How deep do you hunt?

[portinfer]

Time wise ? Or fish weight ? Depends on fish species.... as for longest timed dive to shoot a fish ... no idea ?!

Marwan - look into the threads on yoga here - I found them useful along with static tables in getting to a level where I have quite good dive times (ranges from 1:15 to 1:40 and occasionally up to 2:30 - most fish on aspetto locally seem to appear after about 0:50 to 1:20 so for me this margin is fine). Strange - at this point I don't do any static tables but seem to be able to dive consitently. But then again I dive quite regularly...

[MKDVR]

Originally Posted by portinfer

Time wise ? Or fish weight ? Depends on fish species.... as for longest timed dive to shoot a fish ... no idea ?!

I mean depth. Any fish any size taken successfully. I read somewhere that Pipin has shot fish at 160' for example.

[spaghetti]

Originally Posted by spaghetti

Nothing official, but it is said that this "record" is held by Gabriele Del Bene with a dentex speared at 59 meters, three or four years ago. Another very deep spearo is spanish Alberto March, who reportedly landed fish from 45 meters or even deeper, but Del Bene has a little bit more than March.
An ex competitive freediver and ex member of the italian national spearfishing team, Gabriele is considered the deepest spearo of them all: many stories reported about him.
--Imagine Chuck Norris with a speargun: that's Gabriele Del Bene

Oops: this "fell" in the previous page.
Recently, Umberto Pelizzari is getting more and nmore involvd in spearing. who knows...

[Marwan]

spaghetti, these depths are outrageous, these guys must be part dolphin, part man , thats incredible. i have heard about march, but never about gabriel.
ed i will look into the yoga and static tables.
anyone tried using the book "manual of freediving" i believe umberto is one of th authors, did that help anyone?

[Marwan]

also when do you guys normally plan on going inthe water? some people seem to be very fond of early morning dives (getting in the water at dawn), other believe it is bettr at dusk. I think it is the same with scuba diving, people tend to believe that these are the best times, which i believe theoratically makes sense, the biggest fish i ever hunted however were taken in mid day, i do tend to lean towards dusk dives (not too fnd of waking up early on my vacation i guess )
whats your preference

[panosb]

Hi guys,

I prefer going fishing at dusk. around 18:00-21:00 in the summer are great hrs for spearing almost all species here in greece. I ve spent almost all my diving years( 20 yrs) betweem 1-10m of depth due to medical problems, although as i mentioned in previous posts now i can safely dive at 25m(with 15 secs bottom time). The key for spearfishing for me is to be silent and have great bottom times. I had an apnea course last year and the instructor had us doing statics at 15m for 2 days and the 3rd day of the course we did 25m far more easier than i could ever imagine. From that time onwards i focused on statics at depth as the most efficient and safe way to improve my abilities. When i manage to easily do 1min bottom time at a given depth, then I say that it is time to move to a depth where I have bottom time of 30 secs and i start working my way up. Providing that I am working my physical condition (cardio, walking apneas, tables etc) frequently, I have to find a way to let my mind go while I am laying down at the sea bottom in order to achieve my pb bottom times. As long as I am thinking of my watch etc, I cannot do anything good! So relaxation and concentration are key factors when doing statics at depth.

[Will]

Umberto Pelizzari
Cernia (grouper) taken from 64m.
He routinely does the 'aspetto' on a wreck at 50m for monster snapper...

[portinfer]

Marwan - I bought the 'Manual of Freediving' - alot of information and alot of excercises (that I mostly haven't done yet ).
It explains alot and is a good read as well as being (I'd say) essential for understanding and inmproving. GLad I bought it.
Times over here relate to the time of low water and the type of low water.
For example today it is low at 3pm and it is a 1.5m low - so a medium spring tide. In my experience it is possible to fish about an hour before and up to three hours after the low water time. This depends on currents - in some spots they flow one way and in other spots the opposite. On one coast slack water is at mid time (so three hours after low on a rising tide) and on other coasts it is slack dead on the low... confused ?! I am and I live here ! Most of the time we get it right but I went in on Saturday knowing that the tide would be flowing one way when in fact it wasn't... what had happened was that as it was slightly higher than I was used to it was creating an eddying effect and hitting a reef and curling in....
I live in hope of understanding the sea here one day

____________________
Edward

[Marwan]

will,
you're killing me, aspetto at 50m!!!!!, but again we are alking about umberto, when i do an aspetto at 8 meters my friends really think highly of me , better not show them this post

[Chefkoch]

know a greek guy from athens, who, maybe 4years back, having a CW PB of 60m, pulled a grouper from 49m. He often went deep, around 40m. Also aspetto of 1-2mins @30m. By that time i was a novice, and seeing this crazy stuff on his computer was quite inspiring. It kinda shows you that really great stuff is possible, with good training and attitude. I'm now pulling statics of more than a min @30m, and hoping to improve some, or take this bottom time to 40m. My craziest deep static was 2mins @20m @4°C, and very very dark, in a lake here

[gert]

i hear you guys when you say you don t need to go deep to get fish
but in S.A the reef structure changes as you go deeper (for the better) and the first time i went over 10m i could not belive the diffrent
This plus the fish getting better makes me want to push to go deeper

[spaghetti]

Originally Posted by gert

i hear you guys when you say you don t need to go deep to get fish
but in S.A the reef structure changes as you go deeper (for the better) and the first time i went over 10m i could not belive the diffrent
This plus the fish getting better makes me want to push to go deeper

yes of course it depends on the place and the kind of fish you're targeting, and it's true that at depth there's more life, especially in areas where there's intense fishing, so that fish stay deeper as a form of self defense.
But for the typical mediterranean hunting of bass, mullets and sargo (and english too, as friends tell on this forum), you can get your dinner, lunch, breakfast and freezer storage for the rainy days without going deeper than 8 meters or less.
Two things I find interesting:
-on the top of steep "walls" of rock who have the basement at depth and the top in shallow, it' more fishy, because there is a sort of habitat continuity between deep and shallow. So that dentex, which is not a shallow water fish, is often found on top of those walls in few meters from the surface.
-Groupers: in my waters, you must dive at least 20 meters to find adult ones. This maybe because:
1) they've been overfished hard by spearos, and found it more comfortable to hide at greater depth (a kind of evolution in behaviour, sort of selection)
2) global warming: shallow water became too hot for them, and they prefer fresher and deeper. (nothing scientific, just a spearos' field observation)

[Marwan]

spaghetti, i might disagree with you on point 2 with the groupers, we have caught many big ones in les than 10m tis year, and over here is even hotter than europe, ithink it might be related to their fishing, or maybe the smalle fish that they eat have moved deeper.

[spaghetti]

Originally Posted by Marwan

spaghetti, i might disagree with you on point 2 with the groupers, we have caught many big ones in les than 10m tis year, and over here is even hotter than europe, ithink it might be related to their fishing, or maybe the smalle fish that they eat have moved deeper.

Lucky you, friend: over here we die for groupers. And ain't no joke: reportedly, last summer half a dozen italian spearos lost their lives trying to pull shot groupers out of their caves at significant depth. And this is sort of ON topic. We have a saying here: "Spearos are not killed by boats. Spearos are killed by goupers".
...mmmh: am I clouding this thread?

[Chefkoch]

Originally Posted by spaghetti

reportedly, last summer half a dozen italian spearos lost their lives trying to pull shot groupers out of their caves at significant depth. And this is sort of ON topic. We have a saying here: "Spearos are not killed by boats. Spearos are killed by goupers".
...mmmh: am I clouding this thread?

Wow that's pretty crass, can you give us some details? Were they trying to pull the fish out right on? Didn't they have their guns attached to the buoy? Were they diving without a buddy? Did they black out on return, or down at depth? Was the fish thrashing around causing them to panic?