Tell me...Is it Luck or Is it Skill

[settingsteel]

I've had this conversation with close friends time and again. You have 2 spearos with <or> the same skill, heck you have 2 spearos with different skill and one guy gets more fish than the other...and often its the guy with less skill, right? so what is it in the hunt luck or skill

 

[mishu1984]

c'mon man, you know its more complicated than that. you cant cut it black or white.
theoretically, it should be the skilled diver that gets the more fish, however, it could be his unlucky day. oh he was too busy thinking about something else, like his wife in that new lingerie he got her for their 1s anniversay... u get my point lol
there's a million things that affect the outcome. i say its both.
however, i believe that luck is when preparation meets opportunity, ie you train and are in waters with lots of fish.

 

[Bill McIntyre]

In the long term, a skilled diver will get more fish. But in the short term, luck is more important. I've taken some beginners out and they had huge white sea bass swim right up to them.

For instance, my largest white sea bass is 62 pounds. One guy I know got a 70 pounder, the second one he ever saw. Another guy got a 67 pounder, the second one he ever saw also.

I recall one day when I got the legal limit of three white sea bass, and the other three guys on the boat didn't get a one. But I've been on the other side of that too, when someone else is a fish magnet and I'm not seeing any.

 

[Jon]

After talking to Unirdna (the self proclaimed Shaman of freshwater spearfishing who likes to impart his knowledge through interpretive dance) it comes down to skill and knowing what to look for.

Having dove with him for many years I've seen his knack for finding fish where they don't exist. The fact that he's a limnologist by trade only makes him that much more keenly aware of what to look for and where they might be hiding. I've had a lot more time in the water than he has, but most of my time was on a wreck or doing some kind of work underwater. He's zeroed in on fish habitat and ecosystems.

Jon

 

[Mongrel454]

I agree with Bill's first comment...

Luck wins the battle but skill wins the war

 

[settingsteel]

c'mon man, you know its more complicated than that. you cant cut it black or white.

Ahhh true mon, but thats why its a forum....please continue:friday

 

[Silentspear]

Especially when looking for Halibut and not spooking 'em.

 

[getawayFK]

Luck will get you perhaps the biggest sized fish in one trip... But on the long term, it is certainly skills that pay off !!!!

 

[azapa]

it depends on the type of fishing i think. open water fishing must have an element of luck as the fish come to you (no terrain to search). Fishing over terrain is more in the hunter as you need to know where to look. to sum up, major ingreedients:
- luck
- body language
- good apnea
- knowing where to search
- having a good gun and being a good shot
- knowing how to extract the fish in tricky situations
- getting them safely onboard or on the stringer

Those that say it is pure luck are always the worst spearos....

I have been seriously spearing for 2 years now and at first I wouldn't get anything, then I started to get some easier fish, then lots of easier fish, then lots of easier and some bigger fish, now I only hand pick bigger fish. If it were math you would realize that in all theses phases "Dr. Luck" has been a constant. What has changed then??

 

[strangelove]

I think depending the fish will be luck, for example pelagic fish is mostly luck but fish like grouper that takes skill. I fish with this guy in Brazil last December every fishing trip we did he landed 100 Kg of grouper, way more then we were landing, but the pelagic count was about the same for all of us.

 

[settingsteel]

very good comparisons and examples across the board, but come'on we've seen it plenty of times...I have both hunting on land and in the water seems, sometimes too often that the lucky guy (that is the less experienced guy) seems to get the bacon, interestingly more often than the skilled spearo...is it just luck or perhaps something else...that is his predetorial sense is not as "on" as his more skillful counterpart, don't know just food for thought

 

[apneaboy]

Luck is simply the ability to recognise and then take advantage of an opportunity when it arises. The more you practice the luckier you get. Youv'e got to be in it to win it.

 

[mishu1984]

well to refute the example of open water as luck having equal effect on both i propose the folllowing example. however bear in mind that for this example we consider luck to be "when preparation meets opportunity". therefore, what you attirbute to luck is only a matter of chance, which could be analyzed statistically to be that in a given area with a given population of fish under very specific circumstances (ie tide, time, lunar phase, currents, season, etc) there is a probability of xx.xx% of encountering a given species.

lets take, then this scenario:
Boat A: we have Miles, the Titan of Tuna
Boat B: we have Lesly, some chick i porked for a week back in Miami that hates the water

Already given the different skill levels, we can see that Miles is more likely to catch more and bigger fish.

Now Boats A and B are in Fishing the EXACT same school of TUNA of the coast of South Africa. so its an openwater trip.

-Miles deploys flashers, and chums the water properly, and does everything right to attract the fish to swim closer to the surface. and it works.

-Lesly is lazily floating on the surface and occasionally dive bombs down to 30m. to shoot the nearest fish that she seesm

at the end of 3 hours,
Miles: 4 large bluefin tuna, 6 yellowtail. total worth in kgs: approx 400kgs
Lesly: 1 small bluefin tuna, 0 yellowtail. total worth in kgs: appox 40kgs

we could also have the opposite result, where Miles gets 40kgs and Lesly, that bitch, gets 400kgs, but that would be only for this trip, there is no way she could consistenly be that "lucky" amongst other things

 

[paddythefrog]

I'm a firm believer of creating your own luck. People are only lucky because they can't repeat certain opportunities they were not even aware they had created for themselves.

 

[settingsteel]

So is it that skill is consistent and luck is sparodic?

 

[blaiz]

I have to agree with the skill over the long term luck on the short term. Not to mention, those guys who do go out and have the beginners luck... who do you think put them in the spot where they got the fish? obviously someone with the skill.

I just turned a buddy of mine on to spearing in Huntington. I was able to talk him out of buying a JBL and into buying a Riffe. On his first day out he and some friends (I doubt any of whome has more than a 1 min breathhold or the ability to go deeper than 35 or 40ft) went paddy hoping and he shot a 20lb Mahi.

 

[settingsteel]

Mahi huh, that would be Dumb Luckrofl