Why do spearguns have reels

This is a dyneema line that is durable, strong and does not tangle easy which is the perfect material for line. Cart is empty. Shop By Brands. This site requires JavaScript to function properly. Please enable JavaScript in your web browser. Home Advice Speargun Reels. Speargun Reels. Time Left. What is a Speargun Reel? Pro's of a Reel Less chasing the fish once shot Easy to reel in Prevents the fish from taking the gun out of your hand Can any speargun have a gun reel?

Product rating. Subscribe to the Dive Warehouse Newsletter for all the latest Specials! Using a reel does have some major disadvantages over the traditional set-up which will be discussed later but for me at least the benefits far outweigh the extra hassles. I have used many different types of reel set-ups over the years but had always considered them unsuitable for the majority of my diving, particularly with big fish like kingies.

A trip to South Africa and several dives with Rob Allen and a few of his mates however forced me to reconsider a lot of my assumptions. These guys were almost exclusively using reels. They were diving in deep water in strong currents and targeting big fish. Everything else from the Dive Factory has been perfectly suited to New Zealand conditions so it made sense that the new Vecta reels would be too. The performance benefits to your diving without a floatline holding you back are profound but the inadequacy of the light weight, euro reels available were a major hold back.

At the time of my trip the Rob Allen Vecta reels were well and truly in full production and in typical RA style had solved all the practical issues plaguing the other reels on the market.

The more diving I do the more important I find simplicity in my equipment. The fact of the matter is that if you want to shoot more fish you need to get closer to more fish first. This means maximizing your time on the bottom in the right areas and diving better. No amount of slip-tips or bungees or breakaways or extra rubbers are going to help with this. If you want to enter the water as an athlete you need to be as free as possible.

When I first started out with a reel I was only using it while snapper snooping in the shallows. It was fantastic. I no longer had to think about where my floatline was going before I dived and I could concentrate solely on where I thought a fish might be parked and the best way to get myself there unnoticed. Then I started thinking that it would be nice while weedlining as well in some deeper water.

The reel gun made diving the deep water a breeze. No drag meant I was more relaxed on the surface and could stay longer on the bottom without my float trying to pull me off. By this stage I was becoming hooked. The one thing that still worried me though was what would happen if a big fish rolled past? The guys in SA were shooting some massive fish with their reels but they were mostly spanish mackerel and garrick and other fish that speed off and fight near the surface.

How would I stop it without a float? Not once. So no float was going to be more of a psychological barrier than a real one. At about 2mm reel line is much thinner than a typical 6mm floatline though so the actual fight is going to be more difficult and extra care needed to prevent tangles that could end in disaster.

There was only one thing to do and that was to go and plug some small kingies and see what happens. When that time came it was probably my most memorable fight ever.

I had been diving on a goldy rock out at Great Barrier Island and had just started what I was expecting to be a long descent to around m. A few moments into my drop some movement caught my eye and I saw a couple of very healthy kingys lazily swimming along a crack with a bronze whaler in tow. I angled my fins to alter my descent to intercept the kingies just as they would pop out of the crack into clear water. My timing was good and I placed a great holding shot through the gill plate of the last fish.

However spearguns already have a line attached to them by default, so why does someone need to install an additional reel? There are a few reasons for that. It is rare to see many spearos spearfishing with an oxygen tank or any other alternative sort of air supply on them. Most of them freedive using snorkels which means that they have limited time underwater in which they not only have to hunt the fish and reel it in but they also have to make sure that they reach the surface of the water in time, before their breath runs out.

When you use the default line on your speargun, you end up chasing and fighting the fish very often as it tries to fight the line in a futile attempt to escape. When you install a reel on a speargun however, you instantly lengthen the amount of line that is available to you. This means that when you shoot a fish successfully, you do not need to chase after it or fight it in anyway.