Need info on buying a Speargun
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SuPrBuGmAn
Contributor
Its just what it sounds like, using a free shaft... as in, the shaft isn't connected to anything via a line.
Basically just shooting the shaft as an arrow. A good shot is valued with a free shaft, otherwise, things will get expensive fast.
Basically just shooting the shaft as an arrow. A good shot is valued with a free shaft, otherwise, things will get expensive fast.
Freeshafting is the epitimy of KISS spearfishing. Billers, JBL, Sea Hornet and Ocean Rhinos all have special slide rings on their lineshafts. These create additional drag and rob shaft speed and even alittle accuracy from your shots. Nothing is worse than all that shooting line though for slowing your shaft down. Freeshafts travel faster to the target and therefore hit is harder too. So they require less power to do the same work. Freeshafters have a gun that carries 1 or 2 extra shafts on the sides of the gun. I use only a single 22" x 5/8" band for my 60" freeshafts.
Obviously you have to take more precise shots and have a plan after pulling the trigger in case it isn't stoned. The ideal shot angle is at 45 degrees on both horizontal and vertical axis. This ideal compound shot angle taken from above and behind the fish is massively disabling if not instantly fatal. Hetland described the brain area well earlier but additionally if the shaft passes through the spine anywhere the fish is stoned from there back so the "kill" area is long and skinny. I typically aim for the spot where the lateral line meets the gill plate (high on the gill plate) and remember that the spine is in the center of the fish (when viewed from the same horizontal plane) so if I am above the fish I want to aim slightly higher than that on the outside of the fish since the shaft will be traveling at a downward angle and I want it to hit the sweet spot in the middle of the fish.
So you want the fish to be below you and swimming just away so that the shaft tip will exit closer to the fishes mouth than it entered. If not the fish could "throw" the shaft and hole up somewhere you can't get it back. This is similar to not meat shooting a fish when lineshating and then applying too much pressure on the shooting line causing a tear off. Wait for the right shot and only shoot when you know you have it. It takes alot of discipline to hold off for not just a shot but an ideal shot.
If the fish isn't instantly incapacitated then you simply reload shaft two slowly and calmly while keeping an eye on things. This takes about 3-5 seconds during which time the snapper or grouper is almost certainly just trying to dislodge the shaft from it or is swimming for a hole. Since it has a 4-5' steel handle sticking out of it they don't tend to hide very well if they try to hide. The second shaft will seal the deal and you have still not had to swim agressively and should not be breathing hard. The other fish are more interested in what the hell "Fred" is up to and why he has a new piercing, the ruckus isn't associated with you, even once you string "Fred". The best part of the stringer tht Hetland posted is that you run the pointy end through the eye of the fishwhile holding onto the fish, and without letting go of the fish you can open the stringer by pushing the fish. It is always secure that way. Since they are cold blooded, fish do not bleed out like a mammal does and if they aren't brained they aren't dead and can "come back to life" when you least expect it, so stringing them in this manner is strongly advised.
Anyway back to freeshafting. The amazing part of freeshafting is that once you force yourself to be more selective in the types of shots you take you start stoning the fish more and more of the time. I haven't lost a shaft or a fish in a long time even though I only outright stone 50% of the time. The pros stone closer to 90% of the time. If you stone a fish you can just leave it there on the bottom while you act causal and reload, the other fish will come and checkout what you just shot and you can often get a second and third fish in this manner and be left "holding wood" with all your shafts in your next weeks worth of dinner. Then you retrieve your fish and do it again. This is perfect for those spots covered in mangrove snapper and hogfish or when all the fish are open in the Summer time.
Remember you don't have to worry about a line and only 1 band, plus you can rear load the shaft instead of packing it like an old school powder musket. I would strongly recommend getting the bare bones of spearfishing DVD and watching it. It covers all this in detail with good video and with commercial spearos shooting in the middle grounds.
Obviously you have to take more precise shots and have a plan after pulling the trigger in case it isn't stoned. The ideal shot angle is at 45 degrees on both horizontal and vertical axis. This ideal compound shot angle taken from above and behind the fish is massively disabling if not instantly fatal. Hetland described the brain area well earlier but additionally if the shaft passes through the spine anywhere the fish is stoned from there back so the "kill" area is long and skinny. I typically aim for the spot where the lateral line meets the gill plate (high on the gill plate) and remember that the spine is in the center of the fish (when viewed from the same horizontal plane) so if I am above the fish I want to aim slightly higher than that on the outside of the fish since the shaft will be traveling at a downward angle and I want it to hit the sweet spot in the middle of the fish.
So you want the fish to be below you and swimming just away so that the shaft tip will exit closer to the fishes mouth than it entered. If not the fish could "throw" the shaft and hole up somewhere you can't get it back. This is similar to not meat shooting a fish when lineshating and then applying too much pressure on the shooting line causing a tear off. Wait for the right shot and only shoot when you know you have it. It takes alot of discipline to hold off for not just a shot but an ideal shot.
If the fish isn't instantly incapacitated then you simply reload shaft two slowly and calmly while keeping an eye on things. This takes about 3-5 seconds during which time the snapper or grouper is almost certainly just trying to dislodge the shaft from it or is swimming for a hole. Since it has a 4-5' steel handle sticking out of it they don't tend to hide very well if they try to hide. The second shaft will seal the deal and you have still not had to swim agressively and should not be breathing hard. The other fish are more interested in what the hell "Fred" is up to and why he has a new piercing, the ruckus isn't associated with you, even once you string "Fred". The best part of the stringer tht Hetland posted is that you run the pointy end through the eye of the fishwhile holding onto the fish, and without letting go of the fish you can open the stringer by pushing the fish. It is always secure that way. Since they are cold blooded, fish do not bleed out like a mammal does and if they aren't brained they aren't dead and can "come back to life" when you least expect it, so stringing them in this manner is strongly advised.
Anyway back to freeshafting. The amazing part of freeshafting is that once you force yourself to be more selective in the types of shots you take you start stoning the fish more and more of the time. I haven't lost a shaft or a fish in a long time even though I only outright stone 50% of the time. The pros stone closer to 90% of the time. If you stone a fish you can just leave it there on the bottom while you act causal and reload, the other fish will come and checkout what you just shot and you can often get a second and third fish in this manner and be left "holding wood" with all your shafts in your next weeks worth of dinner. Then you retrieve your fish and do it again. This is perfect for those spots covered in mangrove snapper and hogfish or when all the fish are open in the Summer time.
Remember you don't have to worry about a line and only 1 band, plus you can rear load the shaft instead of packing it like an old school powder musket. I would strongly recommend getting the bare bones of spearfishing DVD and watching it. It covers all this in detail with good video and with commercial spearos shooting in the middle grounds.
Hetland
Contributor
Hey Pat. Any tips for braining amberjacks? I can never get through their thick skulls with my spike.
For that matter, I sometimes have trouble in midwater with big snapper too. It's not an issue if I'm close to the bottom or some other structure, but if I don't have it, I waste a lot of time digging around.
For that matter, I sometimes have trouble in midwater with big snapper too. It's not an issue if I'm close to the bottom or some other structure, but if I don't have it, I waste a lot of time digging around.
MRXRAY
Contributor
The last couple I shot I used the serrated edge of my knife to cut through the top of the scull and then knifed right into the scull cavity....The downside is a LARGE amount of blood!
As for a teather....PASS. Keep your fish close to you or real far from you, but not inbetween. We have had some good luck with game bags when we used them and even had a shark that couldn't find out fish or get a good scent on it after we dropped the bag a the anchor line and threw a bit of sand on top of it.
As for a teather....PASS. Keep your fish close to you or real far from you, but not inbetween. We have had some good luck with game bags when we used them and even had a shark that couldn't find out fish or get a good scent on it after we dropped the bag a the anchor line and threw a bit of sand on top of it.
To brain the big jacks I use my knife
to hit the brain by wiggling the knife back and forth with as much inward pressure as I can generate. The rocking motion from the wrist kinda drills through the softer skull material. The knife above and the several other knock off brands have what I consider to be the best tip and grip (plus a good locking sheath) for this.
To execute this technique you need to have one hand as hard in the gills as you can grab and the tail locked up with your legs, scissor lock style. Worth pointing out that you need to draw your knife first if you keep it on the inside of your legs and go for the scissor lock immediately after its drawn. With the fishes head and tail immobilized you can get the knife precisely into position at the base of the skull well behind the eyes on the top of the AJ's head (dorsal) at a 45* angle. Complete dominating pressure from your legs and gill hand should keep the jack relatively submissive say 80% of the time. Do not stab violently into the skull, just get the knife into position and grind away with the point until you feel the fish kinda tremble and then relax, once it relaxes the deed is done. Its worth saying that if you line the fish up so that either its left or right side are facing you, you can see what you are doing better and have more leverage for the brain grind, but you expose yourself to the possibility of the fish headbutting the snot our of you. I had a mask broken, lip split, nose bloodied and reg pull from its mouth piece one very memorable dive because I failed to consider this.
I apologize to all my fellow shop operators for posting a pic of a knife from liesurepro but its the knife I use and have loved for many years now. I sell the tilos version (Stainless Steel) of it in my shop.
Blood in the water is way less of a shark issue than the thrashing of a wounded fish which travels in all directions at the speed of sound (in the water, so mach 4ish?). Blood has to diffuse into the water and drift across a shark's path which is only done at the direction and speed of the current and molecular diffusion..... which is pretty slow. Reef sharks primarily use there ability to detect vibrations and then sight to find wounded prey. Smell and the Ampulae of Lorenzini (sp?) are only useful at much closer ranges for the sharks we are talking about.
To execute this technique you need to have one hand as hard in the gills as you can grab and the tail locked up with your legs, scissor lock style. Worth pointing out that you need to draw your knife first if you keep it on the inside of your legs and go for the scissor lock immediately after its drawn. With the fishes head and tail immobilized you can get the knife precisely into position at the base of the skull well behind the eyes on the top of the AJ's head (dorsal) at a 45* angle. Complete dominating pressure from your legs and gill hand should keep the jack relatively submissive say 80% of the time. Do not stab violently into the skull, just get the knife into position and grind away with the point until you feel the fish kinda tremble and then relax, once it relaxes the deed is done. Its worth saying that if you line the fish up so that either its left or right side are facing you, you can see what you are doing better and have more leverage for the brain grind, but you expose yourself to the possibility of the fish headbutting the snot our of you. I had a mask broken, lip split, nose bloodied and reg pull from its mouth piece one very memorable dive because I failed to consider this.
I apologize to all my fellow shop operators for posting a pic of a knife from liesurepro but its the knife I use and have loved for many years now. I sell the tilos version (Stainless Steel) of it in my shop.
Blood in the water is way less of a shark issue than the thrashing of a wounded fish which travels in all directions at the speed of sound (in the water, so mach 4ish?). Blood has to diffuse into the water and drift across a shark's path which is only done at the direction and speed of the current and molecular diffusion..... which is pretty slow. Reef sharks primarily use there ability to detect vibrations and then sight to find wounded prey. Smell and the Ampulae of Lorenzini (sp?) are only useful at much closer ranges for the sharks we are talking about.
JPENDERGRAST
Contributor
I have the titanium version of that knife and love it. The only thing I don't like is that one of the plastic tabs that hols the knife in the sheath has been shaved down.. Suppose that means it's been put to good use, though.
Hetland
Contributor
this is what I use:
JPENDERGRAST
Contributor
I saw that on a web site once and was tempted to get it.. How long have you had it? Seems like it would be prone to falling out.
dumpsterDiver
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To brain the big jacks I use my knifeto hit the brain by wiggling the knife back and forth with as much inward pressure as I can generate. The rocking motion from the wrist kinda drills through the softer skull material. The knife above and the several other knock off brands have what I consider to be the best tip and grip (plus a good locking sheath) for this.
To execute this technique you need to have one hand as hard in the gills as you can grab and the tail locked up with your legs, scissor lock style. Worth pointing out that you need to draw your knife first if you keep it on the inside of your legs and go for the scissor lock immediately after its drawn. With the fishes head and tail immobilized you can get the knife precisely into position at the base of the skull well behind the eyes on the top of the AJ's head (dorsal) at a 45* angle. Complete dominating pressure from your legs and gill hand should keep the jack relatively submissive say 80% of the time. Do not stab violently into the skull, just get the knife into position and grind away with the point until you feel the fish kinda tremble and then relax, once it relaxes the deed is done. Its worth saying that if you line the fish up so that either its left or right side are facing you, you can see what you are doing better and have more leverage for the brain grind, but you expose yourself to the possibility of the fish headbutting the snot our of you. I had a mask broken, lip split, nose bloodied and reg pull from its mouth piece one very memorable dive because I failed to consider this.
I apologize to all my fellow shop operators for posting a pic of a knife from liesurepro but its the knife I use and have loved for many years now. I sell the tilos version (Stainless Steel) of it in my shop.
Blood in the water is way less of a shark issue than the thrashing of a wounded fish which travels in all directions at the speed of sound (in the water, so mach 4ish?). Blood has to diffuse into the water and drift across a shark's path which is only done at the direction and speed of the current and molecular diffusion..... which is pretty slow. Reef sharks primarily use there ability to detect vibrations and then sight to find wounded prey. Smell and the Ampulae of Lorenzini (sp?) are only useful at much closer ranges for the sharks we are talking about.
All good advice. I personally try to control amberjack in a different manner. I try to grab both ends of the shaft (assuming it is through the head), pull the fish under my arm and have the head near my hip. Then I ride the fish around until I can direct the nose into a reef or some type of obstruction, a corner or shallow crack is perfect. Once you have the nose jammed into the reef, the fish can not do much since they can pretty much only swim forward.
It is important to keep the fish under your arm and not allow him to get in front of you and bash you in the face with the tail or even slam your ribs with the tail. Once the fish has his head in the crack, then I will sometimes string them up green or sometimes I will free up one hand to use a kill knife. As Pat described, there's no stabbing, you place the tip precisely on the centerline maybe 2 inches behind the eyes and then with a forward and backwards rocking motion, you insert the tip in a controlled manner. I often will occasionally add a little twist or two after insertion, especially if the tip of the knife might have drifted off the centerline. It is easy to snap a knife blade off when you do this or bend the tip. It is also much better to have a double edged (stilleto) blade for this.
I have also been in a total war and was unable to get the upper hand and get the knife in the head, in these situations, I have gutted the fish and made the cut as far forward all the way past the pectoral fins and try to split them. This makes a huge mess of blood and guts, but if you do it correctly, you will split the heart and if you can hang on for another 90 seconds or so, the fish will run out of steam. However, you will be operating in a huge cloud of blood.
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