Back at last from this short but very pleasant holiday.
What may sound interesting is about the skills of one of the two buddies (Robby, which I found out being an ex hi-ranking competitive spearo) who gave a bloody nose to my Ego showing to be a much better spearo than me. Here's the story of some of his catches during our holiday. Could sound incredible but all true.
The twin mullets. I lost my own chance when I did an indian style dive (belly-crawling) around a long tongue-shaped rock protruding toward open sea, but I misjudjed my breath hold time or the distance to dive: when I finally reached to turn the corner on the edge of the rock, I was too much air hungry to hit any of the two HUGE mullets that I found there. The fishes escaped, but after five minutes Robby called my attention and showed me his spear: he had caught both the big mullets in one single shot (they weighed more than 2 kg each). He told me the fishes saw him and acted very shy, so he released a bubble of air to catch their curiosity. The mullets swam a wide loop away then swam back to him. As they were passing side by side he got them both with one sinlge shot. A very long bottom time helped the happy outcome. (BTW: he used my T20 he borrowed, so I gave him the gun as a compliments gift).
The embroided bluefish. Robby's 4 or 5 kilograms bluefish is a great catch, but even better the way he caught it. The first shot completely passed trough the body (whole shaft and loop of line all in one side out the other). Of course a fish like that was pulling hard as hell, so he opened the reel, picked up the shaft from the bottom, reloaded and shot him again with the same shaft and line! Not all in one breath (would have been too much for him too), but indeed a nice stitching needlework anyway!
The BASS in the dark. After three days of a strong north west wind we were sure there would be no visibility for hunting, so Robby took us to a spot he knew well and went down investigatin as I and the other buddy kept waiting on land. He went in with the shortest gun he had (Excalibur 55 cm) armed with a 5 prong trident. From distance he called us and showed the thumbs down signal: no visibility (he said he couldn't see the muzzle of the short 55). After this he started to swim back to the shore, we saw him turn around a rock, then suddenly he stopped and swam back fast as hell, to disappear under water for a minute. He came back with a 5,5 kg bass, wich is an exceptional bass for Italy especially in summer. He said he just saw this big dark shadow in the murky water (half meter viz) and shot with no judgement, without knowing what fish it could be. After shooting he dropped the speargun (5 pronger could not hold the reaction of such a big bass), and swam following the gun and fish all attached. He found the bass had stopped on the bottom trying to break away from the trident against a rock: quickly hands in the gills and job done.
He's a lucky bugger but...hey, what a Spearo!