Favorite Fish To Spear

[VinceDS]

Hogs and Grouper for me.

I will second and third the barracuda though. In SE Florida we tend to go for those that are less than 3ft as explained above. As long as you can get over the stink when you clean them, they taste all right

 

[100days-a-year]

Hogs for the taste.
Grouper big and small for the taste and occasional battle.
Snapper for the taste.
Cobia for sashimi and the battle.Nothing fights and endures like a big cobia.
Dolphin(mahi) because they are in bluewater,are acrobatic and taste pretty good.
Trigger for the taste.
AJs if nothing else is around and someone has asked specifically for one as I don't eat the wormy bastages.

 

[SuPrBuGmAn]

Flounder are good eat'n Grouper, AJs, and Snapper are great for food too. I have yet to shoot a Cobia, but I'd eat em if he came within range!

 

[chuck41]

My favorite is crappie, but big bluegill, catfish, and walleye taste pretty good too. Tried a drum, but that was just plain nasty. Makes good ferterlizer though.

 

[OceanObsessed]

Even in south FL, cuda may be eaten safely but it's prolly a good idea to stick with the smaller ones that haven't had enough time to become toxic. I know guys down there that only shoot & eat them if they're under 3 feet long.

My favorite is Grouper. I just love the sand explosion they cause when you shoot them from under a coral head. Exciting stuff!

I know a lot of people that follow your same rule Wayward Son . Just in case there are people here that consider the Dry Tortugas to be the S. Florida area I think this is worth mentioning.

I used to work for the Florida Marine Research Institute in Saint Pete Florida and my supervisor was a Phd Phytoplankton expert. His main research was involving toxic Red tide causing phytoplankton and the toxic ciguatera causing dinoflagellate. He used to take trips to the Dry Tortugas with other marine scientists to research the ciguatera causing plant. They would target the Tortugas because at the time it had the highest known concentration of the ciguatera causing dinoflagellate in the country. Just like Wayward Son pointed out… these are little plants cling to the reef and reef eaters like parrot fish nibble the reef and become toxic. Then larger predators (Snapper (Cubera Snapper in particular), Cuda, Groupers, etc) spend their lives eating lots of these reef eating fish and so over time the toxin accumulates in the larger predators mentioned. The bigger they get the more toxin they accumulate.

Ciguatera is a really terrible thing. It can cause damage to the central nervous system. Some of the syptoms are hot cold temperature reversal. Hot things feel cold and cold things feel hot. You can even have symptomatic flashbacks years later like LSD. Not that I would know anthing about LSD .

I personally don’t eat cuda but if I did I would make some adjustments to that rule if I pulled the fish from the Tortugas area or anywhere nearby . Remember that cudas tend to cruise out into the blue water far away from the reef sometimes too. I would even think twice about eating a sizeable snapper or grouper from that area.

Hello there ONESPEED ! So what does ONESPEEED stand for anyway?

 

[TropicalDiver]

Hogfish for the taste are the best, IHMO.

AJs are fun for the sport and personal challenge, as they do put up a fight and are really strong and hard to subdue. I've had one - on a stringer already but still lively - knock my mask off a couple of times before hit surface. Their meat is very good - as long as it's eaten within a week or smoked. The bloodline has to be fully removed too.

Grouper come next - for food and challenge. Need to use all skills (stalking, good aim, etc.) to get gag groupers. The gags usually stay just out of range and watch you, so its always satisifying to get one that gets close enough for a shot.

 

[Ironhed]

I popped my amberjack cherry last weekend and it was alot of fun wrestling it to the bottom and stringing him, took alot of knife shots to subdue him too. Grouper are also alot of fun and good to eat. my favorite fish to eat that i see and spear are trigger fish but you must string them through the mouth. our last trip out one of the crew did not string the trigger through the mouth and ended up getting bit. I have yet to spear a cobia but I am looking forward to one of those hopefully soon.

 

[Cold Water Richard]

My favorites are all fresh water, walleye, rainbow trout and kokane salmon. Still looking for the Lake trout.