After a year with the 82 cm carbon MVD Predator I’d grown used to it, but I was hitting a ceiling: not enough range or power in the shot. So before this outing I rebuilt the gun and went to see what came of it. The water was poor — after a week of storms it was proper milk.

What I changed on the gun

I fitted two strong 16 mm bands and doubled the mono line — a double wrap. I liked the release speed and power straight away: the spear leaves noticeably harder. But it brought its own quirk — on the shot the 6.5 mm spear drifts slightly left. The shaft is probably too thin for that much power, so it wanders a bit. On top of that I still have to get used to the new behaviour: there were plenty of misses this time. Next on the list is to build a foam target and sight it in calmly at distance, rather than adjusting my aim on live fish in the water.

Water like milk

The bottom here is rocky, with crevices and posidonia fields — good fish ground in principle. But the visibility let me down: greenish murk, the bottom barely visible from the surface. In water like that everything comes down to slow, careful movement over the rocks. Skittish groupers kept passing, small fish flickered here and there. On days like this the process is almost meditative for me: you hang over the bottom, breathe, watch — and that alone is fine, even without a shot.

What I managed to take

Before the camera I’d taken a sea bass — at three metres, clean. On the recording, the first was a corvina: I spotted it on the left, led it and hit from short range. The fish tried to slip behind a rock with the spear, but I swam right up and pulled the shaft out with the catch, without an extra dive.

Then came an experiment: a small dentex sat on the bottom, and I decided to see how the new rig handled a longer shot. The lengthened line let me reach it — a clean hit. Trials like that are part of why I did all this in the first place.

A double shot and a tangle of weed

The best bit came near the end. I glide over the murky bottom and come straight onto a school of corvinas at the mouth of a crevice. I aim at one, shoot — and there are two on the spear. A nice fluke, but then the circus began: the fish thrashed and jammed the spear and line solid in thick weed. I didn’t risk yanking it — I let the reel go, calmly surfaced for air, then followed the taut orange line back down and worked the spear free along with a clump of weed. Both fish went up.

In the end the day was less about the catch than about the gun. The double bands clearly add speed, but the leftward drift and the misses are homework: a target, some sighting-in, some getting used to it. Coming back empty would have been fine too — right now I’m more interested in understanding the new rig than in filling the buoy.