Ok Ok....cool....chill...we all hang out at this section of the forum to talk about hunting...scuba or freedive, a hunt is a hunt. Where it is legal by law to shoot the fish by means of one choosing..legal it is then...
It is such heart breaker to answer Doyle's question like that...please..... he asked politely for information and he should get one.
Nesim please be nice to Eric, he is also a freediver like yourself and also scuba well, he just love freediving more. He hunts on freedive though. BTW, Eric can do 40M freedive if you are curious to know
.......Ok chill out boys.
Doyle,
I am your closest neighbor in this board and welcome to Deeper Blue. Scuba or freedive you are welcome. Where Nesim comes from you won't believe the kind of fish his place has. I was in Dubai oil rigs a few months back and I was stunned by the numbers of fish and the lack of fear it showed to divers....Oman I heard is even better. I seen video footage of traditional fishermen in Oman catching groupers and my God....they are so plentiful. Malaysia is probably as barren as my place 30 meters up, I know what you mean.
Your C3 with 4 bands has enough juice to nail Cobia even that big if you can get close enough. If that detachable spearhead is the flopper type, get rid of it and get the Ice Pick instead. Cobia has quite a tough body and skin, it fights tough too. At two meters tip to fish, that big cobia is a dead fish. You must get a stone shot, either whacked the lateral line or get an angle where you can shoot the brain. Shoot the brain from the front but not too much angle down, get the angle so that the shaft lead from the brain to the ass, this way if you miss the brain, there will still be lots of damage to other nervous system.
A reel can be good for you, choose the 150 feet/1000lbs line, forget the 500lbs for wrecks. If the viz is decent say at 10 meters, it is quite safe to use the reel. Kevlar can be cut with ease with a sharp knife. Your shooting line shoot be the 500 lbs cable for wreck, not the original Riffe black mono, it will fail on sharp wrecks. If you don't have a reel, hold the 5" bungie swivel of the gun when fighting the fish. That 400lbs Dacron inside the 5" bungie shivel can break with fish at that size, this is the weak link.
If you have a reel and miss a fatal shot but had good penetration, chances of landing the fish is huge. 1,000 lbs Kevlar can take quite an abuse even on wrecks. Missing a fatal shot, you must hope the fish tangles here and there and tires and then you can brain-ed it. Just be prepared to bend that 5/16" shaft, the cost of a battle.
Don't send a fish up on an open bottom lift bag, it it flops on the surface you loose them all. Use the Riffe or Halycon utility 5 liter float, it is good enough, at 43 meters it won't generate much lift but your lift bag may help a bit there....
Good luck and stay safe. Just remember, no fish is worth saving a gun if your life can be in danger. If you have no reel, improvise a 10mm rope of +-10 meters where you can tie to the gun butt and use that to tie off somewhere to the wreck if there is ever a need. Just never clipped a gun to your BCD .....never...
Have fun Datok Doyle..........
