Pistolero: Spearfishing in Mexico

As you know, I recently went on a fishing trip to Baja, Mexico.

Our destination was a small town about half-way down the Baja peninsula on the Sea of Cortez. I'd been there before. My companions included several older gentlemen, a few of them friends of my late father, from Los Angeles, New York, and London. Although the trip was a standard affair with saltwater rod and reel from a boat, I took a day to go spearfishing with a group of Italian spearos who were staying in town.

Blue Water Hunting

The Italians--tanned, slim, muscular, shaven-headed--were a friendly lot whose political and cultural sympathies probably coincided with mine. Four of us hired a boat and guide to take us out. A few miles out we stopped at a shark buoy. The captain threw out some chum to attract the fish. Our quarry included dorado (mahi-mahi), tuna, sea bass, sailfish, and marlin. We jumped in, suspended in the blue, in 300 ft. of water. After a few minutes the dorado appeared, darting about us like crazed little freight trains. Our team shot four; I nailed one. This is not my favourite type of spearfishing, because you just sort of hang there in the water, waiting for the prey to appear. It's a very passive way of fishing.

Mexican reef  inhabitants

Stalking the Reef

Next on our itinerary were the Baja reefs. This is what I'm used to. Stalking, hunting, and nailing the little motherfuckers. We could actually see the bottom--and the fish. May I be direct with you? I hate SCUBA diving. I dislike the restrictions imposed by a wetsuit, weightbelt, and tank. This is why I do not SCUBA dive. It's unnatural. I'm used to using a pair of board shorts, skin-diving fins, and a Hawaiian sling in the Bahamas. That's it. In Baja we dove around the reefs, encountering 15-25' ft deep spots, and nailing prime targets. I shot trigger fish, parrot fish, and small groupers. And more. This was more like it. This was Baja spearfishing at its best. The meat made superb ceviche, which we had prepared for us in one of the restaurants in town.

There's something about skin-diving that I could explain to you, but until you've experienced it you wouldn't understand.

Underwater Stalking: Pressure At One-Atmosphere

It's tourist season in Laguna Beach. Time to abandon the main beaches. Hordes of dowdy out-of-towners pick over the tide pools like hungry shorebirds hunting sandcrabs. Whole families of exotic foreigners congregate on the boardwalk in formal clothes watching the tanned beach-volleyball players. The rocky coves, inaccessible to our bloated visitors, are far less crowded at this time of year.

I met my chum Grant on a Saturday morning to go spearfishing. The sky was overcast as it usually is at this time of day. The sport is illegal in Laguna Beach at the moment, but we sneak in anyway, using a friend's beachfront home in a gated community as our launch site. (Fuck the hippies). So far, so good.

Grant broke up with his girlfriend a couple of weeks ago. He was drunk and called her on her chick-bullshit in an expletive-filled diatribe. She was a hottie, for sure, but it was a long time coming. His frustration with her had been building for several months, he explained, and now it came flooding out in a torrent of hot relief, like a virgin on his wedding night. Three days of angry phone calls, emails, and texting ensued. And now, peace.

On the rocky beach we put on Riffe camo wetsuits over our Quiksilver boardshorts. The water temperature was still in the high 50s, requiring at least a 3mm suit. Our guns lay beside us on the pebbles. Mine was a mid-handle teak Riffe. I favour the mid-handle model for its comfort and maneuverability, although it may be excessive for shallow reef dives. Grant's was a state-of-the-art Cressi Comanche 75cm.

He was mostly quiet. I could tell he was still bothered by what had gone down. I'm not here, I told him, to give advice on girls. So what can I say? Let's go kill some fish.

We waded into the surf. The shore break was heavy, making it difficult to stay upright. We put on our split fins, mask, and snorkel and then swam about sixty yards out where the new kelp beds broke through the surface. Visibility was about 10 to 15 feet. I could see large bat rays sweeping along the sandy flats. A school of sand bass moved away from us on our left. A constant surge swept the kelp back and forth. We hovered above the rocks seeking sheepshead and calico bass. We had decided on one fish each. After about 30 minutes Grant managed to spear a bass. I was content to leave empty-handed this time. It was getting cold, so we headed for shore.

"No sign of him today", said Grant, referring to the white shark he and some buddies had seen in these waters two months ago. "As big as a horse", was how they described it.

On the beach we peeled off the top half of our suit. It was getting a little warmer now. Grant put his fish in a plastic Albertson's bag. Just off shore we could see a pod of SCUBA divers moving across the cove like ridiculous turtles.

He smiled. "Okay, dude, let's go do some fish tacos and watch surf vids on my 40 inch."

"Sounds good to me".

We passed some tide pools and started climbing the hillside. I once found a small octopus stranded in one of these pools, squeezed in between some rocks.

"Why did you do it?", I asked him later.

He thought for a minute. "I just wanted to see if I could", he replied.

Within a few days of the break-up, he told me, he was fucking two local girls that he kept on the side for emergencies. In fact, throughout their relationship, he had a stash of other girls (including a hot escort whom we both know well) that he regularly tapped into as the needs arose. And arose they did, with a vengeance.

Lurisia Archipelago

Abenteuer Im Roten Meer

Spearfishing Southern California

Blue Water Hunter

Spearfishing Bahamas

Spearfishing Bahamas

Do you kill fish? I do: on the water and under it. I prefer the latter. Last time I went spearfishing in the Bahamas was in 2006. My family owns a house at Harbour Island. We stayed in the centre of town. There were three of us in a boat, searching the coral heads off Man Island across the bay from Dunmore Town, exploring clear water about 20' deep. When we spotted a coral formation or pile of rocks, we stopped, put on our fins, and dropped in. At one location we watched a shark estimated at 10-12' glide languidly under our boat. We used Hawaiian slings, the most primitive of spearguns, to hunt grouper among the crevices and ledges. Sometimes a lone barracuda would suddenly arrive on the scene like a silver torpedo and then hang back to check us out. After a few hours we returned to town. The small harbour near Elle Macphersons's place and the J.Crew estate teemed with bull shark pups. Driving back to the house in a golf cart--for that is the main method of transportation on Harbour Island--we passed black schoolgirls walking along the road and occasionally they would lift their skirt to reveal for us an inviting bare bottom like a ripe plum. For dinner we went to one of the posh restaurants along the bay, downing too many cocktails in the red bar, and then afterwards settling in one of the small dance clubs where the grinning American women said "You clean up really nice!" as they rubbed against me on the dance floor. European tourists, American jet-setters, English public schoolboys, and hot girls mingled in a mesh of drunkenness and erotic play to island rhythms house-style. After midnight we stopped by a roadside shack for some chicken and smoked too much weed at the house of a prominent family from Wisconsin, ending up flat out on the front lawn staring up at the stars and wondering what the fuck am I doing here just put me to bed.

Man With A Spear

For a hunting man, there is nothing quite so agreeable as stalking and impaling an elusive creature, whether it be a big Nassau Grouper in the Bahamas or a young blonde hottie in Laguna Beach. The photograph (above) shows me swimming off Pink Sand Beach at Harbour Island in the Bahamas. I am aiming my Riffe speargun at a large Southern Stingray (Dasyatis americana), whilst my friend Trevor hovers in the background. Whenever I visit my property in Dunmore Town, I make sure to put in a few days' spearfishing. During one spearfishing trip to nearby secluded Man Island, we encountered several Bull Sharks. Barracuda were also to be seen. Afterwards, we returned to Harbour Island and partied in town, later repairing to Elle Macpherson's cottage for drinks.