What Speargun to buy?

[Vassilios Perezous]

Hello everyone,
I am new to spearfishing. Well at least bluewater spearfishing. My dilemma is not being able to choose the speargun I want. I will be hunting off the texas coast in the blue water of the gulf of mexico. The fish I plan on targeting consist of Tuna, wahoo, amber jack, and marlin.
The speargun I had in mind is.
- Alemanni 130 carbon tube mono roller inverted , 8mm shaft.
Like I said I'm new to blue water hunting and need some advice on a good gun that would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Mr. X]

Hi Vassilios, welcome to DeeperBlue.com. Sounds like you in the right ballpark w.r.t. size but hopefully some of our bluewater hunters will be able give detailed feedback. Former staff member Miles typically used to SA railguns of at least 120cm barrel length for blue water spearing, esp. for yellow fin tuna (and 110/115cm for reef fishing).

 

[sharkey]

There is no one size fits all speargun, & every area & country seems to have their own preference. The thing to remember is that it is the spear which hits the fish, not the gun. Start with what spear you need to use & then decide on the best gun to launch it. You mention marlin? These could & been taken with anything, but IMO a dedicated spear & gun would launch a minimum 9mm X 1.8m spear with at least three rubbers. For wahoo a thinner spear is fine, but we still want as much range as possible, so I'd still choose a 1.8m long spear. The problem with thinner spears is that they are more whippy relative to thicker ones the same length, so we cant use as many rubbers on them, eg, I only use 2 rubbers on 1.8m x 7.5mm spears but I can use four on 9mm spears the same length. Then we need to consider the buoyancy & mass of the gun to minimise recoil & maintain accuracy, I like my little guns to weigh 3 times more than the spear they launch & my big guns up to 5 times more ( yes, we are talking about 4kg plus guns). I have been playing with a few pully guns this year & closly observed several very good divers who have made dedicated & serious attempts to use them in their larger guns, so far about 75% of those guys have regretted the choice or changed back to normal rubbers for their big guns, it seems the advantage of pulleys stops at about 1.2m long guns. Just remember, choose your required spear first for the job & then decide upon its platform.

 

[Vassilios Perezous]

Thanks for the reply. I will take this into consideration. Very helpful information.

 

[Vassilios Perezous]

Hi Vassilios, welcome to DeeperBlue.com. Sounds like you in the right ballpark w.r.t. size but hopefully some of our bluewater hunters will be able give detailed feedback. Former staff member Miles typically used to SA railguns of at least 120cm barrel length for blue water spearing, esp. for yellow fin tuna (and 110/115cm for reef fishing).

Thank you, 130cm is what I'm leaning towards.

 

[Selenium]

There is no one size fits all speargun, & every area & country seems to have their own preference. The thing to remember is that it is the spear which hits the fish, not the gun. Start with what spear you need to use & then decide on the best gun to launch it. You mention marlin? These could & been taken with anything, but IMO a dedicated spear & gun would launch a minimum 9mm X 1.8m spear with at least three rubbers. For wahoo a thinner spear is fine, but we still want as much range as possible, so I'd still choose a 1.8m long spear. The problem with thinner spears is that they are more whippy relative to thicker ones the same length, so we cant use as many rubbers on them, eg, I only use 2 rubbers on 1.8m x 7.5mm spears but I can use four on 9mm spears the same length. Then we need to consider the buoyancy & mass of the gun to minimise recoil & maintain accuracy, I like my little guns to weigh 3 times more than the spear they launch & my big guns up to 5 times more ( yes, we are talking about 4kg plus guns). I have been playing with a few pully guns this year & closly observed several very good divers who have made dedicated & serious attempts to use them in their larger guns, so far about 75% of those guys have regretted the choice or changed back to normal rubbers for their big guns, it seems the advantage of pulleys stops at about 1.2m long guns. Just remember, choose your required spear first for the job & then decide upon its platform.

Dear sir... I might never do any sort of blue water spearfishing... but I promise you that I'll never forget the basics you just described in your post... simple yet makes perfect sense....
I was just considering to purchase a spare spear for my gun and I was looking at RA ones as I hear the steel and the oil quenching makes for fantastic results...I also started thinking that I might need to change other parts of the gun to keep the balance of power/weight/accuracy.. now it really makes sense