That?s not spearfishing Huntindave

Chris Finch

Chris Finch

Well-known member
This is spear fishing!!!

This is from a few weeks ago, it has been hit or miss with storms hitting the coast when we are there. But the weather that day was nice so we hit the end of the incoming ( for both the better vis from the ocean water entering the bay and not getting swept out to sea). Newport has a series of finger jetties that extend from the main southjetty that fish stack up on and makes diving easier. I was able to scratch out a limit of rock fish and Nikki who is still a little apprehensive managed to get her first west coast kill, a solid surf perch. She also found a nice male dungeness but of course he was just a bit shy of legal size. Overall a great dive! I also met a local who is a friend of a member here and went out crabbing with him and his young son. We have met a lot of awesome people out here and have been enjoying the slightly warmer winter than CT provides. (It?s been very cold for the west coast even seen snow, my god the people here lose there minds when behind the wheel and it?s snowing)

Nikki also signed up for a 15k race and smoked all the local competition. She got some rogue swag, a delicious beer, and a few victory shots of rogue?s own whiskey! She has been training hard to break a 3 hr marathon and has even gotten my old butt out there with her (in my defense it keeps me in shape for spearing and increases my breath hold)



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Well we wanted to get back in the salt so we went to Coos for the weekend and unfortunately the wind and swell was out of the NW so the spot I wanted to hit was a no go. We decided to call an audible and head down to Port Orford which is protected from anything other than a southerly blow. When we hopped in we were greeted with only a few feet of surge and 12ft of vis!!!!

There were lots of purple urchins, star fish, anemones, chitons. Just an absolute plethora of invertebrate life. Unfortunately there weren?t any rock fish around and vis below 25 ft was not as favorable. So I was just exploring, when I saw something out of the corner of my eye. A ling was chilling in a crack of a shallow rock. As I dove to get positioned he started to slink off to the depths. I lined up and got him perfectly in the spine from above.

My first ling! 24.5? What a creature, definitely no doubt they are predatory with teeth like that. I ended up finding a monster scooting away from me in a little slough but it unfortunately shook my spear before I could grab it. Agh!

Nikki enjoyed the dive and smoked some huge perch. I grabbed a red urchin to try some fresh uni and admired our catch. The ling was absolutely amazing and went perfectly with the mussels we grabbed earlier during the low. The uni wasn?t bad either, there just wasn?t too much in the urchin.


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I'm liking it! Great to see you are doing well!

Uni-licious!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
So your saying it's not actually spear fishing unless one is in the water? If so, I invite you to try some "true spearfishing", while one is swimming under 14 inches of Minnesota ice when the water is 37 degrees. No cheating with a dry suit either. [;)]

I done a little of your kind of spearing but it has been many moons ago. Looks like you came up with some good eats. Thanks for sharing your adventures.
 
I have watched a few videos on ice diving. But the closest I want to get to that is going after halibut and wolf eels in Norway. If I could dive for lobster in Maine I would do that year round. Cold water helps me lower my heart rate and get better dives

I have dove the sound at 42 with a 5 mill I could do that for about 40 minutes till I had enough.
 
Chris,

I never got certified for ice diving but I did go under for a short dive one winter. I had been ice fishing a couple weekends before. While Ice fishing I stepped away from my tent for a few minutes. It was quite windy and before I got back to my tent, the wind had flipped it up on it's side. About 150 dollars worth of gear was now sitting on the bottom in 8 foot of water.

The next weekend I was back at the scene armed with my scuba gear and a chain saw. It really wasn't too bad once I was totally submerged. [;)] As a plus, I got all my gear back and the majority of it was salvageable.
 
This is spearing Lake Winnebago style.
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Glad to hear you got it all back.

You never know what you will find down there. You could make a living rescuing crab pots out here.

I?d love to float the race and pick up a bunch of lead and diamond jigs.

If I ever went ice fishing I?d have one of the campers with holes on the bottom and stay nice and toasty inside.
 
Chris Finch said:
If I ever went ice fishing I?d have one of the campers with holes on the bottom and stay nice and toasty inside.
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You sound like some women who say they like to camp, as long as the name of the campground is Holiday Inn. [whistle] Mark W comes to mind, hehehe.
 
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