Spearfishing Trip Tallies & Introducing Matt to Spearfishing

20 July 2007

Spearfishing Trip Tallies & Introducing Matt to Spearfishing

Posted by Darrell under: SPEARFISH HUNTING! .

This past weekend found my family and I, along with a whole slew of our friends, back at Bull Shoals Lake in Arkansas. We spent the weekend spearfishing, pole fishing, living on a houseboat, and hillbilly surfing. What great times!

The question I’m most asked is “how did you do?”. The answer - incredible! We not only had a great time, but we took a boatload of fish. On Saturday, I took my limit of catfish. That evening we cleaned over 20 fish. This included channel cats, blue cats, walleye, and our group’s first crappie - a 14″ taken by Wayne.

Sunday was a special day because it was the opening of Flathead season. On Saturday, we saw and passed over a dozen beautiful flatheads. On Sunday, they were open season! We cleaned over 20 fish again Sunday evening, including a 25″ Walleye taken by Billy. I had two first. I took my first crappie and my first white bass. Crappie and white bass are extremely skittish underwater and you basically have to sit perfectly still and hold your breath at about 20 feet deep to have any shot at one. I got lucky twice and was really excited to take my first of each species with a speargun.

One of the highlights of the trip was on Sunday. A friend of mine , Matt H, drove down for the day. He isn’t a certified scuba diver, so he couldn’t dive with us. However, we made sure to hunt areas that would be good for him to snorkel (looking for fish) and then free-dive.

Matt and I have known each other and been friends since we were in our early teens. Occassionally, we get to bow hunt together. Matt grew up bird hunting and has just recently ventured into other game - such as deer. He instantly fell in love with the sport and is a certified bowaholic. He has a range set up behind his house that would make any archery shop owner jealous.

Anyway, I was excited that Matt was going to try his hand at spearfishing. As I was making my way back towards the boat after one of my dives (with a nice flathead in tow I might add) I came across Matt. It just so happened that Billy and Zach were also making their way toward the boat and we all converged on Matt, who was in the middle of a free dive.

Matt surfaced (as did all of us) and excitedly told us he had just located a nice catfish under a ledge. He was catching his breath and was preparing to go back under and shoot it. We all went down to have a look. Sure enough, there was a nice channel cat sitting under a ledge about 12′ down. All three of us watched as Matt took a deep breath and then came down after that fish.

He made a perfect shot and took his first fish with a speargun - a nice channel cat. It was especially exciting that we all got to share this experience with him. Unfortunately, I had left my camera at the boat! Otherwise, I’d have been able to get the whole thing on film. Oh well. At least we all got to watch him take his first fish.

I’d venture to guess that Matt is hooked on spearfishing. I won’t be suprised to hear, in the near future, that he has gotten certified. It is a lot of fun and really rewarding when you help to introduce someone to an outdoor experience that is new to them.

Related Posts & Pages

Recent Posts

3 Comments so far...

Kristine Shreve Says:

20 July 2007 at 3:47 pm.

You’ve just illustrated, quite perfectly, two of the the things that I’ve been saying we all need to do to make sure outdoor sports exist in the future. One is be supportive and the other is be welcoming. You were welcoming when your friend expressed interest in trying something new, in this case spearfishing. You also were supportive in that you chose conditions in which he could be successful and enjoy himself. The result was he had a great first experience and is probably hooked.

If that isn’t the very essence of what I’ve been talking about on the GSI blog all week I don’t know what is.

Sounds like a great time and a good job introducing your friend to something new.

Darrell Says:

20 July 2007 at 4:23 pm.

Thanks Kristine for the comments. I’ve been so behind lately that I haven’t done a Posts of Note lately. Your “Be” posts will ‘be’ included.

Sharing our Knowledge, Experiences, & Time is Extremely Rewarding » AlphaTrilogy.com Says:

25 July 2007 at 7:59 am.

[…] few days ago I wrote a post where I mentioned introducing a friend to spearfishing. The thrill of introducing someone to a new way of enjoying the outdoors is almost indescribable. […]