Spear fishing

[Kimtown]

So here is a couple of pictures from this weeks spearing sessions. I have recently began this as new hobby from New Years and I must say, I am thoroughly enjoying it!

Couple of morwongs and leather jackets (please correct me if that is not a morwong). The pics may look the same but they are actually two different days. Just dumb luck I got the same two fish each day hahhaa

Looks like a sea carp or whatever, absolutely horrible if it is that, but to each their own.

I got into spear fishing the last 2 or 3 years. I quickly realised how bad Victoria is for this hobby so now I’ve gone back to angling. I found it really hard to get the bread and butter species (whiting, snapper, flathead, gummy’s etc) and found nothing but junk (wrasse, banjos, sea carp, sweep, leathers etc etc.). Did find a little honey hole of boar fish which was nice but other than that, SFA.

Pretty much gave up on taking the spear and just dive for lobster and abalone but haven’t had much luck on the lobster. Plenty of abs though.

Yeah, I reckon it all seasonable and so location dependent - I used to go out quite a bit off Clifton Springs, all along the Curlewis bank 2-3m and the amount of flathead and squid you'd see in spring/summer would blow you away. Whiting you'd have cruise by, but since it's so shallow they'd spook way easy.

Never seen squid unfortunately and looked hard around flinders for them which is apparently abundant with them, without luck

Seen whiting, a huge school at cape conran, and a few individual ones here and there, like walkerville and San remo. Seen one at san remo I reckon was a legit 55cm+ (and that’s taking into account everything being visibly bigger in water)

But likewise all the whiting spook for me. Heard flattys are easy to find but obviously not for me lol

[Andrews]

So here is a couple of pictures from this weeks spearing sessions. I have recently began this as new hobby from New Years and I must say, I am thoroughly enjoying it!

Couple of morwongs and leather jackets (please correct me if that is not a morwong). The pics may look the same but they are actually two different days. Just dumb luck I got the same two fish each day hahhaa

Looks like a sea carp or whatever, absolutely horrible if it is that, but to each their own.

I got into spear fishing the last 2 or 3 years. I quickly realised how bad Victoria is for this hobby so now I’ve gone back to angling. I found it really hard to get the bread and butter species (whiting, snapper, flathead, gummy’s etc) and found nothing but junk (wrasse, banjos, sea carp, sweep, leathers etc etc.). Did find a little honey hole of boar fish which was nice but other than that, SFA.

Pretty much gave up on taking the spear and just dive for lobster and abalone but haven’t had much luck on the lobster. Plenty of abs though.

Yeah, I reckon it all seasonable and so location dependent - I used to go out quite a bit off Clifton Springs, all along the Curlewis bank 2-3m and the amount of flathead and squid you'd see in spring/summer would blow you away. Whiting you'd have cruise by, but since it's so shallow they'd spook way easy.

Never seen squid unfortunately and looked hard around flinders for them which is apparently abundant with them, without luck

Seen whiting, a huge school at cape conran, and a few individual ones here and there, like walkerville and San remo. Seen one at san remo I reckon was a legit 55cm+ (and that’s taking into account everything being visibly bigger in water)

But likewise all the whiting spook for me. Heard flattys are easy to find but obviously not for me lol

Yeah, it's all practice and spearfishing is an art in it's own haha
I used to find with those easily spooked species I'd use my hand to kick up some fine sediment, almost like you see when a fish feeds on the bottom which helped mask my silhouette and at times get them curious enough to close the distance.

Flattys are 100% practice, finding that silhouette against the bottom is only something that takes time. Almost like sight casting a swimming squid land-based, it's all from lived experience.

[Joker91]

So how do you tell the difference between a sea carp and morwong ?

[eddyt]

Sea carp have a marbled pattern - very noticeable if you've seen them before. Dusky morwong sometimes have spots (the smaller ones). If its inside PPB then it's most likely a dusky morwong. The sea carp tend to stay more on the back beaches.

[cobby]

Top is a Morwong, bottom is a shitter fish. Note the larger more pronounced upper lip on the Morwong, larger eyes, more angled anal fin, slightly elongated nose on the Morwong and the dorsal fin is a single length fin compared to the scaleyfin being 2 separate fins