How To Get Close To The Fish!!!!

[alexanderXP]

MAN help me !i have a piccaso 80cm and i cant get close to the damn fish!!how should i get close???because my harpune is having a low rangeli ke meter or so!!!

[johnny]

Hi Alex,

yeap it is not easy, thats why we do it. I am no expert but i shot 4 nice sargos the other day with my 75 gun no problem. You have to be SUPER quiet very stealthy and be ready to shot before you even see the fish. Go at sunrise and sunset you will see more fish, hide yourself, sqwint your eyes, wait. if you are hunting on the surface when the fish are feeding in the rocks, move super slowly not using your fins, pull yourself along grabing rocks( very quietly) keep your gun out of sight from where you are looking if they see your gun before you see them there gone. you have to be super sneeky. No sudden movements either, turn your head slowly always everything must be slow, you will have to get very disiplined doing all this.
An 80cm gun sounds perfect to me for that kind of hunting especially if there are some waves and currents.

Buy the Dapiran dvd " medi jedi aggauto" you will learn alot.

do not forget SSSssssssssHHHhhhhhhhhhh be quiet.

practice practice practice

[AkDiverDude]

Hi, I have recently gotten interested in spearfishing and have been checking out these forums. Just now I noticed you said the fish will run away if they see the speargun..... Can fish actually recognize a speargun or is it just something they instinctively find threatening? Like for example would a king salmon in 40 degree water in Alaska be scared off by the sight of one?

[AB Diver]

AK Diver Dude,
Most places that I know of (and everywhere for that matter) it is not legal to shoot salmon with a speargun! I have always wanted to but it aint legal in California.

In regards to your question, yes I do think that they are naturally scared of them. I shoot perch on occasion and as dumb as they might be to divers in general once a spear gun goes off all the sudden the once curious fish (and I mean curious like comming up to your weights around your waist and pecking at them) will all the sudden go into tremendous hiding i.e. under kelp, under rocks, and in dark areas in general. Be it the sound of the gun going off or whatever it just seems to me that they get the idea very quickly. Not to say that you won't find a curious one every now and then but as soon as the spears start flying you can expect to be alone in the water without a fish to be seen. But once things settle down it can happen all over again.

NEVER under estimate a fishes intelegence. They may just suprise you!

GOOD LUCK!!!

[cdavis]

Alex,
Believe it or not, you can carry a 2 meter range gun or a 6 meter and the fish will still stay just out of range. Its not the gun, its your body language. You know the range and that gets communicated to the fish. Try slowing down, thinking non-aggressive thoughts ( surprisingly effective), Relax, act like you are not spearfishing. Have patience, it will come.

Connor

[IB Boyd]

AKdiver dude, Please I am looking foreward to some future reports from you! Have heard that during Salmon spawn the 100# halibut lurk at the rivermouths to eat the salmon! Now that would be impresive!! You might have a good shot at a world record but up in your part of the world, and lings the size of my leg(pretty big). Am looking forward to the pictures.
I think that fish are more inclined to run from the aggressive motion of pointing a speargun at them rather than the actual speargun itself. From time to time fish will actually come up and sheck out the shiny speartip of the gun while I am lying motionless on the surface during breathup. A couple weeks ago, a pair of thirty pound white seabass did this. Of course, they bolted when i slowly tried to aim the gun at them. Not that I am an experet or anything, but When I hunt, I concentrate on being totaly silent, fluid movment, and minimalazation of profile.

[Luis]

About those theories on fish scared by a speargun...

An old fisherman told me long time ago in Can cun that fish can recognize a speargun... Being a polite person I made my best not to laugh to tears thinking about fish being able to distinguish a weapon... But I kept thinking about it and I asked another fisherman who gave me a much better explanation... That may be true:

He said that fish werent capable of distinguish a gun, but that the way that a gun points is very "predator like", he gave me the example of a barracuda, it has an elongated body and before striking it "points" toward the prey, and whenever a fish sees that, it looks like a threat and escaping is the inmediate response.

I'm still not sure about that being truth, but makes sense (At least more than thinking about fish studing "speargun recognition"). If anybody has a better explanation let me know.

Happy hunting!

[AkDiverDude]

The theory about looking threatening or body language does make sense actually. I am more worried that the salmon will mistake me for a seal or other marine mamal, but I have tried swimming in a river full of spawning pink salmon and I was able to get my hand within inches of them before they would move. I just checked the new regulations this year and they state that you can use an "underwater spear" if you are fully submerged in salt water. Being near the mouth of a "river" (there is really only rarely a trickle and I think the fish are released there when they are young) the salt water part is debatable, but people do snag there in full view of a park service station and snagging is only legal in salt water so I think I will be ok. I am building my speargun this weekend since im on kind of a limited budget (20 bucks plus the epoxy I already have for my boat plus some scrap lumber I have around so far). I will post pictures if this stuff works. The water is cold too. Close to 40 degrees I think, but I often spend an hour swimming in it when its sunny in my wetsuit. Plus Im only 16 so that should help.

[johnny]

Originally Posted by cdavis

Try slowing down, thinking non-aggressive thoughts ( surprisingly effective), Relax, act like you are not spearfishing.

i like that quote connor, i will put it more into practice.



AKdiverdude, go for it dude, look forward to hearing your results, good luck.

[Adrian]

I'm sure the fish can pick up on your heartbeat, and that it must be as loud as a drumbeat to them. They can probably read you in a sonar-like fashion and our hunting behaviour/physiological response on seeing a fish in range is probably not very different from other predators they are used to dealing with. Perhaps to a fish our actions are so obvious that if they were human it would be equivalent to "reading our minds"!

[Jay S]

so basically from wat ive gathered from some of the other threads is that u gotta calm yourself down (take a few deep breaths haha ), think non-violent thoughts, and don't let the fish see the glint in your eyes is that about rite??

[SHOOT2KILL]

In my experience fish seem to have the ability to determine your intentions and react accordingly. When I dive in Southern California for yellowtail and such, and ignore fish such as Calico Bass, the Calicos will actually in some instances follow me. I've turned around on many occasions to see several calicos on my six swimming casually unafraid of my prescence. Kind of annoys me.

[crusty]

Just buy a big long mother of a gun and that way you dont have to get close to them, so blow em away from any distance, Easy

Crusty

[Dobs]

Reading these posts about thinking non-violent things while hunting, a thing that just happened to me last Saturday comes to mind.
I was hunting in the shallows when I spotted a couple of big mullet cruising around and decided to wait for them. I took one and later spotted the other cruising just out of range. In the meantime there were few very big Garpike (Belone belone euxini) which no one shoots around here. They are just too hard to hit as they are just 2-3 cm wide and very very fast swimmers. This one time they were so calm that they came on twice to check the tip of my spear while I was lying on the bottom waiting for the big mullet to come back. But I didn’t shoot because I was afraid that if I shoot at the Garpike, the big mullet will come by just at the time when my gun is unloaded (Murphy’s Law). I tried 2-3 aspettos for the mullet but my target fish was gone. Then I decided to shoot those nose-picking Garpikes which are very tasty btw. Once taken the decision to shoot them I never sow them coming into range... I didn't change position, didn't move or anything. Just the thought of shooting them scared them away... It's spooky when you think about it... What is going on? Are the fishes reading our minds? And we humans though we were the most intelligent creatures

[Murat]

when i do aspetto for harder targets like sargo, especially on shallow water. I try to not interest with the fish, i rather behave like i there for feeding as they do and they come in range easier not looking directly to the fish is one of the most important thing here. When you hide yourself completly behind the rock (only point of spear is uncovered) they also come easier, i think since they can not see you they are not able to read your body language. May be they hear heartbeats sound faded as well since rocks may block it at some amount. I always found the in deeper spots fishes aproaches eaiser, probably they don't encounter with humans as much as the ones in shallow

Another thing i notices while hunting grouper, when you are infront of the cave, sometimes fish don't scare even if you stop there and look at it for a few seconds but as soon as you try to point them a spear they dissapear. I think our bad intented porpuse frighten them off rather than the movement of the speargun.