This time it’s a new gun on test: the Salvimar Ares Carbo 105. Diving in Torrevieja, water a bit murky — it’s been stormy the last few days, but that’s not stopping the trips.

Straight to 105, no in-between steps

Usually you build up gun length gradually — 90, 95, maybe 100 cm at most. I decided not to fuss about it and went straight for 105. Bands are two standard 14 mm Primeline, nothing exotic.

My arms are fairly long, and after watching plenty of videos about loading long guns I was worried 105 cm would be awkward to load — the usual description is a two-stage load, first to the middle notch of the loading fin braced against the belt, then finishing against the chest. In practice none of that was needed: you just take the band and put it straight into its final position in one motion. Very convenient.

Finally fixed the whip on my own gun

Alongside the test, I also finished tuning my own older gun — the one that used to whip on the shot. That started when I rushed to re-fit it with 16 mm bands: the shot got snappier, but a whip appeared, and the shaft kept drifting left or low — at longer range it was practically impossible to hit anything. A viewer, the author of the “Андрей Подводно” (Andrey Podvodno) channel, suggested the fix in the comments. Accuracy improved noticeably; there are still misses, but not like before.

A grouper by a cave, and a shaft that didn’t survive

One good moment came with a grouper heading into a cave. There was barely any time — I didn’t even think about pulling off a band, figuring the fish would leave anyway. On the dive I held my hand with the torch as far from the gun as possible, light on one side, aim on the other. The grouper was moving away from the beam and swam right into range against the mouth of the cave — I figured that even a miss or a pass-through shot would send the shaft into the cave rather than into rock. I hit it: the shaft went through the fish and still ended up in the rock.

One of the standard shafts, though, didn’t survive a repair attempt. That same Andrey shared a trick for straightening shafts with a wrench — I turned the camera on to film a “masterclass,” and with one light motion the shaft simply snapped, the tip breaking off. Bought a new one that same day.

Speed, a new bit of caution, and lessons from this dive

The new gun’s shaft speed is noticeably higher — there were several moments where, with my old 80 cm gun, I would have missed for sure, but the 105 connected. That said, after the shaft-snapping incident I’ve picked up a kind of conditioned reflex: shooting against a backdrop of rocks and reefs now feels a bit unnerving.

I’ve been shooting less sargo and instead learning to work stakeouts, mostly without much luck so far — sometimes a mullet darts out, sometimes a stray gilthead bream, and not everything makes it to the footage or the edit. This time on camera it was a modest-sized meagre. Another takeaway from this dive: don’t wait around for a trophy if there’s already a legal-size fish nearby — I don’t shoot undersized fish at all. Grouper, from what I recall, needs to be at least 45 cm; mullet around 25-30 cm, though its elongated body makes judging length underwater trickier than it sounds. Current minimum sizes for the Mediterranean are on our fish sizes page.

One more moment worth mentioning: while reloading I caught something fast moving close by out of the corner of my eye, dove down and managed to film it. Signing off with the ray that tagged along for the last shot.