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Parrot fish.. any hunting suggestions?

Thread Status: Hello , There was no answer in this thread for more than 60 days.
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J

jharryd

into the earth
Nov 4, 2006
15
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Hi to all, i am fairly new to spearfishing but have started to figure out the behaviour the smaller reef fish and cod i hunt when they become alert of my presence. I usually change my hunting technique to suit these fish, however PARROT FISH are quite a problem for me. I am having difficulty getting a close enough range to make the shot as i have found them to be quite alert and agile, thus they swim away when approached. The area i fish (magnetic island... off the coast of townsville) seems to produce relatively large parrots from about 35cm and there are quite a few of them, you could say they are a common site. Could someone please give me a few hunting tips on how i can get within range.
ill list my suit and gun incase they have anything to do with the problem

gun: undersee woodie comp 13500mm with shaft attached
suit: picasso apnos black 3mm

thanks, any advice is appreciated

jharryd
 
I shoot alot of parrotfish(we call them Veja in the Azores), and yes they are pretty quick and jumpy. Here in the Azores it is very rocky, so they usually will try to hide under a rock. I just dive down, wait a little bit and get them when they are coming out, or sneak up on them. They also usually swin in descent size schools 8-15. Its usually not hard picking one of them off.
 
andy dic, thanking you for helping, yes i have noticed they like to swim in schools, unfortunately smaller schools of 5 - 8 here. but yes i will definitely fry one up on the barbecue when i get the chance cheers
 
the ones i associate with are greyish blue in appearance, with beaks which they use for crushing coral. they have a small tail in comparison to body size. haha, dw the only thing parroty about them is ther beak... im yet to see a feathered fish... take care
 
the color sometimes vary's due to the sex of the fish. The ones I see also usually have a relatively bigger body to tail ratio.
 
hey andy, could u please if u can specify to your knowledge about the colours of the fish being determined by sex, i beleive u as i have seen many variances with colour and was wandering if ther was a simple way to determine. you could say i was curious rofl
 
I'm not fish expert, but we have ones here that are a brighter red, then ones that are a duller grayish color. I know the red ones are female, because I speared one, and gutted it and out came alot of eggs. I was told by a local fisherman that the grayish fish are male, and the reds are female.
 
jharryd said:
The area i fish (magnetic island... off the coast of townsville) seems to produce relatively large parrots from about 35cm and there are quite a few of them, you could say they are a common site.
Click to expand...

I suppose it may not have much bearing on the answers you get, but this is an international web site. What hemisphere are those spots in?

If I mention local spots, I doubt they would mean much to you, although you could at least get a hint from the location in the upper right of my posts.
 
yes i guess you have a point.. i live in Townsville in the state of Queensland, Australia. Its along the N/E coast. Yes i guess then the fish i am hunting are male.. thanks andy
 
We get around 30 species of Parrotfish (Scarids) in Australia, each of which will have 3 or more colour phases as they change from juvenile to female, and then to males.

If you want a god book for fish ID, try getting "Marine Fishes of Tropical Australia and SE Asia", by Gerry Allen.

Also, email the QLD DPI and ask for a copy of the "Reef Fish field guide" which is an excellent ID booklet, and free!

And if youre keen to get out to the more distant reefs, join up with the Townsville Spearfishing club. Great bunch of guys.
 
some experienced spearos here in dubai, they dont shoot this kind of fish, bec it is easy to shoot and especially that u can find it every where.

i tried my luck and found out that it is hell to descale. but it tastes great.
maybe thats why they dont like to shoot it? bec of descaling.
 
Parrotfish are very tasty when BBQd with a bit of garlic-salt and lime, treasured by locals for thier tasty meat... don't even try to scale them... they are like prehistoric armored fish... just fillet as you usually would... try throwing the fillet on the barbie without skinning, and you will be amazed at what the scales do... worth shooting just to see this effect!.. after finished cooking, easily strip off the skin in about 1 second.

Parrots are wily fish in the Sea of Cortez, easily spooked... require patience and a bit of downtime. 25-40ft depth for best fish, when you see them in an area dive down and lay on a rock, wait 30-45 seconds... they will come to you. Don't look at them (or any other fish for that matter), as they see the lens of your mask as a mirror and it spooks them badly... always turn your mask away from the fish and look using your eyes. Sharpen your spear before diving... the scales are VERY hard to penetrate.
 
yes i know Sean Cochrane from the club and also becaus he owns the only store in townsville dedicated to spearfishing, he is a great guy and the best to go to for advice. well i imagine that scaling the fish would be worth the worry if the taste is as good as iv been told, cheers
 
I personally don't like the taste of them. They are a little too soft for me, but I know many that like them.
BD is right, don't make eye contact. But I think the best way to bring them in is to scratch coral. Take a small piece of coral and scratch it on another piece of coral. By doing this you're imitating the sound they make when they're eating. When they think someone else is eating their coral, they'll come in. Just be patient. And by the way, the easy was to scale them is to use a big tablespoon and drag it under the scales from tale to head, it's very easy. Good luck.

John
 
It always amazes me to read that parrot fish are hard to spear. Maybe its a case of rapid evolution, because when I was stationed at Kaneohe Marine Corps Air Station, Hawaii in 1961 to 1963, they were thick and easy to shoot.

I wasn't spearing them because I didn't care for them, but a guy in our base diving club used to bring his 10-year-old son out on the club dive boat, and the kid would spear easily a hundred pounds of them in a single tank of air, and of course that was in spite of blowing bubbles and making all that noise.

But believe me, I'm not saying they are easy now or trying to cast aspersions on those who say they are spooky. I know many divers far more skilled than am I who say they are hard to hunt. One of them lives in Hawaii and has a state record for one of the sub-species of parrot fish, and he tells me that they are very hard to approach in spite of the fact that he is about three times as capable as I am.

I suppose you could say that they get hunted so much now that they have adapted, but its not as if they weren't being hunted then. Does evolution work so rapidly that behavior could change so soon due to just the wary ones passing on their genes?

So this is just an observation rather than a suggestion on how to spear them.
 
Hey Bill,
Lots of little ones and less shy, but 5kg and up are fewer and far more wary of predators. Evolution, or stupid young fish growing older and smarter? (sort of like us). Hope you are getting lots of dive time.

Nice tip on the coral scratch John... I frequently tap a rock on a rock for carbilla and pargo "calling", but never tried a scratch... the YT here in Loreto are loving the five-finger-palm-flash this year, brings em' right in off the sand. Sea of Cortez is FULL of fish at 50'-70'. Try my BBQ tip... shoot a parrot, fillet but don't scale, and throw on the barbie... you will be amazed at what happens to the scales.
 
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