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What's the MOST Challenging Fish...

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Here in Wisconsin we can only go for so called "rough fish" like Carp, Suckers, Gar, freshwater Drum or Sheep's-head, Shad, Gizzard shad, Bowfin or dogfish, and Bullheads. None of which are very desirable to most people. But very fun to hunt and clean the lakes of invasive and or undesireable species.

Besides the rough fish...We can also spear "Pan-fish"...Or Bluegills, Perch, Sunfish, Crappie, Rockbass, Whitebass, ALL of which are desireable fish...To me anyhow.

Out of ALL of these fish - big (10 plus incher) late summer Bluegills are the toughest and most challenging I'd say...They don't let you get too close very easily! Especially where they've been hunted!

Whitebass can be hard to find, not all lakes have them, most that do have poor vis...

Crappie's usually are'nt worth the effort to fillet unless they're atleast 11 inches...Preferably bigger! And the bigger ones can be hard to find on some lakes.

BTW...Most of my spearfishing is done with a "polespear"...Atleast for the good eatin' fish. Besides they (most pan-fish) are smaller...Thats why they call 'em "pan-fish" I guess...

A 12 inch Bluegill would be huge! :inlove
 
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Every time I read about fresh water spearing it seems soo odd...... mainly because its illegal here. Wonder what it would be like hunting peacock bass down here, even though they are invasive they are very welcome rofl..... on second thought everything in most freshwater bodies here have extremely high levels of mercury, so its not in our best interest I'd say =x

There are tons of invasive freshwater fish down here now that I think about it
 
Most challenging fish for me (at least in this part of the world - Persian Gulf) are large milkfish... They seem to be very wary and will never give you a shoot. You'll only see them swimming away. Another hard fish to get are large seabasses. Those are also warry and very cautious and will never get close to you. Second to that are mullets. The easiest fish I find to get are large baracudas (talking about 1.5m + size) . They seem to don't give a d^mn about nobody and you'll get to them to literally touching distance (that if you swim slowly toward them instead of largely splashing) and will be able to place your shoot wherever you want. Trevallies are also easy shoot. Now for groupers it largely depends. Sometimes they are extremly dumb to let you shoot them between the eyes while they are looking at you, and sometimes they'll run away as soon as they spot your shadow...
 
I find the most challenging fish are all the fish worth eating
All the crappy reef fish that arent worth eating will come over and pose for your shot, not even worth practicing on LOL
 

Where I grew up on Kauai we had a bunch of man-made resevoirs for the sugarcane fields. After a while they were stocked with game fish like large and small mouth bass, talapia, and peacock bass (im assuming they are the same, look like a bass with a black dot one of the top fins?) we used to fish for them w/ small tackle.

Peacock bass (we called them tucanary) were friggen bad ass! My friends dad used to dive the golf coarse ponds for a living to collect golf balls. He was attacked by peacock bass numerous times. (protecting their nests) Once a tucanary hit him in the face so hard it split his mask in two:blackeye

I thought that was pretty gnarly!
 
blaiz thats pretty insane that a tucanary split your dad's friend's mask in two :crutch

They are known to protect their nests very aggressively but yikes! This is what they look like down here, I know there are three species of peacock bass. This what ours look like:

 

yup same as here
 
blaiz said:
We have an Emporer In Hawaii too, the Bigeye Emperor or Mu. We like to call them "the black out fish."
Click to expand...

I agree. This is the most challenging fish I have shot, albeit not in local waters. I have only see them in Indonesia, and it took me two weeks of diving and a long bottom time to finally get one to come in close enough. It was delicious.

The most challenging fish locally are pink snapper. So far I've only got one of those.
 
Gday kmo, Nice to see a local boy on the forums
How big was your snapper? i havent been deep enough to see any big ones yet.
 
G'day Mongrel,

The snapper was quite small (only just legal). I thought it was a bit bigger because it was mid water and I had nothing to compare it with. I got it out the back of Stragglers off Perth in about 15m of water when it came up to gobble the guts of a red snapper I was cleaning.

If you are after a club in Perth PM me and I will send you some contacts.

Cheers,
Cam
 

Pink snapper, interesting do you have any pix of it...we have here in Florida, Mahogany Snapper which aside from being quite illusive are incredible "gun shy" wonder if they are distant cousins...like the mut & emperor seem to be, although the emperor also looks a bit like a porgiy which is also quite achallenge
 
Here's a painting of a pinky. They get a big hump on their heads when they are bigger. Minimum legal size is 410mm, but that will likely be increasing next year, which I think is a good thing.
 

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Are these the snapper that have the little blue dots on its sides? If so I have seen them in New Zealand, but the only place I could get reletively close was protected.
 
bros, (sis's too i spose)

settingsteele, you asked me my most challenging fish in costa rica...yeah, the rooster fish is a beast, tough to run into though. i seen one on the surface one time, his dorsal fins protruding from the surface, about fifteen meters away (vis was about five)....swam right at him real still and he bolted, bagged two almaco jacks that same mornin....i love jacks and other pelagics, never bagged a rooster yet but i'm keepin my fingers crossed, they real good eatin, i caught a bunch on line, most small an i let em go...the small tuna here are a feat too....i chase em down on a dingy, rowin with one oar, when i get in the thick of it i hit the water and its like a fireworks display, cant usually get a shot off, but the thrill is intense. if i had a motor and someone to drive and maybe even chunk a bit it'd be sooo much easier i'd imagine....easier but for me maybe not better. i really dig on the challenge, rowing, alone, spearin.... hey, if i get a small tuna on the line, the school dont stick round like mahi, yeah? i havent never tried it, with mahi yes, but not with tuna, small tuna like bonito...anyone know? i never see em hangin round anyways when i got one on the line...
know what? i know there gotta be snook round here cause i heard round town. but i aint never seen one. anyone spear one before? its my favorite to eat, but never caught one in my life, never, not even on line. i ate lots, but from other fishermen....where the hell they at? close to shore i imagine and near mouths of rivers an stuff....? ok, i'm ramblin....
peace out, settingsteele...happy huntin....
 
Yep, they are the ones with the blue dots. New Zealand seems to be the plae to go for snapper.
 
Yeah, We caught some fishing. We went swiming up at goat island North of Aukland. Its a marine preserve. I had found an octopus in a whole and I was trying to "tickle" it out(as we do in Hawaii) to show my GF but to no avail. I was concentrating so hard on the Octopus that it took me a minute to notice the 3 large snapper staring at me in the face. I dont know how big they get but these were probably close to 3 or 4 Kg. Obviously curious as to what I was doing they came right up to me. Pretty cool looking fish!
 
in New Zealand this is an easy choice, it's the common snapper. although the small ones are somewhat easy to spear, the larger ones, especially the 20 pounders are more paranoid than any fish i've head about. if they see you or hear you they are gone. to shoot them you have to pretty much be an under water sniper, creeping around rocks and not letting them anywhere near you. one very good way of getting them is to set up a burley where you can position yourself in a good sniping position. you then leave the area and come back in 20 or so minutes and if yur lucky a big moocher may have turned up.
 
I live here in ft. Lauderdale and I see alot of parrots. If you look at them they know it, and god forbid you aim at them. It's not legal to take. I,ve seen some big ass beautiful parrots around the reef, Jamacans love'm.
The Impaler
 
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