factor when you are diving and toting around a stringer of dead fish, but there is really no alternative when diving 50 - 100' depths except to swin back to the anchor line everytime you shoot a fish and tie them off. When diving and spearing in North Carolina, the dive ops usually restrict spearing if sharks are present.

 

[jebsurf]

Sharks are not much of a problem in the Virginia Beach area, but yes it raises the pucker factor when you are diving and toting around a stringer of dead fish, but there is really no alternative when diving 50 - 100' depths except to swin back to the anchor line everytime you shoot a fish and tie them off. When diving and spearing in North Carolina, the dive ops usually restrict spearing if sharks are present.

Yeah I have a fish clip I have on when I spear here(vb). But my buddy almost got hit by a big bull this past weekend. Like he had to get out of the water. Before he got out the shark got close enough where he had to push the shark away from him with his hands! He was in deep south NC.