Martin crafted his first homemade classic speargun from oak in 2011. It was 60 cm long and it could kill a fish. If this fish did not move and you shot it from 20 cm away. The fish also had to be smaller than 20 cm.
Soon after we met at University, we went on our first spearfishing trip. Uros bought his first rubber-powered speargun 65 that was made from aluminium tube. We were familiar with the sea world and snorkelling but hunting fish with spearguns was something new to both of us. Needless to say, we got hooked on it for good.
In 2013, Martin made 4 new double rubber band spearguns 90. They were made out from mahogany and they were kind of rough. They were effective though and precise at the range of 2m which brought us to bigger fish and more interesting fish hunting. The same year we also successfully completed free diving course and found ourselves a mentor in an experienced spearfisherman with 26 years of spearfishing stories, life tips, and instructions to improve our underwater hunting technique.
For 4 years, we studied as much as we were able to - about the sea, fish, crabs, cuttlefish, and other marine animals and matured into new people. We learnt about sustainability, respecting nature, looking after your diving buddy, and acquired a boating licence. We gained knowledge of marine life, the behaviour of fish, their mating season, and we grew personally nearly as much as our desire for spearfishing.
In 2016, we became a little tired of our homemade spearguns. They were too rough and heavy which made us realise that we need proper equipment to achieve maximum pleasure and to get the one fish that is always a little too far to reach. We decided to mimic the cuttlefish and its way of hunting because we hunted similarly. When we hunted, we always dressed in camouflage suits, slowly drifted between cracks, and hid ourselves behind the rocks until we came close enough to a prey and then successfully finished a dive (you know what we’re talking about). We also noticed a trend of cuttlebone shaped spearguns on the market and thus an idea was born.
In 2017, our first home crafted wooden roller speargun, alongside with our first wooden inverted roller speargun were completed. After a sailing and spearfishing trip, we tested them and were astonished by their precision, power, balance, and stability. Do not get us wrong, they still had some flaws, but we were still extremely proud of ourselves. Finally, we got ourselves a speargun with which we were able to shoot a fish at 4 m. That’s when it hit us: “We should totally introduce some of these spearguns to other spearfishermen.” Then the real hard work started. We were still college students and it was still a hobby for us, so we took our time.
After an improvement here and an improvement there, we supplied our fellow fishermen with the first official Elegans 95 in 2019. After 3 days on the seaside, he sent us a couple of photos of a trophy fish dentex. Not sure who was excited more: us or him. That ignited our passion for crafting spearguns even more and led us to this point.
