Memories of the Southwest Council's First Spearfishing Contest and Other Spearfishing Adventures

by

Herb DeLong

[ Herb DeLong attended the very first spearfishing contest sponsored by the Southwest Council in June, 1958. He and two of his high school buddies attended the event held at Possum Kingdom Lake. As you can see from this account and his other spearfishing adventures, he was one of the early pioneering breath holding skin divers/spearfishermen that participated in the early development of this sport.]

I just ran across your ( Southwest Council of Diving Clubs - 1965 Yearbook [See Third Paragraph] ).

 

It's strange how 3 of our divers traveled from Houston and competed in your 1st spearfishing tournament in 1958, representing the Reagan Seahawks from Reagan High School's class of 1958 and we are not even mentioned.  Since we didn't have a boat or aqua lungs, we swam from the shore and tossed the fish into the trunk of my friend's 1957 Chevy convertible.  (and the smell's still there.)  We had more than 100 lbs of fish over the closest group.  The line of reasoning that was fed to us was that we were too young, since we were all under 18. My original grievance was about being disqualified with a lame excuse that we were too young?  This wasn't to be about my diving life but about the injustice that day.  We don't want some shiny piece of trophy, just our acceptance. And now, even fifty years later, we still know that we won.
 

By the way, we had 228 lbs. of fish, all shot by one diver.  My 228 lbs. won.  Our team won. We had gar, carp. buffalo and a few catfish, all taken with a single rubber Arbalete speargun and snorkel gear.  The gun is in the first photo below. The members of the team were Wally Kittman [See photo farther down the page ] who now resides in Sabine, TX,  Rabbit Flores of Houston and myself -- the shooter-- Herb DeLong, who now lives in CA.  We were divers.

 

First Southwest Council Spearfishing Contest

Our last load of the day at Possum Kingdom...

 

Wally on the right, me in trunk, Rabbit next to me on my left & don't
know the guy with white hat...

 

 

I worked as a commercial ab diver after I got out of the Navy and started the sea-urchin diving business in the Channel Islands.  Invented a lot of labor-saving equipment and methods in that process. I also worked for American Agar and changed their concept of how to harvest gelidium by a diver that they came out and filmed me and my boat at work and then fired all their divers and rebuilt their system.  Their best diver had harvested 900 lbs of gelidium on his best day ever.  On my first day, I harvested 3600 lbs. in 3 hours...and never worked more than 3 hours a day.
 
My crowning moment came when I went to San Diego Dive shop to get a tank filled and they wouldn't fill it because I had not completed their dive course.  They stood there and told me that even if I was a commerical diver and had a qualifcation card from the Florida Frogman shop that said I was qualified to 300 feet, I had to pay them to take their course to get my tanks refilled.
 
2 weeks later, the Rep for the State of CA came to see me and wanted me and a few of the other working divers to start a program to teach all the guys in all the dive shops how to "properly dive in the ocean!"  A lot of them were taking people out after letting them swim in their indoor pool and tossing them into the ocean and watching them die.
 
Boy, was I happy to see the guy from San Diego Dive shop in my first class.  I wonder why he never qualified...?

 

 
I moved to CA after graduating and won all types of spearfishing meets out here.  I was a member of the Bottom Scratchers dive club. I still free dive over 100 feet and I just turned 70.  Here's a few photos of what someone with a snorkel can do.
 

 

 

1959

1959  San Luis Gonzaga, Baja Mexico (they said that I couldn't land a Roosterfish with the arbelette.)

 

This one's got a lot of meaning.  That's my third stringer of fish already.  The guy behind me set a world record because he had money and could sit way out to sea in his fancy boat (sound familiar?) until a school of tuna swam by, then he jumped in and shot the nearest one...which gave him the world record as no skin diver had shot a tuna yet.  I told him to go diving with me to see how good he really was and you can see his total catch for the day, one rubber-lipped perch.  By the way, I shot a sailfish and landed it at La Jolla Shores in 1959.  I guess I shouldn't count it for anything as it was floating belly-up in the surf from some kind of illness, but it came to life when hit by my spear.

 
Distinguished Shooting Awards

 

This is the crap I had to wear just to go on liberty.  I felt like a Mexican General.

The 2 biggest medals were 24k solid.  Only the Navy issued them and more people in the Navy have won Medals of honor than those.  I gradually eliminated some but always had to wear at least these in this photo.
Things on my sholders were medals from Nixon and Carter.  The one on my neck was from JFK.

 

Also, how did you decide to go to Cuba when you were in high school?

My Dad was stationed there quite a bit.  I've never seen better diving.

 

47 of these snappers in one day!

The woman is the wife of the old man that took me out in his canoe. I think she hated me that day as he made her carry all the fish up. 47 big snappers, quite a few over 100 lbs.  Only the women are allowed to sell fish in Sierra Leone.  Over here
the processor  would give me $350 for a snapper that big, but the most I got for a 100+ lb. snapper in Freetown, was at the U.S. Embassy.  They gave me a whopping $7.
1991
Me and Pa Seidu Kamara.  He'd take me out in that 12 ft. dugout and I'd give
him the fish to sell.  It was a lot of fun trying to get back in and I usually swam back.

 

 

The canoes behind me were 60 feet long and the men would go to Banana Island
20 miles to the south (if you look hard, you can see it.) where they would fish.
I got all I needed 400 yards from where I'm standing.

 
I was diving with the Ryan Reef Raiders at this time.  Guy standing next to me
was Michael Tarents, but he didn't do too well as you can see the cigarette
in his mouth. 

 

 

Here's Ron Church with a small ray. [ 25 pound Bat Wing Ray ]

:

 

You might also note the shirt that I'm diving with in the photo below. I shot with the US shooting teams.
 

 

1980
Blow fish I was playing with while catching slipper lobsters for dinner in the Bahamas .

 

1991

 

 

Sorry to bore you with all this drivel, but I thought to explain why I was diving so much in Africa.  So, as an after thought, this is why I was diving in Africa...and I had a license.  This is 3 hours work.  The stuff in my left hand was in the way and there's $29,000 in my right hand.  Try diving between crocodiles.  They ate 2 of my men... The kid in the bottom photo was only 16.  I made a venturi from a porch rail, used a Honda motor to drive my water pump, another Honda running a small compressor (oil less paint-gun pump) and garden hose attached to my second stage of the compressor.  The stuff I sucked up went into a homemade sluice box with a grease trap that had my locks on it and the key was underwater with me. Keene Engineering used one hose too many on their dredges.  If you prime first, you can't compress a liquid, so why run a hose down to a venturi on the bottom?  Just leave the venturi on the shore locked into your sluice box and all you had to handle was the pick-up hose.
 
I don't know why I did this stuff, but I think I did it because everyone else was smarter than me.   But, it gave me memories.  Just don't read Wilbur Smith books!

Diamonds in Herb's right hand and gold nuggets in his left hand.

 

The guy in the blue shirt at the back was taken by a croc also... We're ferrying my dredge hose over to the other side.  Would you like to dive in that stuff? 

 
I spent weeks in the hospital after I got back to cure me of all the things that swam up my fanny and the 2 types of malaria that I came down with.  No one told me that cloroquinine was a preventative for only 2 of the 4 types there. 
 

That's where the Baffi and the Buffi Rivers came together and there was lots of current.  When the natives found out that I was headed back to the USA, they left me on the other side because they wanted my equipment.  I pulled the spark plugs and tossed everything into the river to keep them from getting it,  I had to lay on my back and swim across from way up stream to allow for the current.  I lay on my back to keep from having my flippers pop and attract the crocs.  That's the night I got white hair.  I managed to get to Freetown in time to get my plane a few days later, but it was a rough 170 miles.

 

Here's a photo of road conditions...

Africa 1991

 

All I do now is bow hunt.  Did Alaska, Turkey, Spain and 3 trips to Africa in the past 12 months.  Doc gave me less than a 10% chance of living 2 more years with the renal cell that I had, so I told the wife that I wasn't going to die in bed.  I was going hunting.  That was 9 years ago.  http://safariafrika.net/huntreports2008

Just south of Ensenada, Mexico.  Swam for hours out in the deeper water and caught all of these in about 10 minutes in the little jetty behind me.,

 

 

San Luis Gonzaga, Baja, Mexico  Big grouper, yellotail, roosterfish, and Totoaba
(over 200 lbs), whale sharks and manta rays.  Shot a 56 lb. yellotail while standing in waist deep water taking my gear off.

 

I gave away 5000 lbs. of trophies to get them out of the house.  Never got ripped off for winning  other than in Texas...One other time at a pistol match in Austin that I won by over 100 points and watched them change the plates on the first place trophy and put it on a 3rd place trophy.  Maybe not all the stink was in the trunk of that Chevy.  

 

Here's another trophy I just gave away for someone to use for a perpetual tournament.  Solid silver, not brass plated crap...over $1000 for that cup that I got for some shooting match somewhere. (Not Texas though...good ole boys don't like strangers winning.)

This island was off San Quintin.  Expensive trip to get out there. 
Blacks were floating around throughn the kelp, but usually weren't that big.
The really big ones were at Cortez Banks where I would stay for 2 weeks
at a time, by myself, in my 20 foot boat.  Cold water out there.

 

 

Reagan Seahawks from Reagan High School's (Houston, Texas)Class of 1958

I even shot a jewfish in Offatts Bayou.  You wouldn't catch me dead in a swim suit like that today!

 

 

I dove with Ron Church, Mickey Church, George Kuznakov, Vern Fleet (Who we just had a memorial for.)  Worked at the Florida Frogman in Coral Gables, was recorded on a chart recorder by Univ. of Miami, spearing a big Barracuda as I hit the bottom at 128 feet. Started my diving in the locks on the Mississippi using a Daisy BB gun with a coat hanger as the spear, speared Spade fish in Lake Ponchatrain, broke an eardrum in Cuba trying to go too deep...before I learned how to equalize pressure, hung out with Chuck Nicklin and his sons. Was asked to join the Bottom Scratchers by Mike Carnahan because they needed someone who could win competitions for them,  and took an Austin Healey Sprite to San Luis Gonzaga when there was no road there!  You could see all the wrecked cars in the canyon bottoms.  I forwarded your letter [Paul Johnston invited Herb to write his memories of the first spearfishing contest of the Southwest Council plus his account of being involved in the sport of diving over his life time.] to one of the team members (who owned the Chevy) and here's his reply:
I say write'em  a  story...I don't think they have ( balls, guts, fortitude or whatever) what it takes to accept  & acknowledge what our skin diving club accomplished in that particular competition..I remember you had shot all the fish & I personally was intimidated  by our equipment( lack of). We had NO boat, & only snorkels with homemade spear guns,& diving mask that some had  modified with different lens. I guess we would be considered by today's standards of just a group of punk kids just trying to get some attention..I remember mentioning to you about how all these people had aqua lungs, boats & fancy equipment..& you said don't worry we will get the biggest fish because all those bubbles from the aqua lungs spook the big fish.. You were right..we got the biggest & most fish...
Incidentally the 57 chevy was a hard top convertible..
This is a girl I was teaching how to dive (HONEST) at Makaha Beach in Hawaii and you can see the Addict gun that I made in her hands.  It was stolen from the Diving Locker (It was actually called "Scientific Diving Consultants" then.)  while it was still on Cass Street in Pacific Beach and I was overseas with the Navy (Military service was considered a diving occupational hazard as your stuff would always disappear before you returned from a tour and at $72 a month salary, it was hard to come up with money for a storage place.).  It was actually called "Scientific Diving Consultants" then.  I later found the gun in a dive shop's Addict gun collection in Chula Vista, CA.  They tried to deny it, but you can see the little brass plate on the bottom of the handle that was engraved with "Butch DeLong, Diving Locker, Pacific Beach, CA."
 
Let me know if you want more, because the Navy wants me to write them a story about my shooting with firearms.  Believe me when I say that swinging a speargun through the water, while tracking a fish, had a GREAT deal to do with being able to shoot guns! And now I just got a message from a Naval officer that wants to collect some of the shooting memories of the old, great shooter of the US.  Most are dead. They should've been divers instead of smokers and drinkers?
 

1967

Laurie McGrath was a trooper and went out so far with me that a Hawaiian dude in a boat came up to us to warn about the sharks out there.  I could only see the bottom by diving down about 40' at that point...

The area behind me was where the famous surf would form.  I squatted down in the water with my Polaroid and snapped that shot and then ran like the dickens to beat the shore break before it ruined my camera.  She's got that photo on her wall  in a 46 by 38(?) size.

  

Same day with Laurie at Makaha, Hawaii
 
First thing I ever taught her was how to use a Thompson and other machine guns.  I taught her to shoot pistols and she embarrassed a lot of macho Mexican shooters when we went to their matches and whipped them all.  She couldn't whip me though. .
 

Beach photos were on a very flat day at Makaha...east end.

  

 

Here we [ Herb DeLong, left; Wally Kittman, right] are at my house in San Marcos [Califormia]. in 2008
 

 

[ Wally was one of Herb's spearfishing team members at the 1958 spearfishing contest of the Southwest

Council held at Possum Kingdom Lake, Texas. ]

 

SEARCH AND SALVAGE GOODIES.  USED TO LOCATE AND MAKE REPORT FOR INSURANCE CLAIMS ON SUNKEN BOATS
BACK WHEN TIMES WERE ROUGH FOR FISHERMEN AND THEIR BOATS KEPT SINKING MYSTERIOUSLY IN DEEP WATER.

 

 

We were once able to see toatuva over 200 lbs., but the shrimpers have almost eliminated them in the Gulf of California now.

Tony Reyes Fishing Tours

 

Here's the speargun that was stolen from me at a shop in CA where I found it 40 years later in a guy's Addict gun collection.  I let the guy keep it as it rounded out his collection...all he was guilty of was buying it from someone and there's no telling how many hands it passed through.  It would stick that 3/8" shaft clear through a big black sea bass though!  Silver inlaid sharks and manzanita fore end, with a walnut thumbhole stock.  Thank God for our May West break away rigs then!

When you found your long lost gun, what thoughts and feelings did you have when you first saw it?

I was talking to the girl that worked in the shop and looked up at the wall and saw the addict guns up there on display.  I bragged a little to her (not too much as the wife was next to me) and told her that I used to make those guns.  When I got the "Yeah, sure." response, I took out my driver's license and told her that the one in the center belonged to me and had been stolen (or sold) from the Diving locker 40+ years ago.  I made her see the name on the license and get the gun down and read my name and info on the brass plate underneath the butt of the handle.  I told her that I would just be taking it home with me and she informed me that the gun was not leaving the store.  I told her to go get the owner before I got the police as I had proof that it was mine.  The kid that owned the store was OK about it and I thought about it and decided that I would need a larger gun since I was headed for Africa in a month.  It looked better up there than it would gathering dust in my closet anyway.  I thought that I could always go back to visit my gun, but he's since closed up shop and has gone to who knows where?

 

Vintage Spearguns -

This is the most impressive collection of speargun photos I've ever seen.  Most of the Addict guns used some form of breakaway rig because sometimes, quite frequently in fact, it was just too hard to muscle up a fish from the bottom when you were out of air...especially when they were bigger than you.  A 20 lb. fish could clean the bottom up with you if you didn't stone him. (spine) 
 
The gun I made for Africa was shooting a 7/16th stainless shaft, 6 feet long and had 3 big rubbers on it.  I saw fish there that would scare me, but it was totally virgin as there just are no divers over there that spearfish.  Sharks were very aggressive also.  There was a big fish that they called a "Spanish" that looked like a giant carp, that hung around the mouths of where the rivers emptied into the ocean.  They considered white sea bass a trash fish!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

Once more, after 40+ years, holding my long lost speargun !

 

We will have our club's one and only reunion in April in Texas somewhere.  We still have 5 members left alive and their extended families.  Our purpose for this is that they been telling their kids and grandkids about the diving we did and as Wally put it when I happened to drive up to his house in Hemphill, "Damn! Am I glad to see you!  I've telling these stories of the stuff we did and every one just thought that I was full of bull.  I even went down to the jetties in Velasco and stood there and looked out to where we swam out to and watched you spearing fish and even I was having a hard time believing that it really happened."  I actually speared snook that day.  How many of those have you ever seen that far over in the Gulf?

 
 

Back To

The Story of the Soutwest Council of Diving Clubs and SCIP Home Page

Contact Herb DeLong

---© 2009 Herb DeLong
eXTReMe Tracker