Best pole spear length for lion fish

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12th Man

Contributor
Messages
91
Reaction score
120
Location
J&D Ranch North Central Texas
# of dives
100 - 199
Looking to purchase a pole spear for lion fish. I've seen them in 3.5', 4', 5', 6' and 7' minus the stainless steel tip.

For those of you who you these spears what do you find as the optimal length?

Thanks
 
It is somewhat a question preference. Generally, (but not always) lionfish are bold and will allow a close approach and the placement of the spear tip quite close to their body/head. So, this means that you really don't need and expensive or powerful pole spear.

If you would like to exclusively target lionfish, a very short spear is fine and is very inexpensive. We offer this, if you are interested:

https://www.makospearguns.com/Lion-Fish-Pole-Spear-p/mlfk.htm

MLFK-2T.jpg


If you might desire to target other (moderately sized fish) you might consider this inexpensive pole spear.

https://www.makospearguns.com/Traveler-Pole-Spear-p/mtps.htm

This spear lets you adjust the spear length. The longer the spear, the further away you can stay from the fish when you shoot and it is also allows you to target fish that are hiding deeper under a ledge.


MTPS-2T.jpg

 
In my experience, most lion fish will allow a close approach. However, I have seen a number of them get a bit skittish from a close approach. As such, I'm not a huge fan of the really short poles. A 36" would likely be a good compromise for getting a little bit of distance and still being manageable to put in the container.
 
I'd go for the 6 foot. You never know....sneaking around on the reef looking for lionfish....and a nice snapper comes into range. Might need a bit more power and range than 38 inch....and it's also very doable shooting those little bastards.
 
Longer spears work well too. I personally don't like them shorter than 3'. We have permits that limit our spear size to 4' in protected areas. So for me a 4' spear makes sense and I'm just hunting lionfish anyway.
 
...For those of you who you these spears what do you find as the optimal length?
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.

lion14.jpg
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/perdix-ai/

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