Spear Gear: What do You Need to Get Started?
Your choice of spearfishing gear will look very different depending on where you are in the world and what kind of fish you are hunting. You may have a wetsuit, flashlight, and tiny gun in one area, or swim trunks, a rash guard, and a massive blue water cannon for another. Wherever you are, and whatever you are hunting, there are certain items that you can’t dive without. This guide is intended to provide some direction on the gear you really need and accessories that will make your diving safer and more efficient. While it has been tailored toward the fish species and colder waters of Northern California, the same basic assortment will serve you anywhere in the world. It is important to note that when in the market for gear, the best thing you can do is go to a shop in person, making sure beforehand that the staff is knowledgeable when it comes to spearfishing. Many shops carry some spearo gear and would love to take your money for it, but they don’t have the expertise necessary to offer solid advice. Developing a relationship with a real freediving and spearfishing shop will be an invaluable resource for your growth and development as a spearo. A great way to find a good spearo shop is to hop on your local spearo social media group page and ask!
Necessary Gear
Mask
Low Volume: It would be very difficult to hunt without a mask, and while any mask is better than no mask at all, there are some considerations that can make all the difference between having a great dive or an uncomfortable, frustrating experience. The most important factor in choosing a mask is how well it fits your face. Of course, you could crank down the straps and force a good seal that will keep water out, but that is usually a one-way ticket to an uncomfortable and unsuccessful dive. Your mask should be comfortable and seal easily to your face. You should also consider a true freediving mask rather than a scuba mask or cheap snorkeling mask. Go to your local spearfishing shop and look for “low volume” masks. Being that you’ll likely be diving to depths where there is more than 3x the atmospheric pressure, air gets severely compressed, so the idea behind low volume freedive masks is that you have less air around your eyes to compress. When a normal scuba mask is compressed at these depths it becomes very uncomfortable and must be equalized by blowing air through your nose into the mask. The lower the volume inside the mask, the less compression you get and the less air it takes to equalize. Obviously, when you are holding your breath underwater you want to keep that air in your lungs!
Lenses: A single lens mask always has more volume than a double lens and is more common in scuba masks. Most freedive masks will have 2 separate lenses. You may lose a bit from your field of view, but the sacrifice is worth it for a low volume mask. You will definitely want to have tempered glass lenses as plastic scratches easily. As a hole hunter, you’ll certainly have occasion to stuff your face into a rock to check for fish, and you don’t want to buy a mask more frequently than needed.
Proper Fit: Press the mask onto your face (beards and stubble may impact fit) without the strap on your head and breath in through your nose. This will create a suction that will hold the mask on your face. Holding your breath, remove your hand and shake your head up and down and side to side. Does the mask stay on your face without you holding it? Now add the strap with just enough tension to keep it on your face. Is it comfortable? It should not be resting on the bridge of your nose or pressing hard around the skirt as this will result in a headache in no time. If you have time, wear it around the shop for a few minutes to ensure it doesn’t become uncomfortable. Also, make sure the nose pocket isn’t too large as you’ll be needing to pinch your nose frequently to equalize.
Strap: When you strap it to your face before you hop in the water, make sure it’s not too tight. It needs to be just tight enough to keep water from coming in. When you take off the mask after a dive, there shouldn’t be a significant indentation on your face. If there is, your straps are too tight.
Skirt: You’ll want to opt for a mask that has a soft silicone skirt made from dark material. Silicone is the preferred material because it is softer and more durable than rubber. Clear skirts allow for light to come in and cause glare (Don’t believe us? Next time it’s dark out, look out the window with your indoor lights turned on. Then turn them off. You’ll be able to see a lot more without light flooding in from the sides.). The single skirt mask is understood to be the most comfortable to wear over long periods of time.
Brand and Cost: It can be tempting to purchase bargain gear from no-name internet brands, but there are good reasons to go with a trusted brand when buying any diving equipment. For one, well known brands often tout manufacturer warranties. If your mask starts to leak, they will usually replace it with proof of purchase. This is not always the case with lesser known brands. As with most spearo gear, you’ll want to stay within your budget. That being said, a non-functioning mask will ruin your dive, so it is one of the important dive items that is worth spending a little extra on.
Speargun
It’s very hard to catch a fish with your hands, although it’s definitely been done! There is a LOT to consider when it comes to spear guns, which is why we wrote a dedicated blog about how to choose the right gun for you. Click here to read more. In short, you will want a gun, a Hawaiian sling, or a pole spear. As a beginner, you may want to start with pole spear so you can focus on your dive technique and hunting prowess. Once you’re comfortable with diving and stalking fish, then you can make the switch to a speargun. We recently did a speargun review here.
Important Gear
Freedive Fins
Fins are designed to propel you through the water with ease and efficiency so that you can get deep quickly and conserve your oxygen for the dive. A good set of freediving fins will make diving and spearfishing so much more enjoyable for you. These days, there are so many different materials and designs it can be hard to know what to look for, so we made things a bit easier by creating a blog post all about choosing the right fin set. You can read about it here. For beginner divers, this is one piece of gear that you don’t have to go top dollar on right out of the gate. Inexpensive plastic freedive fins work quite well. Just make sure they are enclosed pocket, long bladed fins designed for freediving rather than short scuba fins. Once you’re a competent diver with some serious mileage under your belt, when you switch to carbon fiber you will be able to really appreciate why you just paid $500 for a pair of fins.
Wetsuit
A wet suit is sort of a no-brainer when it comes to spearfishing in colder waters. While you can get by for a while with dad’s old hand-me-down surf suit, eventually you’ll realize why a good spearfishing wetsuit is important. Suits designed for scuba and surfing are made from closed-cell neoprene which is easier to put on, but colder overall and doesn’t seal as well. Freediving and spearfishing suits are made from unlined (“open-cell”) neoprene, which is much warmer and seals to your skin allowing less water into your suit. You’ll want an open-cell suit that is thick enough to keep you warm and fits really well. It should have a gun loading pad on the chest and fabric on the outside to protect the suit, as you’ll be pulling yourself over rocks and urchins and into caves while hunting the bottom. We wrote a blog with more detail here. It is debatable whether camouflage is important. It is far more important to select a suit for fit and warmth. There are many manufacturers that offer well made spearfishing suits, and not all of them are expensive. There are also custom suit manufacturers that offer spearos the advantage of a perfectly tailored suit. For beginners, this isn’t a necessary item to break the bank on, but when the time comes for you to purchase a custom fit freedive suit, you’ll be very happy you did.
Weight and Belt
Belt: Spearos prefer rubber belts to woven nylon ones because flexible rubber makes it easier to breathe, and stays put better at depth where compression can cause a solid belt to slide around. There is nothing worse than trying to relax and breath up on the surface only to have an off balance weight belt trying to roll you over. You can also purchase a weight belt keeper (aka crotch strap) that runs between your legs from the back to the front to help keep your weight in place. I prefer to have at least one D-Ring on my belt as well which helps me clip my waist stringer and my dive light to my belt. As for color, I appreciate it when my dive partners have a highly visible belt and weight, like white or yellow. It is much easier to keep track of them in the poor visibility conditions.
Buckle: A non-negotiable feature for a freediving weight belt is a quick-release buckle. It can be a cam style (pictured left), or Marseilles style (pictured right). Either style works fine. The key is that it holds securely when fastened, but allows an effortless release if you get into trouble and need to drop your weight.
Weight: I would recommend purchasing vinyl coated weight in smaller denominations (but be careful—not all coated weights will fit all weight belts). I opt for smaller weights (2 and 3 lbs) because it spreads the weight more evenly, and if my belt shifts slightly while diving it doesn’t throw off my balance as much. Ask your local dive shop how much weight they think you need based on how thick your wetsuit is, as well as how tall and heavy you are. When you are properly weighted, you should be able to float vertically in the water, exhale completely, and not sink. If you sink below the surface on your exhale you are over-weighted and should remove some weight immediately. When you get more experienced, you’ll weight yourself for the depth you plan on hunting. The rule of thumb is that you should wear only enough weight to be neutrally buoyant (not sink down or float up) at half your target depth. This is another reason why it’s good to have smaller denominations of weight, so that you can fine tune your belt for your needs.
Snorkel
Snorkels these days look like space ships with double purge valves, splash guards, and silicone necks. That’s too much for your freediving needs and only creates unnecessary drag. The best spearos have a very simple, very flexible, “J Snorkel” with no valves or guards. If you have a stiff snorkel, it will flop around and smack you in the side of your head while you move through the water. It will also cause you to be less hydrodynamic as you descend. The flexible snorkels will bend and be more streamlined with your movements. Valves also have a tendency to get fouled with sand and debris, letting water into your snorkel and ruining your dive. Simpler is definitely better when it comes to snorkel choice.
Dive Knife
This one is simple and necessary. It is of utmost importance as a safety tool. If you get tangled, you need to be able to very quickly cut that which has ensnared you. It needs to be pointy on the end, sharp on the side(s), and long enough to reach the brain of the type of fish you’re hunting. It should be easy to quickly remove from the sheath, but secure enough that it will not fall out. It is recommended to wear two knives that are accessible by either hand. If your left hand is holding a rambunctious fish that is trying to drown you, your right hand needs to be able to grab a knife to dispatch it—the same goes for being tangled. Many divers wear a full length dive knife on their belt or leg where it can be easily reached with both hands, and a smaller “kill” knife on one arm. Practice grabbing your knife(s) with either hand while in the water until it is second nature.
Stringer
Stringers come in many shapes and sizes. There are metal hoop stringers, mesh catch bags, and mono/spike waist stringers. If you’re going to spearfish, you will need a way to keep your fish secure. Hoop stringers are great because of how simple they are to use. However, you should never wear one while freediving because of how easily they snag on rocks, so they are best kept on your dive float. One drawback of a hoop stringer is that your fish remain exposed to other predators that may be interested in stealing your catch. For this reason, a mesh catch bag is a great option to have on your dive board. It keeps your fish in the water while protecting them from becoming another’s meal. A weak point of the mesh bag is that it can also snag on structure if you try to wear it. The waist or “kui” stringer is a great alternative as it is low profile and allows you to string your fish to your weight belt, but beware when “wearing” fish. You could become the target of sea lions and sharks. This is why I wear a waist stringer and use the mesh catch bag on my dive board. I’ll get a fish and keep it on my waist stringer until I have a moment to transfer it to my dive bag when it is convenient.
Accessories
Freedive Watch
This is one item that you may not want to invest in until you’re confident that spearfishing is going to be an activity you will enjoy doing frequently. In it’s simplest form, it is a safety device. It has algorithms that tell you how long you should breathe up on the surface (to expel CO2 built up from holding your breath and return O2 saturation to normal) before you go back down. The common safety rule is to breathe on the surface for at least twice the amount of time you were holding your breath on your last dive. This means if you were under water for 1 minute total, breathe for at least 2 minutes on the surface. True freediving watches come with a ton of other features and often a price point to match, so if budget is a concern you might just consider using a simple water proof watch. You can look at the time when you surface and make sure your surface interval is at least 2 minutes (assuming that a newer diver is not under water for more than a minute).
There are significant differences between a freedive watch and a scuba watch that has a freedive setting. Freedive specific watches have amazing functionality. They can tell you how deep you just dove and how many dives you’ve made so far. They have depth alarms, time under water alarms, dive history from previous days, graphs of how quickly you descend and ascend. They can tell the temperature of the water, help you do dry training with CO2 tables, and some even read your heart beat. At first it may seem like a lavish expense, but a good freediving watch is a piece of gear you will eventually want to invest in if freediving and spearfishing is something you really enjoy.
Dive Light
You will quickly realize how limited your hunting is without a dive light. In Northern California, the majority of our fish like to find small cracks and caves to hide in, and it would be nearly impossible to see them without the aid of a light. The best dive lights are small, durable, rechargeable, at least 500 lumens, and can be easily operated with one hand. We recently did a review of the top 3 dive lights for our area - you can see which one came out on top in this article. You can read more about hole hunting and types of dive lights in this article.
Float Line
There is an interesting debate that often surfaces about float lines versus gun reels. Most experienced spearos opt for float lines in conditions where they can not see the bottom structure. If you are hunting structure, nearing the end of your breath and find a hole with a potential fish in it or see a scallop in a cave but just don’t have the bottom time left to pry it off, you leave your gun on the bottom, swim up the line and breathe until you are ready to dive again. No need to worry about current pushing you off the spot or losing it in low visibility, you can follow your line right back to it on your next dive. A float line also helps you keep track of your dive board if there is no kelp around to clip it to. You just attach the trailing end of the float line to the board. In some areas of the world, it is the law to dive with a float so you are visible to boats, so make sure you are aware of the regulations of the area you’re diving in.
You want a line that doesn’t tangle easily, which is usually a coated line as it’s slightly stiffer and doesn’t twist up on itself. Woven nylon lines tend to snag on structure and get far more tangled than a coated line. For blue water hunting, you will need a stretchy “bungee” line attached to a float line that has a dyneema core to add the great strength necessary for fighting powerful fish. The length of the line you purchase should be no longer than the deepest dives you intend on making. Too much line floating on the surface is a recipe for tangles. Also, an encouragement to newer divers that just invested in their float line: you will probably have a few days of diving where you get tangled in your line and it feels like a nuisance. Just wait it out. Once your muscle memory develops and you learn to be aware of your line, a float line becomes an amazing tool that will keep you safe and help you land more fish.
Abalone/Scallop Iron
Delicious ocean morsels that are often overlooked in favor of big fish, scallops are challenging to find and amazing to eat. They are also one of the most difficult things to harvest in all of underwater hunting. As a filter feeder, they cement themselves into a crack near an area that has a lot of water movement. They are usually impossible to remove with just your hand, so many spearos wear an abalone iron on their belt or carry one on their dive board. It is basically a mini crowbar that will give you the leverage to pry a stuck scallop out of its crack. Once you get a taste for scallops and hunting them, you will absolutely need a tool to get them off. Make sure you are up to date on regulations and areas that you can harvest invertebrates before targeting them.
Shark Shield
When diving in the ocean, sharks are a reality. While encounters are rare and attacks even more rare, there is something to be said for the safety and peace of mind a shark deterrent provides, especially when your local shark species is the size of a passenger van and eats elephant seals for breakfast. There are many products on the market that boast of hindering shark interactions. Unfortunately, the science and data is just not there, except for one device made by Ocean Guardian. It is expensive, but well worth it. Independent studies have proven it to be a very effective shark deterrent on several of the most common shark species, including great whites. After I encountered my first great white shark face to face I immediately went out and bought one. Note that it uses a powerful electronic pulse to deter sharks, and will give you a shock if you let the antenna that trails off your foot dangle too close to your body. I complain about mine from time to time, but there is also a reason why I consistently dive with it.
Dive Board
Most Northern California spearos who dive frequently from shore carry a dive board with backpack straps to hold all their gear while hiking to the ocean, bring an extra pole spear/gun, have something to clip a float line to, bring drinks/food, keep necessities like car keys, phone and license dry in a dry box, mount a dive flag so boaters can see them, and best of all easily glide over the top of kelp instead of needing to kelp crawl or swim under it. Kelp crawling is exhausting and dangerous. NOTE: No matter what you bring with you, make sure it is 100% clipped onto the board or placed in a bag that is secured to the board. Yard sales in the ocean are no fun, and very expensive. Dive boards are fun, easy and inexpensive to make yourself. We did a video and write up about how to do this here.
Kayak
A kayak is a fantastic tool for spearfishing. It allows you to get to areas that are harder to reach or shore dive to, which means less fishing pressure and more fish. We recently did a video on how to set up a dive kayak and you can watch that video here.