Jay’s 1st Hawaii fish: A PRIZE!!!

We’ve updated our spearfishing tours at Maui Spearfishing Academy to offer a new program to give our guests an even better shot at landing impressive fish. We never thought it would work so well! Jay has had some experience in shallow water off the coast of other fishing areas outside of Hawaii, but no formal training. This amount of experience is pretty common for some of our guests (while most have never touched a spear or spear gun before).

Jay decided to sign up for our freedive 101 course, as he knew that he would be a better spear fisherman if he had formal freedive training. He excelled in the freedive course, and soon later utilized the skills he learned in an afternoon dive. I saw how he could comfortably dive about 50 ft. and stay down for a short while, yet long enough to shoot a fish. So we went out for the game fish called “Uku” (Gray Snapper). Simply put, a fisherman with the amount of experience Jay had should honestly never be able to catch a fish as elusive as an Uku. Nevertheless, that’s exactly what he did. With a perfect execution, he dropped down about 50 ft., sat there for 5 seconds, then extended his gun. From above I couldn’t see the fish as they blend in perfectly with the sandy bottom. He only knew by pictures what they looked like so he wasn’t even sure what to expect to see down there. But when this 6.5 lb. Uku showed up, he thought, “Oh, that’s what I’m hunting for”. He took a great shot on the fish and brought it right up where I was able to secure the catch.

GREAT WORK JAY AND CONGRATS!!!!