Hi All
Me and my 2 young sons have just arrived on the Silver coast of Portugal from Cape Town South Africa.
I have resolved to revert to my BC past time of surfing but my sons are trying to keep me accountable to free diving & spear fishing.
Are there any divers on here or resources I can be pointed to in terms of spear fishing on the Portuguese coast? We are located close to Lourinhã in the Silver Coast.
TIA
Hello there!
As a newby spearfisher from Portugal, I think I can give you some useful tips.
If you want some equipment and someone keen to give you recommendations regarding freediving, Sparus Sub is a very good shop with a very knowledgeable owner (it's in Peniche, quite close to Lourinhã, you can google its website).
Between Ericeira and Peniche, you have a lot os good spots to spearfish nearby, although in most of them it takes some careful choice of good weather days, since many times the weather doesn't allow for spearfishing, especially in the winter.
Some good sources of information I can give are: an YouTube channel called Executive Sub Spearfishing (I don't know if you understand Portuguese but the YouTube's automatic translation should do the trick); another one are spearfishing groups in Facebook, there will be plenty of people there who can give you tips and to arrange some dives with. As expectable, there will also be people there very unwilling to share their secret spots and tips, but that's just half of them. Search for "caça submarina Portugal" on Facebook and ask to be invited.
As for myself, I live near Santarém, around 70km from Peniche, but unfortunately I don't have a driver's license so I only go spearfishing quite occasionally as you can understand.
I'd recommend you look into that shop, that YouTube channel and Facebook group, but either way you'll probably want to get a 5mm or 7mm (if you're less tolerant to cold or want to go in the winter as well) suit, a 75cm simple speargun, and of course a float (it's mandatory). You'll probably need a license, which is just a simple payment in a bank machine (not sure you need to, I think I once heard that foreigners don't need one when they're in the county for less than a certain time, do look into that).
Beware that there are minimum size limits, and that these limits are really not that restrictive, one should be more selective than what these limits suggest (I'll try to attach a file with the limits).
I hope this is helpful, and don't hesitate to ask any specific questions.
