Diving Rock Pools

Ok, don't laugh,

I've been spearing for quite a few years, and rod fishing as well, particularly in the mouth of an estuary near where I live. I've always been interested by an area of water which gets cut of by the tide for about 2-3 hours on an average tide. Although it's only about 6 ft deep I guess it's at least 75m by 30m, which makes it quite a large rockpool!!

Anyway today I decided to check it out, just snorkeling, no gun, as I was only expecting to see school bass and crabs. To my surprise I came across at least 10 mullet in the 4-5lb range (could have been many more but I wasn't sure if I saw the same ones more than once) and a couple of nice Bass, the biggest of which at least 6-7lb. There were plenty of nice kelpy hiding places and rock ledges to use.

I have spoken to an angler friend of mine who seemed to think it wouldn't be legal to spear fish in this scenario, but I can't see why not? there are no laws/guidelines that I can see that would be a problem?

Does anyone know of a reason why I couldn't /shouldn't spear a nice Mullet or Bass for my tea? The vis is so bad in the open sea at the moment that this could be my only chance for a while.

Thanks

Just to update, as no-one got back to me, I decided to have a go anyway today with my gun.

When I got in the vis wasn't as good as it was yesterday and I didn't see any of the bigger fish anyway. A couple of boarderline Bass, which I always leave, and plenty of smaller Mullet, but nothing worth having a shot at.

One interesting thing though was that right in the middle of the pool tucked into some weed, I found a very new looking, stainless fish stringer. A sure sign someone else has had the same idea. I needed a new one anyway so that was good. I'll probably wait until later on in the week until the tides are right for a quick trip after work and go and take another look.