During part of my honeymoon my wife and I stayed at a pension in a remote atoll in the Pacific.  It had large pigs, no electricity and no windows so it was basically my idea of heaven.  The people who worked at the resort were some of the loveliest I've met and when they weren't providing exceptional service they were working; making thatch, pouring concrete, and raking leaves for no apparent reason. 

Aside from trying to hold the rabbits that hopped around the open air dining facility and taking 15 tries to light kerosene lanterns so that I wouldn't pee on the floor, I spent most of my time marveling at their handiwork.  Given the 600 miles by boat or plane that separates them from the nearest lumber yard I should not have been surprised by their industriousness, nor, I suppose, by their ability to kill fish.

I asked to go fishing early in our stay and established myself as an enthusiastic and capable angler in our first outing.  A few days later the resort’s co-owner invited me along for an afternoon of spear fishing.  I accepted this invitation forthwith because I had seen the spear guns hanging in the scuba shed and wanted to hold them even more than the rabbits.   

In the lagoon, spear fishing takes place in the heat of the afternoon while grouper are dozing around the reefs.  The fishing is done in 15 minute intervals at several different reefs because as it turns out, even resting sharks will bite you if you have a bloody fish struggling on the end of a stick.

My fishing experience started eventfully.  By eventfully I mean my gun launched at approximately 400 miles per hour while I was still in the boat, snapped from its cable, and dove to the bottom of the lagoon where it lodged in the coral.  I was horrified as I realized that I could have killed my wife or companions, and then was even more horrified when I realized my guide expected me to swim 40 feet to the bottom to retrieve it.

When I returned to the boat, I was handed a new gun – this one was green and required my pinching the grip of the gun against my bare stomach and pulling down on the band with approximately as much force as I have ever applied to anything.  

I watched as my hosts threw their gear into the water and jumped in after it, putting on their mask and fins as their guns floated nearby.  Next I tossed my gun into the turquoise water where I learned that the difference between my gun and my friends’ guns was that mine sank, quickly, to the bottom of the ocean.   

After diving in to save my weapon I came to the surface with my throat burning from salt water, a stomach that felt like it had just been hit with a tennis racket, and a total lack of energy and breath and then wisely set out to do battle.

One of my guides spoke French and English, if you count being able to say “we have two pigs” as speaking English.  The other spoke only Tahitian and another language that contained many O's.  Given our gap in communication, my guides mostly pointed at fish that were 60 feet below me and then watched as my ears exploded from the pressure as I pretended to have a chance at shooting them.

While I was swimming around and shooting spears into the coral all over the lagoon, my partners were downing fish, large and small, with roughly the effort it takes me to pick out oranges at the supermarket. 

Throughout the first hour my friends had killed roughly 20 fish ranging in size from 2 to 20 pounds, and I had a nasty bruise on my stomach, no energy, and a pounding headache from the pressure of my dives.  Despite my physical pain and the fact that I sucked at spear fishing I was having a ball, and the feeling of prowling the reef, gun in hand, made me feel almost as cool as I’d have felt if I had a tattoo of a stingray across my entire back like one of my guides.

Eventually I bagged a smallish Big Eye.  The kill was less eventful than I pictured.  I think this was the case because I am using “smallish” in the most flattering sense, and because my spear was four feet long.  Despite the lack of a climax the success was a boost to my confidence and I entered the water on our last dive with renewed vigor, and a desire to bag only the biggest fish.

My partners pointed out several grouper that I promptly missed and in the final moments of my experience I saw a large school of unicorn fish which I made my target.  I chased the school beneath an overhang and eventually cornered a fish.  It looked big so I pulled the trigger and watched as my harpoon shot into the darkness, sticking deep into the wall of the cave.  Given that I was already short of breath I panicked and pulled frantically at my spear.  When I finally got it loose and headed up I saw what appeared to be a maple leaf on the end of it, but which was instead a unicorn fish the size of an wooden nickel. 

I glanced around to make sure that my guides weren’t looking and casually removed the spear from my little friend, praying he would be ok.  Given that it was the equivalent of having a telephone pole through my abdomen, I doubted that he would be “fine” in the traditional sense, but I was hoping he'd swim away far enough to remain out of view until we left. 

To my delight and amazement, he sped out of my hand and out of view looking none the worse for wear.  I couldn't believe my eyes, and given that they just lead me to shoot a 5 inch fish with a harpoon I probably shouldn't have, but as they say in France, better to inadvertently shoot a very small fish than to continue to miss larger fish in front of the people who took you fishing.