Many years ago I had two pneumatics from Cressi-Sub, SL75 and SL90. Both were excellent guns. We (me and my buddy) used them for uncountable trips and they have always performed perfectly. Although most pneumatics are described as reef / cave guns we speared with them in open water on fast swimmers such as jacks and barracudas with very good results. I later changed into 150cm 3 bands gun which I find quite good, but let’s say I would prefer to have kept my SL 90. In my modest experience there are some advantages of the pneumatic over the rubber:
- You load the gun by one pull. Although it could be difficult for some guys, especially if the tank is fully pumped.
- In the rubber guns if you have the bands “armed” after a while of not shooting, the bands relax a bit and you loose some power. In the pneumatic you can load and swim hours without having to worry about this.
- Although not very often, the bands sometimes tear at very critical moments. On other occasions the whish bone broke when I mistakenly loaded the bands not in the correct order, which usually happens when you are in hurry to shoot the second fish.
- I don’t know the reason for this, but it seams that pneumatics don’t suffer from jammed triggers as often as the rubber guns, especially when the three rubbers are pulled. I lost many good fish because of this. :vangry
- I found the pneumatic (SL90) very accurate in mid range (4-5 meters). We used to target practice with it hitting more often than not a 2 inch circle at 4mt range.
- In terms of power, I remember that we did a very strange test :duh when we aligned several old books amounting to more than 1000 pages plus the covers and shot from 3mt range, the SL90 went all the way through
- I found that the recoil from the SL90 is much less than the elastic gun with 3 bands.
- I would also assume that the pressure wave resulting from a pneumatic gun is less than the elastic gun because the later has more parts moving in the water (shaft, rubbers). If this is true, it will make the pneumatic more stealthy and less in alarming the target.
- I also found the pneumatics easier to maneuver underwater due to less water resistance and shorter length. The rubbers on the rubber guns go “Brrrrrrr….” When you shift your aiming from side to side.
However :hmm , the pneumatics has some disadvantages, such as being extra sensitive to dust and sand. If you have any sand in the valve it will leak the compressed air and you will loose power very quickly. If you spear from shore, you need to take extra care of not letting the sand into the muzzle, trigger base or the valve. In my personal opinion, a good pneumatic with good power (such as the SL90) could perform better than the rubber guns for fish in the class < 40LBS and range less than 5mt. I have seen verrrry large pneumatic guns with very thick shafts that looked to me like Whale harpoons and were told that it is much more powerful than a 4 rubber gun and designed for large tuna and other monsters. Honestly if you are spearing in that class, 4-8 rubbers gun would be the one.
Enjoy your pneumatic spearing! :wave
Gino