Pneumatic Speargun issue

    I took my new Mares Cyrano 830 out today, had a couple pound rainbow parrotfish in my sights... he was only a few feet away... I was aiming at center mass, shot him right in the middle, yet somehow it didnt even pierce him. It glanced right off and went over the top of him.


    I was using a big ricktip with 4 inch wings... am I using too big of a speartip for the little shaft?


    My speartip wasnt sharp as a needle... does it need to be?


    I shot another fish. That time the speartip penetrated but it didnt go past the barbs so it got away (why didnt it go through it?).


    And with one fish it went through him, all the way to where the fish was on my line instead of the shaft (but that was like point blank range).



    Oh, and I wasn't deep at all, only a few meters (so pressure effect on the speargun is out).


    Does it sound like my pneumatic speargun low on air? If so, how do i check how low, and how much to pump into it?


    I have a JBL 3 band explorer, and with just 2 band its about 3 times the power as my pneumatic.


    So why isnt my pneumatic packing a punch at just 5 feet away. Why wont it go through the fish when I hit it center mass right behind the gill?


    I am going to put on a much smaller hawaiian slip tip and see if that does anything.


    But please, anyone with pneumatic speargun experience tell me what they think about the non-penetration issue.

    If you have no way of checking how much air the gun has. Then start by releaseing all the air and pump it back up, please verify this but I think the norm for that gun is 600-900 pumps?

    I believe your gun should be an 850 not an 830.


    Make sure the low pressure selector is not on.


    Use a single flopper spear, the double flopper tip is unnecessarily heavy. No need for a slip tip, it's for hunting big fish, something you wouldn't normally count on doing with such a small pneumatic.


    Don't worry about the measure of how much air is in the gun. Don't take any air out. Pump it 50 times and see how it is to load. Keep adding 50 pumps until the gun is as hard to load as you'd want. I'm not sure but I think you can't over pump the gun with the factory pump it comes with. If you've reach the maximum pressure the little pump will give you and it's still not enough, you'll have to take it to someone who has a fitting that can feel the gun from a compressor or an air tank. In such a case they will have a gauge that will say how much air is in the gun.


    This pneumatic should have no problem penetrating these fish completely from the distance you described.


    There's a small possibility that on the fish you described the gun as bouncing off, the spear did pass through and hit a rock that was directly behind the fish.


    Overall though the 850 is a small gun not meant to be used over any significant distance. The punching power it will have is for closeup shots only.

    Dan, changing your avatar AND name is not fair to the rest of us...I wondering how this guy snuck in here and posted 4000+ times without me ever seeing him...Duhhhhh- cool narwal pic



    chastral- you mentioned the gun was new...did you get it at a local shop? I'd start there and see if they can help you or switch it out for another gun

    i like to spear fish

    Maybe for air shipping they had to take out the air and the store owner was too lazy to fill it all up.

    Davie Peguero

    yea it is an 850, dont know what I was thinking.


    I bought it from leisurepro.com.


    It is rather easy to load, so I am going to put 50 more pumps into it and see how that works.


    Thanks everyone.

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