how often do you get skunked?

I literally never get skunked. Every day is a trophy fish day.

Good luck with the thread :thumbsup5:

Guessing this was directed more toward the east coast guys, but for me the only time I come home with nothing is when targeting king salmon. It's a short season and hitting the tide right plays a huge part in it.

Unless you're fortunate enough to live somewhere like the bahamas where the fish are plentiful, you're bound to come up short sometimes. Thats why it's called fishing and not "catching". Personally, I've grown into a snob of a sort and am super picky with what I shoot. If I don't see the species that I'm targeting, or if another species passes by me that's not the size im looking for then I go home empty handed. I want the time/effort spent harvesting my catch to produce nice fillets or steaks.

Either way, every time I go out is a learning experience and I never know what I'll see. I recently had the opportunity to swim very close with a pod of dolphins.

I've got skunked many times!
I'd say nearly 30-40% of all shore dives, I don't bring any fish home.
But I've been spearfishing for just a year, so I can say that getting skunked really taught me a lot about not only hunting technique, but how to pick the right dive spots. Visibility is a big factor here in the Arabian gulf, so it gets frustrating when you can only hear the fish but can't see them :(.

But hey, it's always a learning experience! If I had to attribute reasons for getting skunked, I'd say bad visibility days and not being able to find the 'fishy' areas at the right time.

As a boat, never. Even in crappy vis we manage a few fish.

Myself on the boat, maybe once or twice. I rarely go out if I think/know the vis sucks.

C

about one in 10 for near shore but thats mainly due to vis, pelagic hunting on FADS almost never, ocean hunting pelagics about 3 in 10 in the wrong season, never in the fishy times of the year for the specific species.

Does this count? Sometimes I feel like I got skunked or had a bad day in the water. But then I think back to when I was working as a scuba instructor/divemaster. If we could show divers 20% of what we see on a normal day diving, they were really stoked. So, in that sense, I never get skunked.
However, there are days, like yesterday. I swam out our pipeline to check the intake screens. Sometimes I get lucky and there's a nice goliath out there. There were a lot of yellow jacks, (small) and school of about 30 two foot barracudas, and 100s of mangrove snappers. I was just laying on the pipe hoping a big mutton might come into range. The vis was only about 15 feet. So I picked off these two mangroves. This is about the least lbs of fish I ever bring home.
Actually, this is my favorite eating size. Gut and scale them and fry them up. Yep.
Also used Mo's hand me down Speardiver fins. Nice and relaxing.

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In Maui I get skunked often. I however am also picky about what I shoot. Plenty of fosh that people out here consider good the rest of the world views as junk. Guess I am more like the rest of the world. Definitely have had better success rate lately with choosing better spots and improved hunting technique.

hank,

I have done the same before, with small sweetlips or golden spot trevally. I have also eaten small mangrove snappers before (bought from the market) and they taste great!
They are great fried whole! I don't dare do this with more vulnerable species though! With breams, grouper or pelagics, I stick with a minimum size!

Similar to Chuck as a boat we almost never get skunked. Personally it happens sometimes but is usually because I choose not to shoot barely legal fish or only target a one or two species. I am not spearfishing to feed myself. If I don't catch anything i won't go hungry so I'm ok going home empty handed and allowing some smaller fish to grow up.