Opsanus tau
Size: to 15"
Habitat:
Generally inshore on hard bottoms and in shellfish beds, in 30-40 foot depths.
Notes:
Small but feisty, this fish may snap at your fingers with its powerful jaws when caught. Up close, Toadfish have ugly ogre-like faces, and eyes that seem to glow red from inside. They also make loud croaking noises during the breeding season. Toadfish are favorite laboratory subjects and have even flown in orbit on the Space Shuttle.
There are essentially two choices of weapon for spearfishing: pole spears and spearguns. The speargun is probably the first thing that comes to mind for most readers - conjuring up images of Seahunt, James Bond, and countless other TV shows and movies. Everyone knows what a speargun looks like - a roughly pistol-shaped device that fires a two-foot steel dart. Everyone probably also has a pretty good idea what a pole spear looks like, but an underwater pole spear is a different in form and use from a terrestrial javelin. Rather than throwing it ( which would be difficult to impossible underwater ) a pole spear ( or "Hawaiian sling" ) has a loop of rubber tubing at the butt end that is used to launch it directly from the hand, the shaft sliding through the loosened hand without ever leaving it.
More: Spearfishing - Choose Your Weapon ...
