If there one thing that separates beginners from people who dive alot, it's this breath hold thing.
As has been said, you dive within your limits and, spearo's, unlike freedivers, dive alone or in groups too loose for buddy diving. Sometimes from boats you might do one up one down diving but it's not standard.
That aside, look, your dive will improve throughout the session until you start to get dehydrated OR tired. Either way, listen to your body!
The main point here is that actually, you do NOT need long dives to catch fish.
All this 2 minutes plus stuff might be fine in the warm clear seas of far off but, take those same divers and they are 'knackered' in our dark cold seas where you can't see the bottom in 5 or 6 mtrs. This alone can cost you 50% of your so called 'bottom time'.
In murky water, in the right place, you might dive 10 meters, wait 10 -20 seconds and trust me, outside of waiting for a black bream or seeing IF a bigger bass might show in a shoal coming too you, perhaps you've dived on a shoal of pollack once too often but, inside a 1 minute or at most, a 1:15 dive, at under 10 - 12 meters, you've spent all the time down you need to catch fish. Yes, really.
You need to come up, relaxed, not reaching, or finning hard because you pushed it. That type of effort compounds on each subsequent dive and if you relax, you simply see more fish. Get into hunting mode and super active, anxious and mega awareness mode and forget it.
Just dive, a good duck dive will see you pass 5 mtrs and, drop to the bottom. That's 15 seconds to hit 10 meters MAX. Line up, lay down and wait. do NOT MOVE around scanning !!!!
That simply burns air and warns fish!
Relax and use your peripheral vision. If you see a fish, wait for it to come TO YOU.
Technique I would say, and being relaxed, hydrated and did I say, relaxed, is FAR more important than bottom time.
Most of my fish last year came inside a minute. Not all, but 70% easy.
. Have a good day!
) and in this way ascending as slowly as possible.
