FREE DIVING AND SPEARFISHING

I'm coming up empty handed from a wreck off the
North Carolina Coast from a depth of 50 feet.
1961 Photo by Carl Johnson

Surfy , my best ever freediving companion.
He was tireless in the water and always ready to go.
Photo Summer of 1964, Virginia Beach


I started as a freediver and believe that that is the way to start diving (hey... this is my story). Starting as a freediver gives you the watermanship that carries you through some of the bumps that come along. In my prime ... long years ago .... I could routinely hit 70 or 80 feet. At age 49 I was still hitting 50 feet easily.

As a sporting activity, I think that spearfishing should be done while freediving and with a hand spear. As a food gathering activity, an air supply is acceptable, but since I have been there, done that, don't try to convince me that you have accomplished much but bring home something that is damned good to eat. (There is nothing wrong with that. Mans gotta eat.). The only reason to spear fish is to eat fish. Here I am meat hunting for sharks in the early 60's with a powerhead off Virginia Beach on the HMS Tiger, kindly provided by a German U boat in WW2. Note the converted CO2 tank.

Here the shark hunters come up he anchor line from the murky depths without any prey. It was during one of those sharkhunting dives when I got my one and only shark bite. I carry the scars on my hand still....a three inch scar on my left hand between the thumb and forefinger and a white scar on the knuckle of the forefinger where it went to the bone. The only problem with this true story is that I was bitten by a dead shark. My hand slipped on the slick fiberglass boat and went into his mouth. I guess he got the last laugh.

I have retired my spear, just as my obsessive compulsive fisherman father retired his many fishing rods. It was a personal decision based on several factors. The first is that my wife does not like fish. (She is hell on crustations and shellfish...as Jimmy Buffet says "She can eat her own weight up in crabmeat.) The second is that one of my favorite targets Tautaugs or Blackfish have to be really old to reach much size. Counting the rings on the scales showed me that many of the fish I was spearing were over 40 years old. I made a personal decision. The last reason is probably even more telling ... I moved more into underwater photography, still, movies, and video. It allows me the stalk and chase, without having to clean fish. I do not condemn spearfishing since I have quit and the crabs, mussels, and lobsters better watch out when I dive as I am like a vacuum cleaner as I slowly cross the reefs and grassy flats.

Having bored you with my world view here are some of my spearfishing memories.

I speared my first fish at 7 years of age. It was a flounder in Rudee Inlet at the south end of Virginia Beach. Dad helped me clean it and we had it for dinner. All I really remember is the 3 pronged spear and bringing in the fish. It started a 20 year fun filled activity.

All in the world an 18 year old thinks he needs. Here I am, resting a few minutes on a piece of a wreck that stuck through the water, my bottle of rum and coke, a friendly diving companion, a spear and a great day at the beach. Life was so simple those days. Cooking foil wrapped fish in the fire pit with the salt water soaked husked corn and foil wrapped crab. Camping on the beach in front of a wreck. Good companions, good diving, and good food. Dive, eat, sleep, dive, dive, eat, sleep......The gloves are to catch crabs.


Fixing the food was mans work. Sometimes we would let the girls help but usually they were content to watch and enjoy. Here one of the guys is fixing an eel. We simply cut disks of eel. Skinned them and seasoned them with salt, pepper, paprika, and lemon juice. Then we wrapped them in foil and put them in the fire pit. They made great little sandwiches. We did the same with fresh filets of speared fish. We wrapped the crabs up in foil and dropped them in the pit. The wrecks were covered with mussels. The mussels were packed in convenient packages of foil and cooked in the pit. They steamed in their own juices.

Here is the typical result of a couple of hours spearfishing on the islands of the Chesapeake Bridge Tunnels. Water visibility is about 8 feet and the depths of up to 30 feet. Easy freediving. All of us use hand spears and freedive. The Taugs love the place because of the profusion of mussels. We love the taugs. Ain't life and our position on the food chain grand. But there was that one Bull Shark. This was in the summer of 1969. We would have a big cookout for up to 80 divers and dates. We would supply the fish, and beer. Baskets of crabs and oysters would show up with the guests. We would show our latest "lousy" under water movies on an outside screen. Chris my retriever loved these parties. At one she must have eaten half a 10 pound Atlantic Sheapshead.

Atlantic Spadefish sometimes got in the way of my spear. Yeah, I know they are really pretty, and they taste pretty good too. Taking one out of a school of a hundred for dinner on the Tiger Wreck off shore of Virginia Beach. The Tiger is one of those that the Germans sank during the war. It is about 14 miles offshore. There was a buoy just south of the wreck. We would set out anchor to the buoy chain about 20 feet down so the Coast Guard would not fuss at us for tying up to a buoy. Carl Johnson just happened to have his Calypso camera available (for those who don't know, it was the predecessor of the Nikonos). I was 19 at the time and the picture was taken in about 30 feet of water.

On one trip down to Nags Head I found some really turbid water. The tide was in and the wind and longshore current was coming from the south. I decided to go on down to the Pea Island Game station on the northern tip of Hatteras. After crossing the bridge, I noticed what looked like clear water coming in the inlet and decided to give a new area a try for spearfishing. I decided to go down near the old ferry docks. Fishermen catch a number of flounder there. I walked past the fishermen with my handspear, fish holder and fins to get out of their way. The water visibility was about six feet. Not bad for this area. I slipped into the warm water and jackknifed down. The bottom was strewn with large section of old roadbed covered with grassy moss. I surfaced and dove again, this time as I glided across the tumbled sections of roadbed I noticed the distinct curved outline of a flounder. I eased up not to scare him and suddenly realized that the outline of the fish was his gill outline. He was huge. I did not want to surface and lose him so I backed off and came in from above and behind. A spear thrust and he was mine. He exploded on the bottom. but I was able to subdue him and move him near the surface but out of sight of the fishermen down the beach. What to do? If I brought him out on the beach, I would be buried in fishermen throwing every type of bait, hook, and weight known to man on top of me. I kept the spearhead in the water with the flounder and was barely able to get my hands on my big stringer hook. After stringing him, I found a piece of old piling under water and tied the lead line to it. Now I was free to strike again. Within five minutes I had another one. Slightly smaller, but impressive never the less. I figured that was enough for a number of meals. Getting my stuff together I walked back to my car. Spear on my shoulder, flounder on the stringer past the fishermen. As I went by each one and they noticed my catch, they grabbed their stuff and rushed down the beach to where I had been swimming. I left without saying a word. Total time in the water maybe 15 minutes. One weighed 12.5 pounds and the other 10 pounds even. Great fun and great meals. My grandmother always loved it when I brought her a flounder filet. Thats why I was her favorite grandchild. Heh Heh.

Here is an Atlantic Sheepshead taken at Nags Head. This was our favorite prey. Most of the time, we would not see one on a wreck but when we did, it was a chance for a great meal. The way to cook a sheepshead is to bake it.

Here is Jim Fortune, a buddy from VPI with one he speared. It was his first and boy was he proud. Jim and I enjoyed a number of years of great diving under the ice, in lakes around Blacksburg, Va and on the North Carolina coast.

Here is a big boy just after the spear hit still pinned down against the eel grass on the bottom. We used to eat a number of these guys before we found out about ciguatera. Since these guys are at the top of the food chain, poison is more concentrated in their flesh. None of us ever experienced the problem but it is quite common in tropical areas.

One of my favorite game fish was cobia. They abound above the wrecks and near buoys off the coast. Cobia introduced me to a one dive dive buddy and lost him within 24 hours. Sometimes the chemistry isn't too good. More coming later as I continue to find old pics in boxes that bring back memories.