Catherine is back from NY and she and I went out yesterday afternoon. Vis on the main reef was kind of stirred up with maybe 20 feet of visibility. We just drove past it and hit the bar which was bathed in beautiful blue water with vis from around 60-80 feet.
On the edge of the main reef there was a weed line with tons of bait swirling around. We jumped in, the only fish other then the bait was small horse eye jacks, thousands of them. It was pretty cool swimming totally surrounded by small bait fish and then having the horse eye jacks charge in attacking them.
Catherine shot a little video, then her camera batteries died.
My girlfriend loves her Rabitech Hunter. It shoots good, loads good , trigger mech seemed good for awhile but we have have had issues with it. According to Rabitech the Hunter is susceptible to getting sand in it. Now we don’t shore dive so our exposure to sand is very limited but we still experience the “sand effect”. The shaft won’t lock into place when the gun is dry. Fortunately we tend to use spear guns wet so this isn’t that big of deal but its still in issue. It’s like magic, the shaft won’t lock into place, then I spray some water in the trigger and it locks in like butter.
The Rabitech Apex trigger and handle are in the same league with the Aimrite in my opinion and both are superior to the Rob Allen and Rabitech Hunter trigger, also in my opinion. Of course you pay a lot more for the Apex or the Aimrite, so it is relative. The handle on the Apex is sort of odd shaped and from what I hear isn’t supposed to be as comfortable if you have large hands. I don’t have large hands and it feels fine to me. There is a new style handle coming out for the Apex that supposedly addresses some of these issues. The trigger mech has plenty of room to rig the gun with heavy mono and the rail on the barrel is deep and holds the shaft in place well. This is kind of important to me because I am often loading the gun while trying to keep my eye on fleeing fish. I currently have the Rabitech Apex with an open muzzle. There is some debate on muzzles but I feel that the closed muzzle will always add a little drag to shaft. Although people disagree with that I don’t see how pulling the loop of mono through the hole can not add a little drag.
Everybody loves Rob Allen spear guns, all over the place you see awesome spearos with Rob Allen guns etc. I think they are probably the best deal for the money. Although for the price I think they are around the same price as the Rabitech Hunter guns, not sure which would be the better deal. Anyways my experience with the Rob Allens is they shoot great but I didn’t like the trigger mech that much. I had issues with the spear not locking into place sometimes. They also have no loading butt on the handle. I thought that a butt would make it more comfortable to load without a wetsuit, but it was the opposite. The Rob Allen was actually more comfortable without any padding. But the downside was when just wearing a lycra the gun would sometimes twist, or slide down my chest while loading.
Also the Rob Allen shafts rust in pretty short period of time, even if you rinse them a lot. They still work fine they just don’t look at nice. Probably a quick scrubbing with steel wool would sharpen it up.
UPDATE
There was something wrong with the trigger, florida free divers sent me a new trigger mech free of charge and now the shaft locks in like butter. Also the rusty shafts were part of a defective shipment of shafts. I have since got a bunch of RA shafts and they don’t rust, well a little at the tip but hardly at all.
