...Contact Jimdoe2you, a member of this board, he's the patron saint of canadain spearfishermen....
Wow, they have saints for EVERYTHING!rofl Excellent Amphibious.
Trying out the gear is the best thing if you have the opportunity. Local knowledge is key & I don't know anything about Canadian conditions beyond what I can glean from Amphibious posts above but here's
a couple of thoughts for what their worth (2 cents!):
Get
a small size, inexpensive (but not cheapo) gun from a major brand to start with (e.g. 75cm Aluminium Omer Excaliber, Cressi Commanche, etc. for the UK where 75-90cm is the normal recommendation). It sounds like your conditions are a tad worse than mine, perhaps more like Sussex & Kent (pea soup?!), in which case 60cm/65cm/70cm might be the thing. It's cheaper to buy & ship, easier load & use a smaller gun and it will be a lot of fun and you'll learn a lot. The fancy dodas (rails, carbon fibre, dyneema wishbones, sharkfins, etc.) are generally less benefit/important on smaller guns. Because it's cheap, you probably won't mind customising it, experimenting or reselling it as the need takes you. If it's your first gun, it will probably get most use and be the first gun to wear out and, being small, it will be the cheapest size to replace. Once you start running into problems, you'll start to figure out what would work better for you -- perhaps more range or greater agility, a stronger/slimmer spear, screw head trident spear, whatever. For me, the frustration of having a gun that was often too long (90cm) for conditions became unbearable. I'm now having lots of fun with a 75cm, which is great (but I was unable to shoot a couple of massive fish this year because they were now out of range. Typical!
You might also think about what you want longer term. You could aim to get one gun that will cover all your needs. That can be hard to predict but I initially thought one good quality 80cm would be good enough for all my needs and in hindsight, I still think that is true (unfortunately only a 90cm model was available). Alternatively, you might prefer to have two guns that bracket the normal range for your area (e.g. a 70/75cm and a 90cm would be a good pair for the UK). Or you might figure that you are something of a "pack rat" as my American friends call it or "gear freak" as my British friends say and will collect quite a lot of guns over time. I was aiming for the former (1 good gun, gradually adapted to my needs) but alas ended up more like the latter (3 good guns). There is much to be said for the middle option though - having a second gun on a trip is useful in case you loose it, visibility conditions change or something breaks (this occurred on at least 3 occasions when I had a single gun). Either use the second gun or, if they are the same model, you can cannibalize the least suitable one for spares. A single gun will see more use and so will suffer more wear & tear and is therefore more likely to fail.
Sounds like the
Rob Allen 70cm is a good fit for your conditions. The RA muzzle uses 10cm more rubber than a conventional euro-muzzle - they're simple and powerful for their size even with a single 16mm rubber (and you can fit two or an 18/20mm rubber) and robust enough to handle the biggest fish. Also, the RA's use a standard length spear, so a 70cm RA will be about the same size as my Omer XXV 75cm, which come equipped with a spear 5cm shorter than normal. It's a great size, I love it - I don't anticipate ever needing anything smaller (we don't get holed up grouper in the UK). In this vein, the
Omer Cayman models &
Rabitech models are probably worth considering too (the XXV is not sold stateside, its an ultra-lightweight gun), whichever floats your boat. Some folk love
Beuchat's, others
Seatecs, others
Dessault or
C4 - not sure if they're even available over there though(?). There are some new brands emerging following the tried & tested railgun formula:
Pelaj (Oz?), Orca (SA) & Hammerhead in Hawaii - it'll be interesting to see what kind of innovations & prices might emerge as a result of the competition. Not sure if all the railgun brands will do the small sizes though - I've seen pictures of a 50cm RA railgun, probably a special order for caves. I guess they just need to cut the simple extruded barrel length, the tri-cut spear rod, bulk rubber & spearline a little shorter than usual.