I might have a spear gun, much like I have a surfboard, but my skill level at either may never qualify me to call myself a spearfisherman or a surfer. Ok, so no one calls themselves a "spearfisherman", that's like a caver calling himself a "spelunker"...very nerdy. It's more used as a verb than a noun. So it will be a long while before I tell someone "I'm going spearfishing" because what I really do is go snorkeling while holding a spear gun and see how deep I can free dive with it. Occasionally, I pull the trigger while its pointed at a fish. Occasionally the spear hits a fish. To date though, my tally is 1 in 6. 1 "jobfish" to 6 misfires. Maybe my use of the word "occasionally" is stretching the definition, which of course I have to look up. So it says "every now and then" or "once in a while" so I'm golden!
Tonight, after work at 5pm friends invited me out to go spearfishing. These friends, who as you may know, have to remain anonymous due to the small island community and all that that entails. These two know what they are doing. We go Oceanside just outside one of the passes. At the marina here, and during the boating classes the "passes" are only named a "pass" if a boat can go thru them. Usually a boat that can handle the ocean a bit. My Hobie can go thru most of the areas between the islands on this atoll at a decent mid to high tide because it has a really shallow draft of say a foot. I don't really trust the Hobie in the open Ocean, although I will have it out there someday soon. Anything with more than 2 feet of draft at mid to high tide should probably use the "passes".
So we go out in a 12 foot inflatable Zodiac deal, toss the anchor and one of the guys gets in to have a look. A quick look under the water and he proclaims "this is a good spot". I jump in and see some big fish that I have no clue what they are, except kind of big, and I proclaim using my vast knowledge of the sea gained in Ohio..."yea this is a good spot". The last of our third jumps in and less than 3 minutes later a "dogtooth tuna" appears about 45 feet down. This ....this makes me right as a "second motion" even though I used all of my Ohio Sea knowledge to proclaim this spot a "good spot", this Dogtooth Tuna has given me "street cred" (not). So "3rd guy in" goes down and thinks about shooting it, but runs out of air before getting a shot off. Ok, well, the 40lb fish did swim away with a bit of a strut. So I go down, with the spearfishing equivalent of a BB gun, to shoot the equivalent of a whitetail deer.
The difference between spearfishing and hunting a whitetail is huge. Not to dismiss the great white deer hunter, but deer hunting is so much easier than hunting a dogtooth tuna with a spear gun. Especially if you cheat and use a game camera, or even worse feed them apples all year in front of your game camera. Sorry...LAME. Ok, I am dismissing the great white deer hunter (that uses a game camera and a rifle or shotgun slug). Make it sporty, track them, shoot them with a bow and arrow. You have to be close for that. Diligence.
So a few of the bigger differences are: Whitetail deer live on ground like we do, and not under water. Yes, they both breathe oxygen, but its just different....I think a big difference is at least these days, is if you shoot a whitetail deer, it dies and that's that. You don't have random bears that recognize the distress of the deer coming running from who knows where and try to steal the deer from you. In fact, you don't have these bears patrolling the woods right before you shoot the deer. You shoot the deer, its over. Oh, I just thought of another one. If you shoot the deer and don't kill it, you track it, breathing oxygen, over the hills and all till you find it all dead or whatever and you end it. You shoot a tuna that's kind of big 40lbs or so, 45ft below the water and 45 ft from the air you need to keep on keepin on.....if you don't kill it, it dives. So you have your gun tied to a spear that you just shot a very strong fish with that happens to live in a place where you can't. He dives, you go up with you spear gun. Your spear gun has 50 ft of line....you almost make it to the top holding your spear gun attached to something you had no business shooting. So close. The spear gun stops letting you go up at about 5feet from the surface. Your giant free diving fins are no match for the panicked tuna. You lose your speargun.
The other problem is of course having a shark show up with a panicking fish in the water. Sharks panic when fish panic. They go a little weird. They bite stuff that's in the water....like spear guns and stuff until they figure out what's panicking and take a real bite. Bears ...well we don't have many of them around whitetail territory...don't do that.
I made this all dramatic and all, but the real truth is ...you just go out to "the drop off" and snorkel with a spear gun. See what swims by. Sharks show up, sharks leave. Don't shoot a fish, if you can get close enough to shoot one, if a shark has been by recently. Actually shooting a fish isn't so easy either, the ones that know they taste good are very skiddish.
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