Posts by Rusty

In Western Australia, the second place i hunt alot, this is a huge debate at the moment. There is talk of rougue sharks that prey on humans, that learn our habits and target us. There is another theory that the increase in sea lion numbers has caused an increase in sharks, others that say we have killed to many fish and so sharks are taking what they can get and so on.

There are to many cooks in the kitchen, we dont know or understand sharks enough and that is what breeds a fear, the unkown.

I used to be a furm believer that we shoukd never kill sharks because of attacks on humans, then i moved to W.A and the attacks were happening often, more deaths than any other western country last year. I know believe that sharks that do venture to close to highly populated shores should be killed. Baited lines are great for this reason, they are local, they target sharks in a fixed location.

However if an agressive mako or white was sighted in a remote location i wouldnt be up for killing it, thats my opinion, might seem strange to some but logical to others. I guess im saying its ok to kill them under certain circumstances.

I also agree with Dan in that no shark is worth more than a human, unfortunatly we are not saving a human for every shark we kill, it just doesnt work out like that, so culling is just a quick fix with potentially negative impacts.

That will be 2$

its a 120 bro with a closed muzzle, 7mm shaft and a gen 1 paxman reel. its a bit old now, its a work horse and has shot heaps of fish

real nice looking finish on the blue and green guns mate, thanks for sharing the pics.

few more pics

Hey Guys,

I managed to get down south to my friends resort last week for a few days, the purpose of the trip was to fix up an abandoned 44" cat and tow it back to the mainland. A bit of spearing was planned in between and some beers, spicy food and catching up too.

I have been spearing this spot for over ten years now, it used to be full of pretty good fish, once in a while i would see grouper to big to shoot with the guns use at this spot. They were so few and far between that i gave up taking the 140 and going trophy hunting after about 10 dives. These were not monsters but big at about 75kg.

It wasn’t unusual to land 15kg cobia, 20kg Cuda and Milkfish up to 20kg too. unfortunately things change, spots gets discovered and then they get popular and then they become part of the tourist trap, we move on and find virgin grounds and we get followed and so on.... Thailand is a pretty small county and with 62,000,000 people and a HUGE tourism industry there are not many spot X's left.

Today its rare to spear anything over 15kg at this site, the big grouper are long gone, either caught by rod and line fisherman or lurking in the depths, i hope they’re lurking somewhere, watching me, learning, waiting.... but its wishful thinking......

The first day we arrived on the island it was time to catch up with the locals and take a look at the catamaran, i had mixed feelings about it...... until i saw it! She is a beauty, 44" of bliss, O.K both hulls were badly damaged, she had been stripped down to the shell pretty much, but what was left was awesome. I knew straight away that with about 25,000 U.S.D we will have her sea worthy and also looking and feeling better than new.

Labor is dirt cheap here, and if you have friends in a particular industry its almost free, you do each other favours and pay for parts etc. I have a friend that does interiors of boats, a friend that owns a boat yard and luckily a friend who has a tug boat for the trip back to the mainland. We tied up 20 x 44 gallon drums to the cat and at high tide towed her to another beach where we waited for the tug boat, this was a day away, so the next day was spearing day.

that evening i honestly planned on being in bed by 8pm, getting a really good sleep and being in the water with my torch just before sun up. i would use my torch to navigate through the shallows and be on the outer reef, 4m to 20m, just as the sun was popping up........ finally at 1:00am i made it to my bed. Rice whiskey, spicy food, singha beer, tales of fish turned into exaggerated stories which turned into all out lies. we were in tears at some of the stories we were telling each other.... then the bottle was empty and we knew we were in trouble come sun rise......

I think i rolled out of bed at 10.00, i was the first up. i grabbed a big bottle of water, cooked an omelet and got ready.... i was in the water at 10:30, throwing up in my snorkel but pushing on. i got nothing in the first hour, saw some ok fish but i couldn’t face swimming all the way down there.... i was hoping g one might swim up to me and save me the hassle but it never happened. I swam back to my float and smashed a litre of water, then tied my float up to a mooring bouy on the outer reef and used my water bottle as a float..... much lighter, much easier, man i must have been hung over....

At about 12:30 my mate rocks up in the boat with some fresh fruit, cold water and a big smile...

Got anything? he asks
I just shake my head, relieved to see the boat

I sat in the shade for a short while and had a gut full of fresh fruit, it was just what i needed after about 20 minutes i felt spot on. i guess i needed the sugar. I jumped back in and disconnected the float line as my mate loves diving with a float line and i hate them.

I worked the deeper reef while he worked the shallows for grouper and jacks.

It was good vis, about 20m and water temp was about 27c but cooler below 15m.

As mentioned there is not much in the way of big fish but the conditions make it worth while. Lots of turtles, beautiful corals, eagle rays, blacktips and if your very lucky the odd bullshark. Most of my dives were dropping to 15m or so and either working the reef slowly or just doing an agashon. I will often dive below a cave or bommie with deep crevices and crawl up the reef to look inside. The grouper and mangrove jacks seem to feel more comfortable when they are looking down at you. If there is nothing in a cave i will often go up for a breather, then swim down and sit it out in the cave for a few dives, this often brings in the mangrove jacks, i got 2 that afternoon using this method.

There were very few grouper around, the ones i saw were down deep and didn’t hang about, they were straight in the reef and watching from a little spy hole somewhere i would never find them. If i was feeling 100% then hole hunting with the torch could have produced some better fish, but i didn’t feel like pulling 10kg of grouper out of the reef at 20m that day, in fact i knew it wasn’t going to happen.

After a few hours i ended up with 2 mangrove jacks, 3 grouper, one mauri sea perch, 2 sweetlips, one coral trout, a golden trevally, 2 blotched cod, and a few crays. I asked my mate if he wanted to gut and scale the fish over a nice lump in the deeper water with me in the hope of bringing in a Spanish or cobia but he was feeling like i was in the morning, he only got 2 fish which is really unusual for him. we opted to swim back to shore and do it there as the boat boy had taken off ages ago.

We were swimming back to shore in about 8m of water when i saw a nice size goatfish feeding in the shallows in about 4m of water, i dove down and very slowly creeped my way up the reef towards him, he couldn’t see me due to the mess he was making in the sand. I lined him up and just took a last glance around to make sure nothing better and come around to watch the feeding goatfish...... sure enough sitting in between two bommies side on to me was a barracuda, it was the biggest fish i had seen all day other than a milkfish that shot off first thing in the morning. i used the stirred up sand as cover and crept around the bommie to my left, i crept up over the bommie and sure enough he was facing exactly as when i left. I was now on his tail and he was facing away from me, cause it was so shallow i had t pull myself over the bommie and hit him before i surfaced, finning to keep myself down would have spooked him for sure. I managed to get close enough for the shot just as he turned to check me out, i took the shot before he swam off and it was high. I put the shaft through his shoulder and he took off, pretty good run to for a little fella. he took a good 20m of line off my paxman reel and went for deeper water. After the first run he didn’t put up much of a fight, i didn’t hit any organs and i knew if i swam down to knife him now he probably would take off again. My mate rocked up to see what it was, he was hoping for a cobia, and seeing it was a cuda he put a 6.6m shaft though its head and it was all over.

There were High fives and whoops all round, i didn’t even know why i was so excited, it wasnt a big fish, it wasn’t a tasty fish and it wasn’t a hard fish to shoot, but it felt great. I think its just because we were feeling so rough that this bit of a fight together on one fish made it worthwhile.

The cuda went about 15kg, the rest were all under 5kg.

Its great that sometimes we don’t have to travel to the ends of the earth or spear the biggest of fish to have a cracking time, that’s the beauty of our sport.... its all about who your with not so much what you shoot.

The fish here are very skittish and very hard to approach in Thailand, when i first speared in Western Australia i was shocked at the fish there, you can swim right up to them, i found the same to be true in other countries as well. Thailand really is a test of your patience and skill and all for pretty small fish.

But its worth it.

Rusty

Hi Guys,

I thought I would share a classic Thai meal with you guys, we eat it really often. You can cook this soup with Chicken too but seafood is best. The 2 best meats are crayfish or Coral Trout, luckily i got a small trout last week so we put it to good use. I will first run through the ingredients and then the steps to cooking it and then some photos at the end...........Enjoy

This is for 2 people

500grm of fresh coral trout or your chosen meat, chicken, prawn, cray or other fish (sliced into 2" pieces)
500grm of mushrooms, anything from shitake to button mushrooms works, cubed
250grm tomatoes, cubed
2 limes
handful of mouse shit chilies, i guess any other spicy chilies could work
Galangal, about as big as your thumb, chop it into 5 pieces. you can get it at the Asian mkt
lemon grass 5 stalks, just the bottom of the stalks about 1" long, pound them and them score them
thai red chili paste 2 tea spoons
fish sauce to taste
brown sugar 1 tea spoon
full fat milk to taste
5 lime leaves, crush them in your hand then rip them up
one stock cube, fish or chicken
some chopped coriander

step one.
boil 3 cups of water and add the lemon grass and Galangal, add one tble spoon of fish sauce and the stock cube..... bring to boil.

step 2,
Give it all a good stir then reduce to simmer and add the beautiful coral trout, DO NOT STIR AFTER ADDING TH FISH, wait for the water to boil again then scoop the froth off the top of the soup.

Step 3.
Add the mushrooms, tomatoes and lime leaves then one cup of full fat milk and turn the heat down to keep it warm.

Step 4.
Get your big serving bowl and add the juice of two limes, the chili (if you crush the chili first it will make the dish hotter, just add a few first and see how you go, you can always add more to taste.) Add 2 tea spoons of the chili paste and mix it all up with the chili and lime juice. Add a pinch of brown sugar and stir it in.

Step 5.
Now add your soup from the pot, it will be a white colour and wont look like tom yam just yet, once it mixes with the paste and juice in the bowel it will get that awesome tom yam colour and flavour!! give it a gentle stir in the serving bowl. Now add the Fish, mushrooms and tomato to your soup, being careful not to break the fish up as you do so.

Step 6.
Chuck some coriander on the top, it tastes good and makes you look like a boss. If you end up adding to much chili then don’t sweat it, sorry i had to say that :D, just add a bit of milk to bring the tone of the soup down a bit. Serve with steamed rice.

Step 7.
EAT!!!! A glass of milk will cool your mouth down if you gets the burns, ice cream, yogurt are just as good. Unfortunately beer is terrible for a burning mouth.....

If you have any soup left over then hold onto it and you can make a super quick and easy meal with it. Just strain the soup into a pot, bring it to the boil, throw in some instant noodles and wait a few minutes..... job done! they taste great!!

Thanks for the warm welcome guys! I will post a report on a little trip i took to my mates place in the south of thailand last week. Nothing big but a nice mixed bag and good fun.

Jono. I am in yokine when im in perth, but its normally only for a few days and normally one or two of those days im either round paxman's place or out on the huntress when i can, not nearly enough cause of work. Where are you at bro? Are you in BFWA or WAUC?

Will post a couple of recipies up soon too. Got some coral trout so may do a "tom yam trout" spicy. Clear thai soup.

Hi guys,

I have not used a forum in a very long time, I had a bad experience with spear board about 4 years ago and just had enough of talking with what I like to call sofa spearos.:crazy:

I remember a few of the members on speardiver from spearboard and I'm glad to see its the good guys that have moved over to here:thumbsup2:, which is the main reason I have decided to join this group. I'm looking forward to being involved with a community of people that actually do spearfish more than type and that have the experience and/or brain power to string a conversation together with out talking about how cool each other are and how Sh#t everyone else is.

I have been spearing since I was young, I have speared in a few different environments around the world and a few different countries, not nearly enough though....... Wife, mortgage etc

I grew up shooting small fish in the U.K, cod, pollock, wrasse and of course bass! I then moved to Thailand and shot reefies and a few pelagics but not billfish or wahoo. I then started to travel and shoot much much bigger fish about 5 years ago and have been doing it since. So although I have been spearing for nearly 20 years I have only been spearing the big stuff, 50kg +, regularly for about 5 years. I do still enjoy shooting small fish with a small gun, especially for food, but I wouldn't travel for it and I don't get as excited about it as I do the big stuff.

I went through a stage of chasing just dogtooths but I have been back into the reefies again for a few years now and I'm pretty much settled in that pigeon hole for the time being. I really enjoy hunting grouper, snapper, mangrove jacks and mauri sea perch and of course GT! I still hunt blue water for mahi, wahoo, YFT as and when I can, and Spanish mackerel is the staple fish to shoot in Western Australia, where I have been working for the past 3 years, but when I travel over seas it's generally for big reefies and when I'm home, Thailand, it's small reefies.

My favorite fish to shoot is GT.

My favorite fish to eat, so many, but a few would be West Australian Dhu fish, sashimi YFT, lemon steamed coral trout, pan fried Spanish mackerel with raw mango sauce and Napoleon wrasse ceviche.

I use rail guns mostly, I like them because they were a natural transition from the pipe guns I grew up with and they take some real abuse and still work everytime. They are cheap, easy to maintain and enough power for most of the fish I shoot. I am a religious reel gun user, I use paxman reels, if I'm hunting marlin or big yft I do use a float system but I use reels for 99% of my hunting. Best fish with a reel gun to date is a 65kg dogtooth and a 150kg+ grouper

I own and use 2 roller guns as well, have been using rollers for a few years now, and just made a 96cm 32mm O.D roller. They have both good and bad points in my opinion and are best used in certain circumstances. I like them because I can squeeze them into holes and caves for big reefies that would normally be out of reach from a 150 railgun. Best fish to date with a 96cm roller is a 40kg GT

I do own an Andre 145 which I use every now and again on trips but it tends to collect dust mostly.

I'm looking into doing Mexico in November, funds are limited at the moment, and will be chasing big grouper and of course cuberra, any cheaper option? Flights are 3,000 bucks from Perth!!

The things I am looking forward to getting from this forum are down to earth reports on the spearing in fellow spearos countries and info on new gear, there's always room for more gear lol. The other thing i really enjoy is cooking seafood and im looking forward to learning new recipes from the group. I hope to spear with new friends either in my home country or theirs.

Things I can offer would be info on diving in areas I have visited and of course an open invitation to anyone that wants to visit my home or Western Australia and take them out for a swim. A sympathetic ear on a windy day :laughing:

Anyway, I just noticed how long this intro is so I better call it quits.:@

Rusty