Now I have your attention, I've got a bit of an issue which I am hoping some of you fine folk might be able to help you with. Female input welcome.

My fiancee often comes spearing with me, probably more so now that shes finished studying. "Her" gun is a 95cm Mares Phantom Carbon, however shes having trouble loading it - she simply lacks the upper body strength to be able to pull back the band to the 1st spear notch, let alone 2nd or 3rd. She *almost* gets there, but just not quite. I originally bought the gun for myself, but "upgraded" in a bit of a rush to the 110 Phantom on a whim due to a diving trip we were taking last year so we could both go spearing, so we never really "specd" a gun for her.

Its current setup is a single 19mm powerband. As I can figure, I've got two options:

- Replace her gun with a shorter barrel length gun. Thinking maybe a 75cm?
- Drop the band on the gun back to a 16mm (or lower?).

My questions are:

If she drops back to a shorter barrel length, but keeps the same band thickness (most of the ones I've looked at seem to be in the 18/19mm range) is there the potential that she may still be unable to load the gun?

I've never used a gun at the 70 - 80 cm range, so I have no idea how they perform in terms of accuracy or power. Obviously they wont have the reach or the power of the larger gun shes been using, but is it a dramatic difference between the shorter lengths? I know that there is a noticeable difference between that gun and the 110 I use.

If I swap the band down to a 16mm, same goes as above. I know it will decrease the guns performance in terms of power and accuracy, but dramatically? Is 3mm really going to make a difference in the strength required to load it? Again, I've got no real comparison.

Any advice welcome. Also I might have a Mares Phantom 95 for sale soon...

just slap a 16 on it and see how it goes. If its under powered then try twin 16's or maybe twin 14's. Have a play around with some different set-ups

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bluedevilspear@hotmail.com

Yep ... Nothing wrong with the gun and it's a good length: don't change it
As I recently learnt (I always used 19mm euro bands and nothing else) 16mm rubbers will still give her plenty of grunt
Teach her the right loading technique and she'll also be loading your 110
Good luck
Also... Check posts on Spearoz by "Emily" time ago there was a long tread on this topic

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Il mio mare e i miei fondali sono quelli del golfo de La Spezia

I have got a 16mm band on a 85cm gun that is one or two sizes larger (as per legendary's sizing chart) for the gf to use when she come out. When i was in the shop I tried a few rubber setups until I had one which I thought was a good compromise. I use it and also lend it to my mates when they come out in the bay and have not had any trouble taking fish with a 6.5mm spear.

I also have a 7mm/Pranger setup I use on that gun but I haven't put much time into it but it does drop pretty quickly when shot. Don't have a lot of confidence in a long range shot but that just means you need to hunt/stalk better. This is probably more important for most species than gun range.

When she got a proper chicks spearing wettie with a loading pad she also found that it made a big difference when loading the gun because it wouldn't slip off her chest. The gun also has a loading plate bit on the back of the mech (Picasso spider handle) for his and hers comfort

Thanks guys.

Gives me a at least a bit of insight. It could be half the issue that shes loading it wrong. I showed her how but haven't really observed her that closely when she tries to load (she generally just gives up, swims over to me and gets me to load it). She doesn't chest load for obvious reasons, so shes using her belt buckle as a loading plate. There's some loss of strength there I guess. Might look at investing in a strap on chest plate for her as well (don't want to drop 300+ bucks on a spearing wetty for her ... yet).

The gun handle does have a loading plate on it already (thats pretty big) but maybe some after market modifications are in order...

Ill drop a 16 on it and see how we go.

I just run twin bands, they're easier to load but having two you get the same power. She will find that as she spears more she will get stronger quite quickly and can go back to the singles if she wants. some people don't like twins for speed of loading but i much prefer that to hassling my buddy to load my gun, which is likely to take longer than twin rubbers!

if she can almost load the existing band but isn't chest loading id say she can load it on her chest. before i got a "proper" suit i used to put an old thong down the front of my wetsuit to load against. i also modified the loading pad of my first gun so it was a lot larger to distribute some of the weight a bit more too.

Simple solution, leave her at home

My missus has a 70/75cm Taipan with a 14 band and I think a quite thin 6mm or 6.5mm spear. It's a ripper. She's shot flatties, snook and salmon with it so far. It's easy to handle and load for her height and strength and the thin spear gives it loads of speed and enough range for flatties, snook, salmon, whiting, pinkies, sweep etc. IMHO a 110 is overkill, especially in the shallows. I guess it all depends on your girl's fitness, breath hold and experience.

got the new SDM mag yesterday. On the dvd that comes with it, Featherstone was putting together a gun for his 10yr old boy. He put twin 12mm rubbers on it.

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bluedevilspear@hotmail.com

Totally want to swim with a whale shark after watching that DVD

Alrighty,

Single 57.5cm 16mm powerband using Rob Allen rubber and bridal. Loads like a dream now, though I haven't taken it out yet to test fire, etc.

Also managed to put a nice gash in my hand from the bridal kit. It hurts a lot. I've learned that lesson.

I'm guessing its going to be slightly underpowered still with only a single, but given that shes not exactly going to be taking on kingfish with this gun any time soon, probably doesn't matter too much.

I'm still convinced that proper technique is 9/10ths of it. I really struggled to load the gun on my first two dive trips before Paul at Legendary kindly showed me the right way to do it (using an unloaded gun). Never had a problem since and that's with a 19mm rubber and pen-pusher arms.