Hey guys welcome to another edition of unrolling the roller I am Chris C oates and
in this episode i'm going to be dispelling the myth that long rollers don't work
and why i love my 120 single roller so much and why i think it's one of
the best guns built by Rob Allen. Stick around this is going to be really good.
Spearfishing Cobia
In the last two episodes I covered the 90 and 110 single rollers. Thanks so much for all the
great feedback with so many guys trying out the setups from the videos so kick back relax
get your favorite drink and let's get into this next video you hear it all the time on interweb
that long rollers don't work in theory there should be no reason why they do not
one of the reasons small guns work so well is that proportionately you can load more into them
let me explain if you can load 50 to 60 kilos onto the notch then your loading
capacity is the same whether you're loading it into a 90 or into 120 centimeter long gun
so it's easier to load the right amount of energy into a smaller gun than it is into
a longer one almost everything is scalable and the only variable is what you are able to load
and if what you're able to load is enough which it probably is then there's no reason why 120 or
130 roller gun won't work in fact this 120 over here is one of my all-time favorite roller guns
and what i believe is to be one of the best blue water reef all-rounders available on the market
if i could only have one gun this would be it making it pretty much one of the best off the
shelf guns at the Dive Factory the 120 is my go-to gun when i'm guiding i can sharp shoot fast moving
rainbow runners and punch all the way through a big doggy's head on the second shot this is
also my go-to recommendation for clients coming to the subtropics you know where they're diving
and looking for jobbies and big grouper on the reef this is lethal with jobbies and where they
are jobbies they are usually bigger pelagics like cuda and the 120 has enough hitting power to take
down most fish. This for me is the ultimate couture spanish macro gun most the time you can get fairly
close and with the confidence that you have from a gun that is so consistently so accurate
means that you can pick where you shoot the fish making it some of the best hunting you'll ever do
So the question is why don't long rollers work? I think it's because of these two main reasons:
The first one is obviously wrong band and shaft setups and the second one is muzzle wraps.
Both of these are solvable. On setups I will go over what i've found to just work and i won't cover
all the wrong setups but i will say this you should not be hand loading a 120 single roller.
When you scale up a 120 from those epic 90 and 110 rollers it's more than you can load by hand.
And you're most likely going to be using a 7.5mm shaft with a 16mm band,
And for that you're going to need to use a load assist if you haven't seen the video on load assist check it
out in the link above with that you'll be able to load just about any roller gun on the market
the second main issue guys have with long roller guns is muzzle wraps this is primarily because
guys do not keep their shooting lines tight and if your shooting line is slack when you track
your gun the shooting line flops over the rubber and this is a surefire way to get a muzzle wrap
after loading always double check and make sure your your dyneema shooting line is tight.
Muzzle wraps is a fairly complex subject i would have to have a whole separate video to cover the subject
but that said if you just keep your dyneema shooting line tight you'll almost completely
eliminate muzzle wraps with roller guns. Let's get into the 120 setup as always i'll start your
points with any gun is what shaft you're going to use and it as explained in previous videos
the longer the gun the greater the buoyancy proportionately because all your components
are the same the handle your reel your muzzle those things all weigh the same but the volume
inside the barrel increases so the longer your gun proportionately more buoyancy you have in that gun
so that means that the 120 is fantastic with a 7mm shaft and will even take a 7.5mm quite well.
When I first started using a 120 I used the 7mm shaft because it's better balanced than the 7.5mm.
The 7mm shaft is also faster which is a big plus over time I've settled with the 7.5mm
The thicker shaft has less flex so I found it to be more accurate and I bend fewer shafts
But it's the extra punch and penetration that you get from the 7.5mm shaft is the main reason why I've stuck with a thicker shaft
The 120 for me is my go-to for big cuda and you need to be able to get through a meter of fish especially when you're aiming
for those acute angles i'm going to have to do a whole video just on those shots
So if you're using a 7.5mm shaft then the 16mm rubber is the right rubber thickness
and for this you will need to use a load assist. Using the same easy rubber formula of half barrel plus five
centimeters which gives you 65 centimeters of on the 16mm band this is perfect for the 120.
I've also noticed in the comments and feedback from other guys from the other videos is that this
formula has been slightly either too hard or too soft for the guys this will depend on the rubber
that you guys get and obviously i mean some guys are stronger than other guys but if you're using
good quality natural latex rubber you'll find that this will only vary a centimeter or two so use the
half barrel plus five as a guideline start there and if it's easy take off a centimeter time if
you're finding it too hard maybe just get a longer load assist, try a 40 or 45 centimeter load assist .
and you'll be amazed at what you can actually load easily on a single roller
so what makes the 120 carbon roller so great compared to the other guns i've already covered
If you remember my comments on the 110 with the 7.5mm shaft that I felt it was just a little bit
too heavy for my lacking it did shoot really well but now with the 120 it's got just that
little bit more buoyancy so the 7.5mm shaft isn't so much of a problem
and if you pair the um 7.5mm shaft the 16mm bands on the 120 it gives you a fair bit
more power and range than you would out of a 110 and it still is super accurate i think this extra
power and range that you get actually exceeds what i would consider as a practical shooting
range for most fish so you always have a little bit more performance than you really need for
for most fish you're going to be putting the trigger on and that's an ideal situation to have
so what is practical shooting range this is the practical distance or range that you shoot fish at
in my experience and going over years and years of blue water footage is that we all
think that we shoot the fish further away than we really are most shots are within single rap range
go look at most youtube spearfishing videos and see how many raps come off the speargun when the shaft hits
the fish most of them will be well within single rap range. Gopros don't help either and they make
the fish look a lot further away than they actually are and what we see through our mask
if you've ever done a pull test and actually measured out the distance from the targets
you'll know that seven meters from the diver which is approximately five meters from the end
of the speargun which is actually single rap range on a 120 it looks quite close but if you've taken a
conventional 130 you'll notice that there's a considerable amount of shaft drop
at that distance and you'd have to actually compensate to be accurate the 120
is lethal at this range but it's it's further away than you think in the water and most fish
are well within that distance so for me the 120 is still nimble enough for small fish
and it has all the power and range i need for most situations now it's hard to talk about the 120
without also talking about the 130 single roller the 130 because of the added buoyancy is actually
better balanced than the 120 with a 7.5mm shaft and the 16mm bands at 70 centimeters using
the same half barrel plus five centimeter formula drives the 7.5mm really really well
with the same consistent accuracy that you would get out of the 120 roller
the 130 rubber at 70 centimeters is 370 stretch when fully loaded this is important because the
longer the gun is the more energy you need to load into the gun for to perform properly
this does however mean that the 130 is going to be that little bit more difficult to load
than the 120 so for the smaller guys i would suggest your load assist don't make it
the standard 30 cm make it 40 or 45 cm and just make it easy for yourself
so the 130 is a fair bit more powerful than the 120 which kind of limits the gun on the
reef this is a purely open water gun for bigger pelagics so if you're looking for a gun for
wahoo and bigger blue water pelagics the 130 is going to be your go-to my personal opinion
is that you actually don't need anything more than the 130 unless you're targeting fish well
over 100 kilos and if you consider the cost of other blue water guns in the market you realize
that the 130 single roller is definitely your best bang for your buck blue water gun on the markets
before i wrap this up one of the most frequently asked questions i get
on these videos is about aluminium barrels and will they work with rollers um i realize that
for most you guys you already have ali spearguns and you want to convert those two roller guns and
can either not afford to buy a carbon barrel or in some cases you can't even get them but the plain
and simple answer is yes they will work the 120 and 130 have more than enough buoyancy to float
when the shafts out and the surface the ali barrel specifically the Rob Allen is extremely durable
and on a roller gun your forces are actually on both sides when the gun is loaded so there's no
problem with flex or anything like that and a conventional 16mm band gun where the load is
all on one side actually puts way more force on than a roller does and an alley barrel is
found it's been designed for that so there's no problem with the strength of the barrel
the only problem is is obviously the weight in the water this will mean that if you relax the
muzzle sinks when holding out the gun so you have to lift up the muzzle with the handle
especially when on the bottom hunting fish like job fish this is where a well-designed handle
or grip makes all the difference how much of an issue is this well that will depend on the diver
and their technique and where you're hunting if you're hunting an open water or blue water
a lot of the fish will shoot you'll be diving you'll be chasing in these situations if you have
good technique as in you keep your gun in while approaching the fish and only extend out at the
point when you see the shots you'll probably not notice the lack of buoyancy and have too much of
an issue with the grip lying on the bottom and having to lift the gun up smooth and quick for
fish like jobbies and coral cracker this is where you're going to notice the difference especially
if you've used a well-balanced gun in the past another thing to consider with heavy guns it's
like diving with a pendulum or a drop weight but instead of leaving that weight behind at
the bottom you have to swim that weight all the way back up to the surface every single time
i guess this only becomes a real problem at deeper depths and yes you can compensate by
taking some weights off your weight belts the nice thing about it is that you can actually
follow your gun um down when you when you're diving down which does assist you
so i guess it's not all bad but remember you have to swim that weight back up every single time and
that is a bit of an issue so with the 120 and 130 if an aluminium barrel is your only option
you can make it work for you but i would maybe consider using a 7mm shaft instead of a 7.5mm shaft
That will lighten the gun up quite a lot and if necessary turn the power down
on your 16mm bands if you're finding the shaft starting to whip especially with the 130 where
you're using a 1.7 meter shaft so this pretty much sums up all the videos on the single roller setups
and depends on where you're living and hunting you can have all your bases covered with two to three
guns best of all once you have one gun dialed in if all your handles and muzzles are the same it'll
be easy to flip-flop between the different lengths of guns without having to adjust at all so that's
it for this edition of unrolling the roller i hope i've covered everything you need to know
but if you have any questions please ask them in the comments below the conversations become
great additional resource to all the videos and help clarify anything that i might have missed
or bring up that i haven't even considered after all this is a learning process for all of us if
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thanks so much for watching and i hope this video has been super helpful cheers
Coatesman's Spearfishing