Posts by Ryddragyn

Quote from tinu

i think doing that is not good for the karma. the fish's and yours too.

Karma is about as real as the tooth fairy, and we're doing the environment a favor. This is a subject that's been beaten to death on other forums.

I do it to prevent the air from escaping from my mask and making noise. I blow the air into there fairly early on, so it's still got a lot of usable O2 in there.

There was some swell and wind at the Isthmus this weekend, so conditions were best in sheltered coves and at offshore reefs. Max viz we had was 30-50, worst was about 8. My dive buddy saw two 40# class WSB but couldn't connect. I didn't manage to see anything exciting apart from a 5 foot long soupfin shark.

Game taken: 2 calicos, 2 rockfish.

Quote from attan

soo do you eat them or what???????????

"Carp" is the plural, and no, we pop the air bladders and stick them next to crayfish nests. They are devoured within a week or two by the crays or by catfish.

If you are used to using thermoplastic fins in colder water (low 60's), the hard LeaderFins or SpecialFins will be slightly softer. That's my only point of reference. Between 50-55 degrees, the Riffe silent hunters are MUCH stiffer than Estonian fiberglasses. But the fiberglasses are always more responsive.

Heading there tomorrow morning, Isthmus area, and staying through Sunday afternoon. Fingers crossed that it'll be decent. I will post up a report when I get back.

Quote from spearstuff

But here's some more PB fish that I'm sure someone out there can beat.

Barred Sand Bass
5 lbs
February 9, 2009

Calico Bass
5lbs
October 1, 2009

Carp
18.9 lbs
October 2009
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Sure thing Daniel

Sand bass at 6.5#

Calico at 5.8#, and another at 5.5#
(picture forthcoming)
Carp at 23.5#

Here's another question for the inners - how are you doing Frenzel when your mouth is open and full of water?

It genuinely perplexes me why people take loaded guns on boats. There is the obvious question of someone's laziness, but how hard is it to load and unload a speargun? Maybe I take for granted being in a good physical shape, but I don't even consider it to be exercise. A 5 or 6 band gun IS a lot, but still...it's less than a minute of your time to unload it, or even to just fire it into nothingness.

Here's another consideration - if you're only getting out of the water for a few minutes or moments, you can just clip the gun to a gear clip line. If you're getting out to move to another spot, that could take a while, during which the rubber bands are under strain and incurring progressive damage. Meaning you will have to replace them sooner. Plus, there are a few people that have postulated that a band gun loses small amounts of power the longer it's loaded. I don't know if that's true or not, but if it keeps people from bringing loaded spearguns onto boats, all the better.

This relates to the part where we checked for fishing licenses by a game warden. This was the first time ive ever seen let alone been stopped by a Nevada warden. Everything of ours was in order, but he remarked that they had been having problems recently with spearfishermen illegally shooting catfish and largemouth bass. As such the wardens were "cracking down".

Perhaps he was telling the truth and had actually caught people doing it, or maybe he was just trying to warn us a bit, just to be on the safe side. Either way I'm not surprised that there are some bad apples out there, and it wouldnt surprise me if spearos (or anybody freediving with a visible flag) will start to get stopped and inspected more often in the future. With the importance of fishing and watersports to the regions economy, I hope that they wont shut down spearfishing due to a few miscreants, but you never know. Due to the nature of the local laws there are unfortunately more ways for us to break the law than there are for hook and liners.

Overall message: they're onto us, so mind your P's and Q's.

Dan, Brandon, and myself hit the water at about 11am, and found ourselves in awful, muddy viz (0-8) with jetskis buzzing around us constantly. The air was 110, and the water was 81. Not the best of circumstances, but I'm not the type to give up easily. So I hugged the shoreline and dove shallow ridges and dropoffs looking for patches of viz and fish. I managed to pop three small carp with my 90 carbon fiber Aimrite, at which point I decided to unclip my 32" pneumatic, which I had never actually used before. I swam around with one gun in each hand "akimbo"-style for a bit. I dove down to a dropoff and spotted a large carp moving slowly below me in a murky haze. I took aim with the carbon fiber gun, and I got it with a solid holding shot from above near its hump. It swam around in a counterclock wise circle, then lightly thrashed on the ground, but it never freaked or ran for deeper water. However, it was at this point that I realized that this was a VERY large carp. Since I had it in my hand and it was loaded, I decided that a second shot with the pneumatic wouldnt hurt, and would be fun practice.

My first impression? Pneumatics are...weird. No recoil at all, but relatively poor penetration for the distance and shaft size. My friend who also recently switched to the dark side thinks that they have more power at range than they do up close.

Regardless, the carp now had two shafts in it and seemed resigned to its fate, even though the second shaft hadn't stoned it. I got it in hand and realized (again) that this was a HUGE carp. Dan came over and the first words out of his mouth were "oh...my...god". Lengthwise it was maybe only 35 inches or so but the girth, height and tail thickness were crazy.

I went to string it up on my float and thats when it went berserk. No, it went BALLISTIC. Every time the string got near its eye or mouth it thrashed and kicked and pulled me under water with it once or twice despite the fact that I was bear hugging it.

Eventually I got it to shore, and after getting our licenses checked by a game warden, we weighed it in at 23 pounds and change. It went 23 and 14 oz on one attempt and 23 10 on others. Eventually we settled on 23.5 pounds. I know bigger carp have been taken from this lake on spear, but this is well above the average size and is only 2 pounds shy of the official all tackle Lake Mead record of 25 pounds and 10 ounces. So all in all with the awful conditions and double shot on it this was a very cool fish for me.

Thank you Brandon and Dan for diving with me and taking photographs. Let's dive again soon, but someplace WAY cooler. According to my bathroom scale, I lost about 6 pounds this weekend.

This isn't a "California" report per se, but it's close enough and it all involved CA people. Two parts after the jump.

I consider them antiquated in that their Euro line is a lot more sophisticated (ergonomics, handling hydrodynamics, accuracy, more bells and whistles etc), while being essentially the same species of gun - a rear handle woodie. At least at local stores to me, they are very similarly priced, although online the Euros are a bit more pricy. The Comp is one of Riffe's original designs from the 80's.

I think that moving the Euros (which seem to be their most popular gun at the moment) to a lower price point with Padauk would be a good business decision, but maybe there are technical issues that hinder this. Or maybe they are just feeling the market...

Are they just using Padauk for the antiquated competitor line, or are they going to do it for the euros too?

Quote from Dan

Rydragyn, hunting from the surface is a common and preferred way for us spoiled tropical water divers. When I was introduced to spearfishing in Cuba, compared to which Florida has dirty water, I thought that's how it was done period.

Sounds like I'll have to visit Florida sometime...got to use those frequent flier miles for something.

When I hunt freshwater, I sometimes (but not always) hunt from the surface as well, but that's in quite shallow water with 10-20 foot of viz. In those circumstances, I still spit the snorkel out, and for good reason. I'll spot a fish from the surface, inhale deeply, and almost in the same motion as the inhalation, I'll spit the snorkel out, and dive. I have found that this rapid inhalation and submersion effectively creates a vacuum inside the snorkel that won't result in the loud roar of bubbles that scares the prey away. This is important because the prey is so close when I dive. At that point, it's a matter of a quiet duck dive and approaching parallel to the lateral line. It would be ideal to already be underwater and moving, but sometimes that just doesn't happen.

Also Rick, I'm not sure why you place such an emphasis with keeping your eye on the bottom. Buddy system? Sharks? Fish on the line?

Regardless of the reason, it seems like it might be a uniquely Florida perspective; if you are diving "deep" (a relative term), and you can see the bottom from the surface...then you're spoiled when it comes to your visibility.

From a California spearfishing perspective - out. Simply no other option. The bubbles that will trickle out of the snorkel during the dive will scare fish away.

When I trained with PFI, they taught us to always spit it out because during blackout the body will reflexively shut off the airway (including closing the mouth) as a defense mechanism. Leaving the snorkel in negated that, and effectively created a straw into the lungs. Also, the recovery breathing on the surface was done with the mouth out of water, not with a snorkel. So why bother leaving it in? The arguments Rick listed on the side of spitting it out aren't even the right ones. If Rick is indeed an instructor, then I guess we could declare that "professional opinion is divided on the subject".

Some people (old people) have always just left it in, and they get stuck in their ways, so they make up all kind of excuses and anecdotal evidence as to why it's acceptable. Terry is a nice guy, but he's not the alpha and the omega. Just because there were less reported incidents of lung complications doesn't prove his point - he's leaving out important variables in the equation. There's been a huge influx of new people into the sport in recent years, and many of them aren't the natural freedivers that he and a lot of the die-hard old timers were. More freedivers, each with a higher average chance for blackouts, and thus more reported incidents of water intrusion. If he could scientifically demonstrate a CORRELATION between water intrusion and snorkel in/out, he'd have a lot more professional support on his side without having to resort to anecdote.

Crawdads have much less discriminating taste buds than I do.

Quote from 808natural

Thanks for the insight Ryddragyn. The reason why I asked is because the guns I'm making has wood enclosed tracks on them and the ball cutter I used to cut the track are a perfect fit for my shaft. I didn't want to epoxy the track and make the track even smaller to where it's squeezing the shaft. I was thinking oil will be better but I'm not sure!

You could also route the track area with a dovetail bit, fill it with epoxy and graphite, and then cut the track with your ball cutter. Low friction and durable, and you can redo it if you mess the alignment up, or if it ever breaks.

I have a dive buddy who is Russian, and crazy (in that order). Anyways, he picked up these halloween masks for our friend's kids, and somehow they wound up on the boat. Seeing as how the masks are ridiculous, and shooting carp is a ridiculous activity (they're inedible, invasive pests, but tons of fun to shoot and turn into fertilizer), it only seemed logical to combine them. So whomever gets the biggest or most carp on a given trip wears the Bozo mask for the trip photo.

I think there were some other SoCal guys who were doing something similar with paddy hopping YT and Mexican lucha libre masks...