Question on etiquette / safe practice
Hi all,
Over the weekend while boat-fishing with anchor down & burley, we had a spearo jump in the water about 60m astern of us. He then swam up our burley trail (and lines and hooks) until he was 1 to 2 metres off the side of our boat, and then swam past us to a about 5 or 6 metres ahead of our bow. Meanwhile, his boat followed a similar line after allowing him to get ahead of it, though didn't come quite as close to us - maybe 10m off the other side of our boat.
The boat then came in 5m off our bow under motor to pick up the spearo, and they then drifted back out - at one point going within arms reach of our boat, though at a pretty slow drift.
A number of questions arose for us here:
- I assume it's legal to spearfish with tanks?
- Given the description I've given, does this sound like adherence to good conduct? in particular, fishing up our burley trail, and then right in close to our boat? - a good technique, but not very respectful..
- Similarly, for a not insignificant period of time, the spearo's spotter couldn't see him because he was on the other side of our boat - didn't seem very safe to us.
From what I know of spearfishing, it looks awesome - but I don't have any experience or knowledge so thought I would ask here for any insight. Needless to say, having just caught a 76cm 16 pounder and 3 decent pannies in the 25 minutes before the spearo turned up, we weren't too impressed when the bite went off, and didn't look like a particularly safe / smart way to go about it...