The thrill of spearing fish in the crystal clear waters of the Bahamas has never left me since I started when I was 15.
I feel much more confident with a buddy but I will go down on my own.
I hope someone has had similar experiences
1 Story:
Speared a large grunt out of a school and then turned round to find a bull-shark easing up on me! Should I give him the fish and make him excited for more? I opted to keep it out of the water and swam to the rocks. When I climbed out he was so close I could have patted him.
The moral of the story: It can be a long, long, long way back to the rocks with a shark on your tail so spear-fishing from a boat with a good keep-up man is the wiser option.
The challenge of free-diving fish.
Free-dive down to the fish smoothly so as not to scare him. Hit him dead in 1 shot on the top of his head. Bring him up in the same breath. Spear-guns are forbidden in the Bahamas- we use the hawaian sling.
The ultimate kick is big nasty-looking barracuda.
What I do do which gives me the greatest kick is to spear large barracuda by hitting them dead in 1 shot. The kick is not to tremble when anticipating what he might do to me if I miss! Barracuda is the best meat you have ever tasted, but 1 in a 100 is poisonous and they can easily take your hand off with their razor-like teeth.
What I dont do is dive blue-water and spear tuna. I have pulled too many tuna out of the water where sharks have left me only with the head. I hate to think what they would do to me if I was in the water holding onto the spear stuck in a frantic tuna!
But people do it!
Crawfish:
There is nothing more relaxing than going from head to head finding crawfish. In the Bahamas we have tails up to 4lbs in weight.
Hogfish:
The sweetest meat in the sea and fun to spear (my favourite)
Yellow jacks
Fun to spear and if you leave one with a spear he will swim in a circle and you can pick off the others (but keep an exe open for interested sharks)
Grouper:
Hit them right because theres nothing worse than wasting a juicy grouper.
see my buddy who I fish with at
http://www.eleuthera.de/
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