I disappeared from the channel for a while because I got hooked on spearfishing, and I deliberately didn’t film the first outings. The camera only added an extra task, and I just wanted to quietly figure out how to handle the gun, how to move underwater, and why the fish almost always sees me before I see it.

This time I did bring the camera. The spot is a typical one for the Mediterranean here: shallow sand, posidonia and rocky ridges with something always flickering between them.

The first fish and the first technical mistakes

On one of the first dives I saw a small school and took a sargo — the local white seabream. I’m still learning the local species and their size limits, so I only shoot what I can confidently identify and what’s legal to take. The sargo turned out tasty, to my taste no worse than a gilthead.

The gun was another story. It has a plastic ledge where the line has to be laid correctly. I was doing it wrong, the spear snagged and wouldn’t fly properly. Those misfires left a few fish wounded, which is the part I hate: a clean miss is one thing, leaving an injured fish is another.

After a chat with the manufacturer’s engineer I worked out how to lay the line. The video actually kept one of the failed shots, and a bit later — a normal shot on another sargo.

Along the way I started thinking more about the bands:

  • near rocks I load a single band, so I’m not driving the spear into stone at full power;
  • over sand or in open water I use two, when I need speed and range.

A simple thing, but as a beginner you mostly learn all of it through your own mistakes.

The fish reads your silhouette

Little by little I stopped swimming right over open bottom and started using the rocks as cover. The fish here are not stupid at all. They spot a big silhouette from above quickly, so I try to keep the gun close to my body and peek out from behind the rock piles instead of showing myself whole.

One such approach worked especially well. I looked out from behind a mound, and a big wrasse came calmly toward me. Clean shot. Good fish, though cleaning it is a separate exercise in patience.

At another point, after surfacing, I dropped my knife. I had to dive again, pick it up off the bottom, and only then string the fish. Apparently learning to shoot wasn’t enough — I also need to learn not to scatter my gear across the sea.

How the spear became part of the rock

The most laborious moment was a big sargo under the rocks. Clean hit, but the spear went into a round hole between the stones and jammed solid.

First I moved the fish onto the line, and after that it stopped being hunting and turned into underwater engineering. Over about fifteen minutes I made roughly ten dives, trying to find the angle to work the spear free. In the end I managed to release it through the flopper.

Later I shot another wrasse, but it flipped and hid in a crack. I searched for it, because I didn’t want a wounded fish to die for nothing, but couldn’t find it. That’s exactly the kind of moment that sticks with you more than a good shot, and makes you pick your timing more carefully.

A red mullet to finish

Near the end I spotted a red mullet on the bottom. I’d never tried one, so I decided to take it. After an hour and a half or two in the water, the red buoy held five fish: three sargos, one wrasse and one red mullet.

For me a good outing isn’t measured in fish. I can happily come back empty — nobody at home will go hungry over it. It’s more interesting to understand one more detail in how the fish behaves, fix a mistake with the gear, or find a way to get closer without scaring everything off.

Looks like I’ve picked up a new active hobby with a lot still unclear in it. And that, honestly, is the most interesting part.