How deep do you hunt?

[Spaniard]

I fish 10m -15m. Although I have done 30m at the SETT tank, it is not the same as diving with all your spearing gear in cold, green water. The biggest fish I have shot in Uk (10lb bass) was in 4m of water and I have seen bigger (and missed them) in even shallower water. I think it would be a challenge to spear a deep wreck on a slack tide for a big cod...... who knows, maybe one day..........

[spaghetti]

I couldn't say in detail, Chef: should find back reports I've read months ago, which were not so much detailed as far as I remember.
The basic concept is that when you "work" a grouper shot in a cave it's often not easy to be pulled out. So you try once, then surface, than back down and up and down again and again. We call it "fare l'ascensore" (elevator action). With many ad many repeated dives at significant depth, also making efforts to pull while at the bottom, I think that many bad things may happen to your organism, especially if you don't make correct pauses on the surface between one dive and another (as may happen also in shallow waters). Another cause maybe exceeding bottom time: When it seems to you that the grouper is finally coming out, you may say to yourself "five more seconds, five more seconds"...
Same thing may happen doing aspetto: the fish seems to come closer, but not yet close enough, so you wait, wait, wait...

[Marwan]

ok i must agree with you there, my buddy and I shot a 17 KG grouper 2 weeks ago at 14m depth, to ork out the fish and bring it to the surface was borderline dangerous, repetitive deep(by our standards) dives and work to be done at depth, you keep thinking, 5 seconds more 1 seond more, but we never pushed i far, having two people helps.

[Manuel]

I'm mainly freediver and scuba, no spearo (not very popular in my country), but I've a little question:
Was is "aspetto"? Heard often, but what does it mean?

I love those stories like Umbertos -64m that you only can find on deeperblue.

MANUEL

[spaghetti]

Originally Posted by Manuel

I'm mainly freediver and scuba, no spearo (not very popular in my country), but I've a little question:
Was is "aspetto"? Heard often, but what does it mean?

I love those stories like Umbertos -64m that you only can find on deeperblue.

MANUEL

Aspetto is a spearfishing technique, comes from italian verb aspettare, that simply means to wait: you hide yourself on the bottom and wait the fish to come closer, or attract teir curiosity (depends on what fish). When they're close enough you shoot.
Aspetto was invented and named in the 50's at Marina di Pisa, Tuscany, Italy, by spearfishing pioneer Rodolfo "Marò" Betti and his friend Nanni.

[dave]

Originally Posted by spaghetti

Aspetto was invented and named in the 50's at Marina di Pisa, Tuscany, Italy, by spearfishing pioneer Rodolfo "Marò" Betti and his friend Nanni.

But if you talk to a Frenchman, he will tell you Agachon (the French name for the same technique) was invented in France, around Marseille, in the 40's!

cheers
dave
www.spearo.co.uk

[spaghetti]

Originally Posted by dave

But if you talk to a Frenchman, he will tell you Agachon (the French name for the same technique) was invented in France, around Marseille, in the 40's!
cheers
dave
www.spearo.co.uk

And why not? I always put too much "italianity" in my posts on DB, tending to forget that this is an international forum, and that people from other countries may know things I dont' know.
But there must be a reason if everybody except the french use the italian word. AFAIK it was Marò who gave diffusion to this technique worldwide when he became the brand image manager of Mares.
40's, 50's: thats' the time when appropriate gear came on the market: guys couldn't freedive very deep before the invention of masks with nose pocket for equalizaton, right?
However, this his the story Marò tells in his autobiography...After serving in the navy in WWII, those guys came back home and made a sport of what they had learned about diving. They used to go spearing in shallow water always in the same place, Gorgona beach (where there's now a milestone to remember the pioneers of spearfishing!), until the fish became aware of the danger and changed their behaviour...mmmh. ok, I quit it here.
But Dave (and whoever), why don't we open a BIG thread about spearfishing history in different parts of the world?

[trux]

Originally Posted by Chefkoch

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?

Typically, those who die are alone or out of sight of others, so there are rarely any details available. Some statistics about SWB deaths are in this document: http://www.freedive.net/SWB/vest1_lo_rez.pdf - in the followed countries, there is raughly around a half a dozen to a dozen of dead freedivers per year and country (though for example 33 SWB deaths in 2003 in France alone)

[dave]

In the UK, agachon has always been the term, it is only through Deeper Blue that I became aware of aspetto as another name.
I think in fact several people "invented" aspetto/agachon/lying on the bottom waiting independently in different parts of the world
A spearfishing history thread, thats a great idea! (it must have as many old photos as possible!)
cheers
dave
www.spearo.co.uk

[Oldsarge]

Jay Riffe said to me at a Neptunes' meeting "There are plenty of fish in the top 20' of the ocean. There's no need to go deeper." I like that philosophy, but then, I'm one of the more senior old farts on this board . . . and Jay is older than me!

[sickbugs]

ouch, well, i shot my first grouper 2 days ago and i can see why people would drown trying to get them, i hit him bad and he ran into a hole about 20 feet away (love my reel !) so i surfaced, did my usual 1 min, then went back down for him... 3 dives later, i was still trying to get him out of the hole, he apparently had his gills open and that wedged him in pretty good, only way i managed to get him out was to shoot him through the flesh in front of the tail, about 3 inches in, and hold the spear from each side and pull.. he was pretty badly beat up, but tasted good

i generally used to hunt in 20 feet, sometimes up to about 35, but recently ive been hunting more in 40-50 feet, sometimes down to maybe 55 or so. kind of hard to judge the exact distance, my crude method is to leave the spear on the bottom, go to the surface, mark the line, then haul it up, measuring armspans at a time (with my hands stretched out, there is a 6 foot distance, give or take an inch)

[magiatika]

just a question for you polyglots out there: if aspetto is agachon, what is agguato?

[spaghetti]

Originally Posted by magiatika

just a question for you polyglots out there: if aspetto is agachon, what is agguato?

It's just another italian word
These are the italian terms for the 5 techniques:
Aspetto= Waiting (ambush the fish from a static position)
Agguato = Ambush (with dynamic action seizing the fish around)
Tana = Cave/hole (seizing fish investigating in the rocks)
Caduta= Falling down (localize fish from above, dive straight down and shoot while descending)
Razzolo= Stracthing about (a mix of all the previous techniques performed in shallow waters)

[Spaniard]

I think in French, Agguato is something like peche a L'Indien (stalking like Native Americans ??)

[magiatika]

grazzie!