Ah yes the challenges of the underwater hunt…..How I miss them. Where are you hunting? We had to be careful with some local fisheries laws and spear fishing when I lived in South Louisiana. They only allowed taking certain species and frowned on spearing some of their freshwater “game” fish. One of the more challenging hunts was for sheepshead at the train trestles in Lake Pontchartrain near Slidell…… We would dive down about 10 feet away from the support pilings, (snorkel, no tanks, exhaust bubbles would scare them off), approach from below then use the sunlight from above to look for the outline of the fish in the murk. A lot of misses and your diving buddy, (sorry to may years teaching), should not be anywhere near you when hunting like this……..They are real boney fish but if you wrapped them in cheese cloth and boiled them with some Zatarian’s crab boil…..Good stuff. One of the dive clubs in Baton Rouge would sponsor a garfish rodeo every winter. Cold water would slow the them Gar down enough where you had a chance to sneak up on them. Tough fish to stalk in the clear ponds and the murky creeks were just really spooky. Fortunately water was so cold no snakes to worry about. Back then (1970 something), any excuse to get underwater was a good one….. I never did develop a taste for gar no matter whose Cajun recipe was tried….. Now a Barracuda harvested, ( = shot with a big metal spear), on the Empire Mica wreck offshore of Panama City Florida, then rolled in seasoned flour and fried up in a hotel room with a fry daddy……well that’s another Good Eats story…….Now I'm in Tennessee, what's a diver to do......?
