Family hobbies- spearfishing
Quick pic of gun for reference. tension band and 1 stinger band loaded.
Family hobbies.
I write this as I have had a fair amount of interest in how my smallest child can load a spear gun and shoot fish. He is my buddy now and we dive together.
Every parent knows that they are the first heroes their kids know. It’s quite natural then that kids from early on want to copy and do what their parents do. Some of the hobbies that parents do have a natural age limitation.
Safety: If as a parent you are reading this then you will know that your kid is one of the most precious things in your universe. Teach them to dive safely in the one up one down system. Teach them about shallow water blackout. Teach them how to rescue people. Teach them how to react to panic. Teach them how to despatch fish safely. Teach them how to react around sharks. Do a freediving stage A course with them, the things you and they will learn will set you up to dive safely for years. Best money I have ever spent on my spearfishing hobby. My youngest did his when he was 12 with Ant Judge(as did his older brother and sister). Ant Judge is an excellent instructor/spearo and if you want someone who can communicate well to kids I thoroughly recommend him (you also get a NQ holiday). Throughout the course Ant Judge monitored him closely and he got a lot out of it. He was also pretty stoked to hit 20m.
I’m into spearfishing and my kids have naturally wanted to have a go. Small kids cannot load traditional guns because the physics of pulling on the 14-18mm rubbers usually means they do not have skeletal musculature for it until they are between 13-15 years old minimum.
However it never stopped my youngest trying to load my gun in the lounge at the age of about 8 cause he really wanted to come along with dad to shoot a fish. About 3 years ago I met a new friend called Jesse Eggins(top all round guy), he had just started working for the Spearfishing Superstore which we highly recommend and had made himself an inverted rollergun, he explained to everyone who wanted to listen just why it was so amazing. What I took away from it however was that you could use the principle to have multiple lighter bands on a gun to deliver phenomenal amounts of power to a gun with no recoil. Kid’s and smaller ladies can now join in a sport that provides an amazing dinner.
For Josiah’s 11th birthday he received an 85 cm gun. We tried different band arrangements in an attempt to gain some traction out of the gun as a normal band gun set up however it just did not deliver the necessary power. As a family we play underwater hockey and this has given us excellent relationships with the local spearing shops ( the sport no one has ever heard of)due to all the gear we buy. A trip down to Diversworld Spearfishing which we also highly recommend saw us purchase a rollerhead.
With the memory of what they looked like we started building him an inverted rollergun as a father son exercise (this mostly meant me with him being highly interested). We used an MVD compact rollerhead so that it can become a rollergun in the future. We tried a number of rubbers but worked out that a combination of 10mm and 12 mm worked really well and we achieved the power and range of a normal 1100 bandgun with a 6.5mm shaft. The 12mm was the tension band and the 10mm became the stinger bands. We have since upgraded his rubbers as he got stronger to a 14mm tension band and 3-4 12 mm stinger bands which has meant less bands for him to load. He has taken down Spanish Mackeral, Tilapia, Tuna, big Trout, Stripey’s, Moses Perch, Crays, Trevally and Spangled Emperor.
Josiah is a small kid for his age. When he first jumped in the water his gun was longer than him!!. This worked to his advantage in that he could get closer to fish than I could. Keep an eye out for sharks, kids are small and therefore less intimidating to an excited shark than an adult.
Disclaimer: I am not and will never be a professional speargun maker, I’m just a dad wanting to share good times with my family.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1613366668936328/permalink/2032210593718598/
link showing how easy an inverted is to load for juniors