Hey everyone, Luca here, Alchemy freediving and spearfishing team member. Today I'm going to be talking to you about how to find spearfishing spots in the Canadian Pacific northwest. I run a company here called Sea To Sky Freediving & Spearfishing, based out of Vancouver Canada in British Columbia, and I teach people how to freedive and how to responsibly and sustainably spearfish the waters of the pacific northwest.
Finding a good spearfishing spot is what every single spearo wants to know. Once you find one it's always good to just keep it on the download don't tell everybody. Keeping it to yourself and keeping it secret is also really good for the marine habitat and the aquatic wildlife. So too many people don't start harvesting and spearfishing at that location.
I've had the opportunity to spearfish in many places across the world including Southeast Asia, the Caribbean, the Mediterranean, but my favorite place to spearfish is in the Pacific northwest specifically the Canadian pacific northwest in British Columbia. The marine wildlife here is stunning, the biodiversity is quite impressive and you have an incredible abundance of fish and other marine life which you can use for spear or harvest.
First and foremost take the time to study the marine weather forecast and the predictions. Check the winds, are they southerly, are they northerly? That will affect the swell, and surface choppiness, you don't want to dive when it's very choppy, when there's a lot of swell it can be dangerous for safety and being there for your buddy. Check the tide exchanges, this will give you an indication of what kind of current inflow and outflow you might have and what kind of speeds. This is very important when spearfishing. Talk to other spearos, get some information from fishermen, look up forums and also Facebook groups can really be useful in terms of current conditions, visibility, temperature, and other in pieces of information that are very valuable like this.
First off, when I look for a good spearfishing spot I start with google maps and other maps. We have such good technology at our fingertips that we can use this before we even step in the water. Check bathymetric maps and other sonar charts that you have access to. Some are for free, some you have to pay, it's worth paying for them as well. The bathymetric maps can give me not just the contour lines and tell me how deep or what is the layout of the underwater area I want to explore, but they can also give me a very important piece of information, what is the substrate of the bottom, what is it made of, is it a sandy bottom, is it a silty muddy slope, is it a rocky bouldery outcrop field or is it a deep wall with caves and cracks? All of these conditions create different habitats and different ecosystems for different fish and marine wildlife to live in.
This is how I like to use multiple amounts of data, both beforehand using the maps and while on-site using my observations, to put together a conclusion. Ok, I see an area that's getting shallower, it's steep on either side, maybe I should go check it out, the map also indicates that the bottom of the substrate is rocky and if I notice that there's a kelp forest or seaweed floating on the surface that could be a good spot to go spearfish.
Another way you can use these maps is by identifying shallow sandy bottoms, potentially in areas where there's a bit of bay, near some outflow, and inflow where there's some current. The map might indicate that it's a sandy bottom with some eelgrass, when you go on-site you identify the exact thing you saw on the map, and if it's what you see then that would be a good spot for harvesting crabs. In Canada, we have Dungeness crabs and red rock crab and we want to make sure we get the right size and the right sex and they are delicious sources of food.
Finally, if on my map I see that it's an area with a steep wall, maybe some overhangs and some caves, that could be a good place to harvest scallops, sea urchins, and even some sea cucumbers. Some people really enjoy eating those, I've tried them a couple of times they're actually not too bad, depending on the recipe of course. So finding that kind of spot really means okay, I can put my spear gun aside and I can actually go for some scallops, using only a screwdriver.
For example, if you're looking for lingcod which is a delicious predator fish that eats other fish including small salmon, you might want to look for a large bouldery rocky outcrop field, that extends gradually underwater. The linkcod will tend to either sit at the bottom, often between 20 even to 40 meters, often deeper as well, they'll sit on these big boulders or they'll even hide under them sometimes it's easy to catch them, because they're actually a predator fish, other times you need to look inside and under these big boulders.
We are going to be attempting to go after the best of all fish, halibut. So we have used different techniques including long lining down a bottom weight trying to bait the halibut at depth because we have to go very very deep with different variable weight dives as well, we're trying to find an area that is sandy, muddy, coming up from the depths into a shallow area, just at the mouth or the delta of a river potentially, and these are all just estimations or assumptions of course. Halibut is a delicious fish and it's a massive flat fish so it wants to be at the bottom of these sandy muddy areas. So in this case understanding the fish's habitat, where it wants to migrate, where it wants to reproduce, and where it wants to eat and find shelter, and camouflage itself essentially from predators, is very very important to finding it, as well as looking at the maps beforehand to try and identify these potential sites.
What's nice about using these maps, bathymetric maps, sonar charts, is that you get out on the site and you have an idea "okay well this is what I think I'm gonna find here, am I looking for an underwater boulder field, a deep but flat sandy bottom or a rocky outcrop"? And that also gives you an idea of what kind of equipment you're going to want to use before you jump in the water to investigate your theory. Often I will put on my short fins, my short Alchemy Pro fins because I just want to scope it out, I don't want long fins in a kelp forest, I don't want to get caught on something, and maybe I'm not going to go too deep and I just want to assess the situation. If I think I have to go a little deeper then I'll put on my longer fins so I can get a bit more power to go a little deeper. Also, this will tell me what kind of gun I'm going to use. Am I going to go for a triple-banded inverter roller which is very powerful or a simpler one-band arballette gun such as my Pathos. Or do I go for the pole spear? So having an idea of what your site is and thus what kind of fish you might potentially find, really saves you time and increases the safety of your dives, because you don't waste time and effort, and energy to jumping in and jump out on the boat, or onshore even worse, to change equipment change gun change fins. You've already done the homework and when you jump in you already have a good idea of what you might find and hopefully, you're correct.
Finally, one of the most challenging but rewarding areas to spearfish in the Canadian Pacific northwest is an area where there's a lot of constriction. We have massive amounts of water moving in and out because of tidal fluctuations, and depending on the constriction and the geomorphology of the land, that could create a lot of currents. We have lots of inflow and outflows in very small areas. All of that current, all that moving water actually brings a lot of nutrients and increases the biodiversity in the habitat for fish. That means you might find amazing things to spearfish and harvest. The downside to this is that they could be potentially dangerous areas, where the current goes from zero knots to eight or more knots in just a matter of minutes, and if you're not ready, if you haven't studied and you haven't looked at the charts and the current charts as well as the tidal maps, well you could get in trouble. So make sure you do your homework beforehand.
Another reason I really enjoy harvesting with my little short fins, the Alchemy Pros, is if I'm going to get scallops or crabs, I don't have to go that deep and I want to be able to maneuver and chase the crabs for example as quickly as possible and have that flexibility. Sometimes the crabs are two meters deep, which is very shallow or sometimes they go up to 10 meters. Either way having the shorter fins is my preference, because I'm able to navigate down, not worry about hitting something, not worry about scratching my fins, and having that speed and that agility that a short fin provides.
The best advice I can give on how to find a good spearfishing and harvesting spot is to study and then to ask yourself where would the fish be, if I was a fish where would I be in order to find food, find shelter, and survive essentially. So if you're a kelp greenling, well you want to be in a kelp forest so if you want to find that kind of greening, which is delicious in ceviche for example, well you want to find a healthy and abundant ecosystem of kelp seaweed. Understanding the kind of fish you are going after, understanding their migration, their seasonal patterns, their reproduction patterns, where they go in the summer, and where they go in the winter, is really really important to have a successful spearfishing trip. So studying that in advance can really really help you to not waste time and energy.
