Spear fishing without a spear gun

While I was back in Vila I went to one of the local fishing / dive shops and was perusing their selection of spear fishing equipment, looking at all of the different price tags and wondering, if I purchase that gun for 79 dollars will I really use it often enough to feel that I made a good purchase? After a while I decided that since my snorkeling gear had just shown up and I hadnt even had the chance to snorkle on Maewo I’d hold on out a big purchase such as the spear gun and opt for a cheaper one until I decided whether I like it or not. This cheaper method involves a wire, basically a long metal rod sharpened at one end, and a two foot length of medical tubing they use for elastics. The purchases were cheap and upon returning I was ready to spear fish with my dad, confident that with my fitness and brains I’d be bringing in bucket loads of fish by the end of the first week. I was so very wrong, and to emphasize how wrong I was, in a week of spear fishing with my ghetto version of the Hawaiin sling, I had caught a grand total of zero fish and managed to bend my wire in one of my diving attempts. I had seriously underestimated how hard it was. In order to be a good spear fisher with the wire you had to have a number of things going for you, prior knowledge of the area, so you know where to wait for the bigger fish, the ability to hold your breath while swimming for atleast 30 seconds, and a good chunk of luck. On an average day of diving I would shoot at 100s of fish, I even managed to hit them every once in a while. I would  dive down until my ears felt ready to burst and then start cruising along, peering into all the holes in the reef until I saw a fish big and dumb enough to have tried hiding instead of running from me, then I would shoot it, and lungs burning speed my way to the surface. After a few seconds of recoup, dive again and collect my wire, fishless again. The first time I actually shot a fish I was so excited to get it to the surface to show my dad that I accidentally yanked the wire out of it and it swam off. Another time I shot one of the fish I had to surface because I was running out of breath and when I went back down the fish had swam a good distance away before my wire fell out of it. All in all, im glad I waited to purchase a spear gun because when I do I’m going to be so grateful for it, and you better believe I’m going to get one, and make all the fish in the reef rue the day I did.