I’ve wanted to make this video for a while — not just a review, but an honest comparison of the two guns I’ve actually hunted with. My first gun was the MVD Predator 82. I bought it after reading around: the local standard here is 90 cm, but for a first gun I went shorter — figured I should learn to dive without a gun first, and only then with one. What sold me was that at 82 cm the shaft’s power-stroke length and the shark-fin position near the grip are close to optimal for that size, so it reportedly hits almost as hard as a 90 cm gun. Plus my local spots are full of small grottos and rock piles, and I didn’t want to carry several guns underwater — I wanted one universal one.

A year in, I kept hitting a ceiling: the fish here are wary, educated, and hold at the edge of visibility. That’s how the ambush tactic behind the channel’s name, Aquatactics, was born — holding my breath up to two minutes, lying in wait under a rock or in the weeds, tapping the gun to draw fish in. It worked — I got a few dentex and gilthead bream that way. But the lack of shooting range, plus a string of the Predator’s “teething problems” (I had to grind down the line-loop stop with an angle grinder — nothing else worked), pushed me toward the Salvimar Ares Carbo 105.

Build

Side by side, the Carbo is objectively the better-looking gun to me: the body’s shaped more like a cuttlebone than a tube like the Predator, with contrasting carbon textures and a glossy sticker — love at first sight, especially with the orange rope tying the whole look together. Down at the detail level, though, the Predator feels more delicate: its line-guide tabs are small, and you have to thread the line carefully through an eyelet and rail — a fiddly job in thick gloves. The Carbo’s rail is much chunkier; you can loop the line over it almost without looking.

The Predator’s rubber bands took some trial and error: the stock single 16 mm band was useless, a double 14 mm setup felt right, and a double 16 mm made the shaft whip and bend on the shot — faster in theory, but noticeably less accurate — so I went back to the double 14 mm. It now loads with real effort. The Carbo, despite being longer, I load bare-handed at 183 cm tall, no loading aid needed. I never found an upside to the Predator’s open two-band muzzle: the bands cross and pinch each other after every shot, and there’s a visible diagonal pull toward the shark fin while loading. On the Carbo, the bands never tangle — there’s a guide that keeps them pulling parallel to the shaft.

The Predator’s reel looks far more high-tech and is smaller, with less rope capacity — and it’s noticeably worse in practice: even with the drag set, the rope can bind on itself, so I’m constantly readjusting it. The Carbo’s drag is precise and the rope pays out smoothly. I rinse both guns in fresh water after every dive and spray WD-40 on all the metal parts.

Ergonomics

The Predator’s stock grip is roomy — gloves never get in the way — but for my not-huge, medium-sized hand it originally cut into my skin, so over a few trips I filed down 3-5 mm and rounded the edges until it felt right. I initially thought buying the Carbo with an ergonomic grip was a mistake — figured a standard grip would suit that length better — but the palm rest genuinely works: it gives you leverage that offsets both the extra length and the fact that a longer gun is objectively harder to swing one-handed than the shorter Predator. On long swims, carrying the gun down along my body, that same palm platform keeps the grip stable with no side-to-side wobble — which makes the Carbo feel even safer to carry.

The Carbo’s safety is clearer: click it once and you’re set. The Predator’s needs to be pushed to precisely the right position — roughly 45 degrees — or it can still fire. The Carbo’s shaft seats with zero play; the Predator sometimes seats only partway, so the shaft slips and you need to re-cock the trigger to lock it properly — that almost never happens on the Carbo. The Predator’s loading heel has a larger surface area on the left side, which I worried would be uncomfortable but never was. The line release never lets me down on the Carbo; on the Predator, current can nudge it out of position and the hookup misses. Oddly, the shorter Predator’s shark fins are quite large, while the Carbo’s sit lower-profile — the one downside there is that thick band connectors don’t seat well two-at-a-time on the far fin, so I’ve learned to route them one per fin.

Verdict

If I had to keep just one gun, I’d take the 105 — the Carbo works equally well for shooting into holes under rocks and for the ambush-from-a-ledge tactic. But it has one serious flaw: right where the flag seats, the shaft necks down noticeably — from 7 mm to roughly 5 mm — and bends very easily there. I’ve straightened it with an adjustable wrench about six times, and broken it outright once — there’s a short clip on the channel of the shaft snapping on a rock mid-shot, right through a small grouper. Hopefully this comparison, really two reviews in one, helps someone else through the same decision.