riffe MT0 - got it !

[Fondueset]

I posted a bit over on spearboard about this - but anyway. Got my Little mt0 the other day - after talking with Iyadiver and vacillating between it and an omert20 mimetic - probably 90 or 100cm.
I opted for the riffe but it was a real coin toss.

I went out to shoot pictures of Lake Trout (best one is #70 in my gallery below) and it was a great day! Sunny, calm - viz was at least 40' - with some variance in the thermalclines. Got some great pictures. I wanted to test out the MT0 but had no plans to spear anything. Put only two bands on it just to get a sense of how it shoots. I went down along the breakwall in about 22' of water and a school of Lake Trout came by at a good clip. Since I was allready down there and not moving they kept right on going by - they were about 15' away - probably 9-12 from the muzzle so I figured it was safe to shoot - out of range - plus they were tracking pretty fast and I hadn't held a speargun in 30 years. Fish were around 20 inches. Well, of course, I hit the one I was aiming for exactly where I was aiming - right behind the eye on the gill plate! The shaft was right at the end of it's energy so the fish was merely stunned for a few seconds. Shooting lake trout is..er.. frowned upon in these parts so I felt lucky to have all my questions answered with one shot! (there is one trout in that school with a lamprey eel latched onto it - I wonder if I could pick it off....)

Very nice balance on the MT0 - I have a 36 inch 9/32 shaft on it and the extra length gives a nice feel. The gun was quite transparent in use and tracked effortlessly. My concerns about range were also abated - with a third band it'll be perfect.

check my gallery here, or the one in the link below for some pretty good pics of these beautiful fish. here's my fav so far.

 

[ajwaverider]

Fondueset!Glade you are pleased with your new gun and great pics by the way.I looked thru all 107 and Lake Michigan is an oasis for those away from the ocean. There is a calender in this guys office at work of a place on lake michigan and it's amazing,It has a rocky coastline like Alaska and the blue waters like the med sea.
I forgot the name but write it down and see if you know thw place. Happy hunting.

 

[Fondueset]

thanks! I'd planned to stop the gallery at 108 - but we'll see. The fall waters here are increasingly clear and still a quite comfy 50F in my 5mm suit.

Beautiful guns on the site you have in your sig! And very reasonably priced.

I should get some of the coast up - where the pictures in the big lake were taken is along the sleeping bear national lakeshore - miles of beautiful secluded beach and bluffs. Next summer I hope to get out to South Manitou Isle - there is a sunken/beached freighter a couple hundred yards out off the south end in fairly shallow water - people used to climb around on it until they started falling through the decks. Should be a really interesting habitat still though.

I've written the DNR here about spearfishing regs. Can you imagine if we could get seasonal freedive spearing of lake trout and salmon legalized! it would be sort of a midwestern version of bluewater hunting.

Personally I'd be down with taking the occasional fish for dinner - but mainly I like taking pictures while freediving. Though for the Lakers and Salmon spearing would be every bit as challenging.

Here are three pics - one looking south, one north and one east from a hundred or so yards out in the area where most of the shots of freshwater drums and the burbot were taken. Bluffs right there are about 200 feet high. Note the absence of other humans - generally only a few people in site during the summer. Pretty much none the rest of the time.

 

[feign]

Congrats on getting yourself a weapon Fondueset. Did you get the hawaiian tip and two wraps of line?

 

[Fondueset]

3wraps - 3 bands extra long shaft - Hawaiian. 9/16 bands, enclosed track. As mentioned - only shot it once so far If I'd used all three bands I'd have had a logistical problem. Very nicely put together piece of kit. With the nylon/glass muzzle they are saying 3 5/8 or 4 9/16th. Depending how much I end up using it, and where, it might be fun to try some different combos.
Aiming seems pretty intuitive.

 

[feign]

Nice set-up. Yes, I like how versatile those guns are. I noticed burbot in your pics. Are you able to spear those? We have a similar species, strange fish, but the meat is good eating.

 

[ajwaverider]

Fondueset!The place I was referring to is castle rock in Rock national lake shore.Here is a few pics I found on google images.They're nice but not as good as the one on the calender.Does your riffe have the new softgrip handle or the old handle.I bought one of the softgrips for a speargun project and I like it compared to the handles on the rear handle guns.

http://images.google.com/imgres?img...?q=rock+national+lakeshore&svnum=10&hl=en&lr=

 

[feign]

wow, nice pics. That doesn't look like your typical lake. I wonder what the underwater terrain is like there?

 

[Fondueset]

i think that's up in the upper peninsula - on Lake Superior - be some gorgeous diving there - very clear - but also cold. Alot of my diving is along the Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore.

By 'soft grip' I assume you mean the sort of textured handle they put over the nylon/glass grips. I like the grip fine - though I wouldn't mind if Riffe did what Omer does with the MA and T20 - provide and extra, larger grip with a thumb rest that you can slide on. Still, it's very comfortable and certainly easy to aim I got mine with the enclosed track - which I think lets you load up a thinner shaft a little more.

The most interesting grip I've seen so far is on the Merlo guns.

Feign - michigan spearfishing laws are annoying. The most difficult kind of spearing - for most species - a speargun - is also the most restricted. I thought Burbot were legal but it turns out only for hand spear and bow. They really need to revisit that regulation if you ask me. With our water clarity there is the possibility of a modest but robust tourist trade for midwestern spearos. And the most difficult and desireable species are more than abundant.

If you haven't seen the great lakes - the biggest thing to compute is their size. Lake Michigan is 301 miles long and 118 miles wide with a surface area of 22,300 miles - it's the sixth largest lake in the world and averages 279 feet deep - 925 at the deepest.

When Cousteau and his crew explored it they were quite freaked out by the the intense wave action - alot of them got seasick!

Lake Superior is also Huge and deep - in fact it's bigger than Lake michigan at 31,700 square miles - second biggest lake/inland sea in the world- second only to the Caspian Sea!. It gets so rough that awhile back a 720 foot freighter - the Edmund Fitzgerald - broke in half and sank with all hands during a storm. It's 350 miles long, 160 wide (widest obviously) averages 483 feet deep with a max of 1332. It contains 10% of the worlds surface fresh water!!

Right now Visibility in Grand Traverse Bay - where I took most of my pictures - is 40-60feet! I hope to go for a dive again tomorrow.

Lake Michigan also has areas that have the same sort of terrain - rocky bottom is very nice for visibiliy.