Again I say, ITS THE HUNTER THAT MAKES THE GUN, THE GUN DOESNT MAKE THE HUNTER
My respect to the elders and pioneers of our sport who landed fish without the luxury of choosing between band types, muzzle types, shaft thickness, fin length, or even wetsuit rubber! These Kumu, masters/teachers, taught us more than we're teaching each other here on this thread. At the end of the dive, it's about what is on the kui, the stringer, that matters...and they got em!
Respect to all you guys. I'm glad to be a part of a great community of spearos. We are blessed to have the variety of gear choices we have available today. Go to a distant reef somewhere else in the world and see how local villagers put food on the table with home-made rusty gear. You'll never look at your gun the same way after that. Big Mahalo'z to you for sharing your opinions...all of them valuable because they are dveloped(hopefully) by time in the water and you have adapted to your own style and method of hunting.:)
Aloha!
Makoa
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I don't dive much anymore but I can certainly talk with a certain amount of authority on what it was like in the ancient start of spear fishing in the late 40's early 50's. Our gear WAS primitive but boy o boy did we kill some big ass fish. Of course we had more fish than now and fish didn't really fear us BUT let me try to explain our gear.
Most of us used the early French double or four banded French Arbolets. The bands were shit compared to today. Shafts were ALWAYS bent. They were very soft and we would normaly end up on shore or boat straightening out our shafts over our knees after practically every nice fish. We mostly used nylon parachute cord for shooting line. Many of us used a bright yellow nylon ski rope (only color available) tied to our guns with a Clorox bottle as a float. I tried the Italian Spring Spearguns when they first came out - heavy thick shafts and I couldn't load them underwater.
Our guns all used metal wishbones and we have scars from when they snapped. Spear tips? Mostly standard double barbs which was normal in those early days. But, not sure, may have come from east or west cost - but one of our best spearos was in Panama working as a machinest (he was from Finland -Jon Bock). And he made slip tips for us (still have one of the originals somewhere).
Wetsuits? Haha my first Free diveswetsuit was bought just 3 years ago (I did buy a one piece surf suit in 2000). Water in Panama would drop into the 60's and even upper 50's when the upwelling brought in the cold water from Humbolt current. We would jump in and shiver and tried to get a fish quickly to get the hell out of the water and warm up. The cold upwelling brought in cold nutrient rich water and some really great fish. Jewfish would be stacked like train cars, so many Red Snappers the ocean would turn red, giant Broomtaol Groupers, it was amazing. Lobsters would go lethargic in the cold water and I could catch 3-4 a dive. Brought them up in my swimsuit, under my arms - yes Spiny Lobsters (who said kids were smart another me).
Jellyfish? Damn they hurt! Sea snakes - no problem, mouths too small to bite us. Men in Grey - mostly Bulls, Tigers, Dusky's and zillions of smaller black & white tip reef shars. If we dove without seeing a shark - it meant the water was really murky.
Fish: not what I would do today for sure, but we killed jewfish up to 400 pounds, Big Sawfish, giant Pargos/Cuberas to 100 pounds. Groupers as long as we were, giant Snook, Amberjeack that would go 80 plus pounds. Not many Wahoo, Dorados as the Sharks mostly kept us Reef divers. A big no no today, but I shot Jewfish 600-700 pounds (no never landed one that size), once speared an 18 foot Sawfish trying to win the biggest fish pool (no didn't land that one - in fact he took everything including an 80 got ski rope and two Clorox bottles (damn near cut me too).
When I needed money for a date - easy, go catch 50 plus pounds of lobster to sell. Amador Causeway along the Pacific entrance to the Canal was my "bank.". Corvina, snook and lots of lobsters for the picking but almost always in dirty murky water (and yes lots of sharks). We would dive for lobsters during the day and fish for sharks same place at night.
We lost a lot of gear. Shafts, guns, ski ropes, but we never lost a spearo but boy we have some great Shark stories. Sadly, we seldom took photos. I have a few but nothing to show the take and size of fish we routinely took with our primitive gear.
Masks - early ovals used for swimming pool then better French Ovals - wish I had kept a few. Fins? Ha ha, short ugly heavy fins. Hell, I used my "latest" fins - short heavy rubber Cressi full pockets (still have them) until my first long Omer plastics in 2000. Snorkels haven't changed much simple J's. Weight belts? Old surplus army canvas belts with whatever we could add to them - we did make our own weights eventually with molds and molten lead.
This was before long lines killed all the sharks and so many of our fishery. We were a small band, probably only 12 speros in the early days growing into the 50's with more U.S. military guys joining us few local divers.
But boy did we kill some fish :laughing
