Hey guys, thought I'd take the suggestion and introduce myself. My name is Elliott and I've recently moved to Puerto Rico and discovered that how much I love being in and around the ocean. More specifically, I am on the island of Vieques. It is a great place to learn to dive and spearfish, as it is basically surrounded by good condition reefs with good numbers of moderately sized fish.
I had started doing some reading about spearfishing a couple months before coming down here, and got extremely excited about it. I didn't really know much about spearfishing, though I had an uncle that showed me how to use a polespear in Hawaii. That was about the length of my experience. Truth be told, I'd initially considered this island for the Fly Fishing, which turned out to be bogus. So my wife and I got down here, I bought myself a polespear and a decent mask and snorkel set and started bagging fish. My wife even gave it a try and decided to buy herself a spear as well. The largest fish I've taken was a bit of a joint effort between myself and my wife, which was a hefty 15+lb mutton (I think it was closer to twenty, but my eyes tend to exaggerate :laughing3: ). It took several shots from both our spears to disable it enough to draw it out from under a ledge, but it was great fun. I've taken plenty of various other types of snapper over the last couple of months, but a small five foot, three prong polespear can only go so far.
So, last week I took a trip to the main island and visited Roberto Reyes, who hooked me up with a Mako 110cm speargun and a basic float. I took it out the day after, pulled a few snappers and grunts, and had a blast (despite having a hell of a time loading it up with no chest pad). Taking shots at 10-15ft instead of 2-3 was an eye opener.
My bottom-time is pretty much nonexistent. I usually go down to a max depth of 30ft or so, peek under ledges and maybe take a shot before feeling like I need a breath. I work on breath-holding whenever I can remember, but I feel like it's something that will really just take time and practice. Tips here are appreciated 
I've also gotten myself a little bit of lead and I'll be getting a set of freedive fins before too long as well, which will hopefully help me with bottom time. Hoping to learn a lot while I'm here.:thumbsup2:
