how did YOU become a spearo?

[fishimani]

I was looking through some old spearboard posts last night and i saw one that i thought would be nice to have on deeperblue. Here goes.....

What is the story behind how each one of you individually made the transformation from a regular person living on land to the preference of the life aquatic....what gave you your gills???

 

[Erik]

Good thread!

Diving/freediving for me is another story.
But spearfishing: I'd never hunted anything or even put a hook in the water in my life, and I felt the need to be confronted with the responsibility of seeing how something lived and died if I was going to eat it. I was already a decent freediver when my friend Doug Morgan (Freediver48 on Deeper Blue) took me out one day off Vancouver Island. To say there was an epiphany is to underrate the experience. Since then I have been a spearo. 99.9% of the time, I don't go in the water unless I'm hunting.

RIP Doug and thank you again.
Erik

 

[foxfish]

I guess I was destined to spearfish - I have never lived further than one mile from the sea & often a lot closer.
I was a competitive swimmer at school & started spearfishing at about 11 years old.
The end!

 

[Tong]

I have always been a keen hunter on the land, i love the idea that i know everything about the food i eat.

I know how it was killed, where it was killed, how fresh it is and i also take the responsibility of only hunting things that are adults.
I get very annoyed looking in supermarkets at fish/lobsters/crabs that may be legal but are still way to small from a personel perspective.

I also know that everything cought while spearing has been plucked from the sea with next to no impact on the natural enviroment.

 

[jtkwest]

JAMES BOND!! six million dollar man a little too,(one episode had scuba diving w sharks!) i was on a competetive swim team at age 8. life guard at 16 etc. but i had a boss and friend dan was a scuba diver, he bought me dive cert. class for christmas in 1994. he LOVED to look for lobsters. i saw a HUGE moray on my first dive, in pretty much the first hole o looked in, and was traumatized. i dont like sticking my hands where i cant see them.i dont like snakes. then i moved into a house and in the garage was an aquacraft bandito speargun, i bought new bands and used it for few years, on scuba. then i bought a jbl 55magnum with 3/8"x 60" spearthen i mooved to key west from west palm beach, 6 years ago, and i learned about freediving and started getting good. despite spearing for 11 years previous to moving here, i just never hunted enough to learn that much, my aim has always been good i guess but thats about it. how bout you?

 

[Lazuli]

I was well into my freediving and quite disinterested in spearfishing to begin with. Then I found a rusted and dusty Cressi Sioux 60 laying idle in a disused building that my other half was using as an art studio. I had a look at it and thought "yeah! I'll give this a go". Tracked down the owner and bought it off him. Repaired it and the rest is history really.

I would say that I became a spearo the moment I started to think like a predator underwater.

 

[glowworm]

My dad was in the navy and stationed at portland. Growing up on the island ment i was surrounded by the sea and several very very good spearos.

Bob Milverton 1970 british spearo champ and current british cod record holder lived on the island.

Ian Parry was also a big influence telling us younger spearo's amazing stories of fish encounters and captures in his dive shop.

One of my elder brothers had a friend who's father was South African.

Ray Arms...he was a typical South African who had great stories and alot of experience and patience to teach us younger spearo's.

I was hooked and spent most of my time from 11-16 in the water spearing and learning.

I remember getting my first proper speargun a Beuchat Marlin 90cm from Ian Parry.My previous Beuchat didn't even have the line running through the end of the spear it was on a plastic clip that the spear went through at the muzzle.

Happy days if only i had the kit and knowledge i do now.

 

[cdavis]

Read Cousteau's "Silent World" at about 9 and was hooked. Did not get a chance to get in the water with gear until 15, shot a little sheephead the first dive and never looked back.

Only discovered freediving without a spear years later (what an odd concept that seemed) and have slowly gotten more into pure freediving and less spearing.


Connor

 

[mishu1984]

when i was 12 i got tired of sitting on a boat and waiting for the fish to bite on my line. i thought how nice would it be to choose my own fish. i asked my dad and he said that spearfishing was the way to go. ive been hooked since. i still fish with a rod or handline, but most of the time, sinus allowing, i try to spearfish

 

[devondave]

I've always been a fisherman , when little I would tag along with my elder brothers to catch trout in the local river ( and usually fall in and scare the fish ) .
As I grew older I became an avid flyfisherman and salmon and sea trout were the main quarry , in those days we still had some . Eventually sea angling took over because I loved being on the coast .
My underwater love affair began as a respite from rock climbing on sea cliffs during the midday heat of summer . A few of us would jump in the water to cool off , and for me this led to a mask and snorkle , an ill-fitting suit , tiny fins and a weightbelt made of string and beach stones with holes in them .
As I became more confident in the water I'd go out a bit further and a bit deeper , then one day while watching a small shoal of bait fish , out from the deeper gloom two large bass came zooming passed me and attacked the shoal , then just as quickly disappeared back into the depths .
That was it , the same day I went to the dive shop and bought my first speargun , and weightbelt after telling the guy I used a piece of string with stones on it and he almost had a fit .
It became my passion , my obsession , the winters spent counting down the days to spring , to the first dive of the year when upon ducking your head underwater that strange sense of peace and freedom returns and you know you've got the whole season ahead of you , bliss .

Regards ,
Dave .

 

[cdavis]

Love the string and rocks belt! My first was an old ammo belt filled with cast off tire balancing weights, backed up with a kiddie snorkel and fins 3 sizes too big. Still got some pics of that, great material to spark a laugh from a fellow diver.

Connor

 

[azapa]

Connor, WE NEED THOSE PICTURES PUBLISHED HERE.

I was brought up 500M from the ocean in the NW of England, and fished with rod and line every day almost. Never caught much, and the ocean was, and still is, brown murk in that part of the world.

Luckily we went to the south of Spain for 2 months a year in summer, and i met a young Scotsman who lived there, we dove for octopus and fishies just off the beach and used the proceeds for beer and burgers (i was about 12, so the beer was an experiment).

With crap Spanish I got on the bus by myself to the next "bigger" town to a wonderful sports store and bought the attached gun, and a nemrod mask and snorkel. I loved it, but to be honest I never remember having shot anything. I do remember one incident with a moray stabbed in the tail with a dive knife. Angry.

10 years later I move to Chile, 5 after that I buy small house right on the ocean. Three boys and a wife who likes cooking = great incentive to spear.

For me spearing = freediving and freediving = spearing. The two are inseparable, sounds corny, but so many spearos are NOT freedivers, and that strikes me as a strange disconnection.

 

[budleigh spearo]

some crazy frenchmen asked if i wanted to try it i said yes and now im hooked on the sport

 

[scottie3030]

i was watching gordon ramsey on tv with spearo dave diving on the eddystone. had the laptop on at the time so google spearfishing ended up on daves web site few clicks later i had a gabbi 77 on it ways! been trying to gather my own food ever since now i grow some veg and go shooting above the water!

 

[kkdavids]

i got dragged around on my dads float from the age of 5 (apparently i insisted!), and the rest as they say is history!

ps.. now i drag him around! revenge is so so sweet!

 

[Trelawney]

It all began a long time ago in the mystical land of Kernow. My family, and my parents friends' family used to go to the beach most days during the summer and early autumn. I was probably about 11-12 years old, and having watched Pete (my dads mate) swim off with a speargun and come back an hour later with a few bass, I wanted to give it a go.

So next day, kitted up with a 1970's mask and flippers (no wetsuit, as we were tough back then) we headed out to Whitsand bay. Being extremely short sighted, I had to take my glasses off, so vizibility was in effect, zero. So there Pete was, pointing out these wonderful fish, and I couldn't see anything. I just nodded my head when he pointed at something and agreed with him. Funnily enough though, I was hooked.

The next year I got a leaky second hand Trago Mills surf suit, an ancient Nemrod gun, and a pair of cut down specs for my mask that I fixed in with silicone. Now, this was a time when fish were plentiful. Big bass, flounder, plaice, with the occasional turbot (10-15lber) and you didn't have to dive for most of them, just shot from the surface. My best memory from the early days was Pete being a bit tired from a dive, so he strapped his weightbelt onto his dog to carry up the cliff for him. The dog made it, surprisingly.

So I've been spearing and freediving ever since. For me, Its always been about catching ultra fresh, and expensive food, and having a day diving with some brilliant mates. There is nothing better than tucking into a nice, hard earned lobster and crusty bread on a summers evening with a cold beer, yapping on about the good ole days.

 

[Tong]

and having a day diving with some brilliant mates.

AWWW shucks im blushing! :friday

 

[Old Man Dave]

I've always considered myself as a fisherman who dives rather than a diver who fishes.

I got my interest in fishing from my father although my mothers side of the family consists of a history of fishermen, lighthousekeepers, privateers and seafarers going back hundreds of years.

When I was young we fished with handlines, nets and long lines made from hemp and sisal and used crabpots made of willow. Primitive greeheart fishing rods without reels gave way to the first solid fibreglass rods and fixed spool reels imported by a local entrepreneur directly from Olympic in Japan and the revolutionary introduction of monofilament.

Some early days diving was going on using first generation aqualungs and ex-navy drysuits. However it was the introduction of the wetsuit in the 1960's that really kicked things off. These early suits were tailored by a local dressmaker from sheets of imported expanded neoprene, glued and taped together.

I was in my mid teens when we visited the weigh ins from the first spearfishing competitions. Catches were spectacular despite the primitive gear (no minimum weight limits).

The fisherman in me was aroused and I made our own wetsuit with unlined "skinned" neoprene from that local dressmaker. Much gluing and taping later the black and bright yellow striped creation was ready for testing. Armed with a beuchat band gun, some very early jetfins, home made weights and an assortment of other purchased or home made gear I entered the water. Ten minutes later I exited with a half pound wrasse and a broken spear.

Over the last 40+ years I have freedived and scuba-ed, involved myself in competition spearfishing, speared for the table and commercially, wreck dived, photographed, salvaged and done most everything a human can do underwater, but ever my love is fishing and to that I always return.

About 5 years ago I sold my commercial fishing license and the wheel has turned almost full circle. Despite my high tech gear (compared to my original stuff anyway), when I freedive spearfish nowadays it's still me against the fish and in the fish's enviroment. That's where I started and looks like that's where I'll finish.

Dave.

 

[fishimani]

Following OMD is a tough act but i will give it my best.

It was the furthest thing from destiny that i became a spearo. I grew up a farm boy in northern michigan. I didnt see the ocean until i was 13 on a summer trip to sarasota, florida. It was not love at first sight, as i can remember whining about salt water in my snorkel and being freaked out by nurse sharks swimming under the boat. I left terra firma behind when i was 17, i joined the navy just as three generations of my family had done before. Lived in San Diego for some time and was a chain-smoker and an engineer....dabbled in some lobster diving...... i loved the dinners with brazillian friends who brought thier home made wine!! Sat around with a friend of mine in a barracks room BS-ing about "harpooning a shark and riding it" (testosterone crazed ignorant sailors)....anyhow....my next duty station was Guam and i pursued spearfishing like a hellish fiend. I found someone on my boat who claimed to be able to dive 180ft. (he can dive well in reality but not that well) he taught me everything and threw me more long winded fish stories in there too. I lived out my barracks room dream of riding a shark..... i did not harpoon it though, as i respect sharks much more with the little education and experience i have gained. I will never quit spearing and i strive for excellence in this beautiful and mysterious world underwater.

-Pete