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Whats the first fish you shot?

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Griff

Certified SCUBA Rider
May 7, 2002
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Do any of you remember the first fish you ever dispatched with a speargun. If your experience is anything like mine, then it was a pretty embarrassing start.

It was the fist time i'd ever dived "deep". before my dive buddy and i would scramble around the rocks in the shallows looking for crayfish. we were diving this spot off the north coast of zululand. conditions were perfect. no wind, tiny swell and top-to-bottom viz. with borrowed spearguns we swam out till we reached a good patch of reef, in about 10-12m. the spearguns proved realy useful in marking the holes where the crays hung out, but the actual intention of shooting a fish was competely out of mind. after about and hour of diving i was feeling completely stuffed so i hung onto the float to grab a rest. thats when i saw them. small schools of brownish fish milling about in the midwater. i pulled the gun up from the bottom, and managed to load it. dipping under the water, i swam towards one of the closer fish, lined it up, and pulled the trigger. all i remember was the excitement of seeing the fish spinning around on the shaft. i pulled it in, took it off the spear and stuck it on my home-made stringer. my dive buddy saw this "action" and was amped to get in on it. then i spotted a very decent sized fish lying on the sand, just off the reef. i swam down towards it, but as i got closer, the short floatline pulled me back. i decided to have a shot, so i lined up and placed a solid shot right into the sand, about 10cm from the fish.:head the fish didnt even flinch. my dive buddy saw me miss, so he swam down. got to the fish, speartip almost scratching the fish's nose, tried to fire, pulled back, switched the safety off, aimed again, and let rip. the spear didnt even leave the barrel but he had a very nice catface rock-cod for his efforts.

back on the beach we had a better look at our prizes. the catface had a whole cray in its gut, with the two feelers still sticking out its mouth. the poor catface was greatful to be free of the indigestion. my fish wasnt such a prize. a nearby spearo identified it as an "old woman". he shook his head and said "you dont shoot those fish".
fortunately my fish selection has improved somewhat, but i'm thankfull that the passion that was ignited on that day still remains.

here's a pic off fishbase of the great trophy
 

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Oh this thread should humble even the best of em....

My first was a rockbass. I chased his butt for over 10 dives, and took 1/2 as many shots before my JBL Custom landed it mark. I got my first lesson in "water magnification" when I got to the surface and found out that I had shot a guppy :eek: . Looking back, I don't know what I was doing to require such a chase, since now I can't keep those annoying little buggers from picking at me.

Ted
 
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My fish first fish was a 10cm long Comber. I'm still loughing at my memories but it made me very excited at 7 years old...
 
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I've never shot any fish before. I grabbed one once though. Does that count?


Eric Fattah
BC, Canada
 
My first was 10-15cm european parrot fish. :D :D Did not give much fightrofl rofl rofl
 
These were my first fish. The little suckers were skittish, but they were plentiful. Good with hot sauce over the barbeque.
 
first fish with a polespear was a kelp bass...then i took my first halibut with a polespear and when i got my first gun i believe i shot a kelp or sandbass with it first...
 
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First fish I shot with a polespear...

Shot him from a wall as he swam by. Ended up as crab bait. I believe I was 5 or 6 at the time.

Photo is from fishbase.org
 

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First fish shot with a speargun...

Poor thing was about 2 inches long. I got 2 of them in about a foot of water while my grandpa stood over me watching with a sense of amusement. The gun I used was one he made with a primitive trigger, very slender shaft, and a 3/8" sling. I wish I knew where that gun was... it'd bring back so many great memories... :(


The 2 little fishes did not go to waste - he pretended to be so proud of me & ate them deep fried, head and all, for lunch the next day. :)

This picture also came from fishbase.org
 

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Shot or caught?

THe first time I shot a fish was back in 1981 when I went diving for the first time off of Anacapa.

It was my first ocena dive and i still didn't have enough money for a perscription face mask, which I really needed. I was given a pole spear and told to jump in and spear a fish.

Of course, no one ever told me what the bungie on the back of the polespear was for!:duh So, I ended up stabbing a couple of Sheepshead only to watch them wriggle off the end of my spear and die somewhere else.:( I felt pretty bad about just maiming soe fish that I wasn't going to eat so I left the spear on the boat for the next two dives and just watched all of the fish swim by.


The next time I tried spearfishing was a little over a year ago when I met this guy named Ted who said he knew all about this spearfishing stuff. We went out to Devil's lake where I impaled a bunch of crappie and perch with a speargun better suited for some larger reef fish in Hawaii. I was hooked and now, 4 spearguns later, I finally have a set-up that I really love to use.

Jon
 
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First fish?

You mean your supposed to HIT the fish with the spear? I've been trying to scare the things to death with close calls!!!!
 
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great thread!

Humbling indeed...:eek:

It was a cabezone in about 30' of water on my last open water checkout dive for what would become NAUI's Jr Diver or something like that. It was at Horseshoe Cove, Sonoma County, now off limits to the public, but in the day it was a pretty sweet location. The Instructor was carrying a Nemrod Galleon pnuematic and I grabbed his fin :rcard to get his attention to show him what his bright and handsome student discovered. He handed over the launcher and I crept up on the wily, wiry and sedentary sculpin...

THWAACK!

Right through the tail. :head Some things don't change. :D
 
He he he ...

I shot a +-30cm Flathead Mullet in Richards Bay - my firs fish (and the only one for the first year of spearfishing.
 
When I was 9, I saved up money and bought a polespear. I was so excited. I shot up paper plates in the driveway, which I thought would lead me on the road to mastery. I took it to a rural san diego north county river, held it underwater from the shore, and stoned a good sized smallmouth bass. I took it home and microwaved it with butter and salt- mmmmm, better than the rattlesnake I prepared the same way. I really thought I was hot shit.
As for diving, when I was about 12, I angled nails into a broomstick and went for a dive off lanikai, oahu. Voila, my first 3inch boxfish....poor lil' thing.
Great thread!
 
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First fish was a hottie..........i was using a cressi pneumatic with a five prong head. Lined the little fish up and pulled the trigger. When i retrieved the spear, no fish was attached to it!! Was convinced that i had hit the fish because after the shot i saw blood where the fish was. This happened about 3 or 4 times after the first fish. Viz wasn't very great, about 2-3meters and i was diving in the shallows so i was shooting these fish from the surface. Don't know why i decided to dive down and see what was happening on the ground??...............found all the fish i shot laying on the bottom of the sea, split in two!!!. The five prong spear simply chopped the fish in two:eek:
 
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I was 12 years old when I begun diving, made myself a pole stick and shot the first fish after a week of trying it ....a cabrilla like 30 cms long....it was funny, cause the fish was swimming around a little rock that had some algae on it, but this rock was the only thing that you could find in that part of the sandy beach!

Anyway, I learned to hadle the pole stick so well, that when I bought my first speargun 6 months later ( a 60 cm cause i coulnt load anything larger) shooting at the fishes was really easy... ''long shots''....precise.....man I had lots of fun!

RCC
 
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1st fish

Wow,

I'm jealous of the early start that most of you got in spearfishing. I started last year at the ripe age of 39. My first fish was a Striped Bass around 14lbs. Trying to make up for lost time.:cool: The learning curve over the past couple of years has been huge, what a blast.

Cheers
 
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