How deep do you hunt?

[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 :duh

 

[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]

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]

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? :rcard

 

[Chefkoch]

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? :rcard

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?

 

[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]

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]

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]

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]

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!