Starting out FAQs

Plenty of people want to get into spearfishing but just don't know where to start. It's reassuring to know that, whilst spearfishing has an undeniable element of risk to it, it's enjoyed safely by thousands of fellow spearos in the UK every weekend where visibility allows us to.

The best way is to get involved with a club, or join UK Spearfishing Buddies @ukspearfishingbuddies on Facebook and get involved with other likeminded spearos.

The main thing you want to do is just to go out with a buddy. There's a very strong code amongst spearfisherman whereby we always like to at least dive in pairs and look out for each other. The main benefit is that you're diving with another experienced spearfisherman so you're going to speed up the learning curve. You don't have to make all the mistakes we made in the past because we'll just show you the best ways! So there are loads of people who are always looking for buddies and there are clubs pretty much all along the south coast of the UK.

Also there's the BSA which is the British Spearfishing Association. As well as running competitions throughout the year they also run fun days which are aimed at helping introduce new people into the sport. On those days we all meet up, go through the equipment, take you out for a dive and see if you enjoy it.

There are some important dos and don'ts when starting out spearfishing. So it is important to get some form of tuition to avoid making silly mistakes. For example, a lot of people go out and buy a speargun and they'll use their long body board leash and velcro it to their wrist because obviously they don't want to lose it. The problem with this is if you dive underwater and you miss your fish, the spear can easily get lodged between some rocks so it's near impossible to remove it - and in a panic situation, this is where accidents could happen. It's just little things like this which you just need to be educated on. Once you know it, it seems obvious - but unless someone's there telling you abut the potential risks and dangers, it probably wouldn't even be on your radar, you just wouldn't think about it.

Also it's important to have a service buoy which is basically a float that your speargun is connected to with about 10 - 20 metres of line. This float will have a diver down flag so other water users, people in boats, should be able to see this flag and recognise that there's a diver under water. So even though you might be invisible them because you're under water diving and hunting, boats in the water should be able to recognise this flag and avoid you making it safer for you to hunt.

Aside from this, should you shoot into the rocks and your gun gets stuck or you come into any kind of problem, you can just let go of everything and not have to worry about losing your gun because it's attached to this float, and you can just go back up to the surface, rest up on your float, take a moment to compose yourself and then swim back down to resolve whatever the situation is. So there's lots of little dos and don'ts, and it just takes someone to buddy up with to show you these things, just so that you can learn them. These are mistakes that are very easy to make if you're going out on your own and you've not got the support of someone with a bit of experience.

If you're not into clubs or you're struggling to find a partner to buddy up with, then the other option is to take a course. Our courses have a 1-2 day variance, depending on the amount of free time you have and your budget. Feel free to get in touch if you want to learn more.

Most spearfishing in the UK occurs between 4 and 12 metres. These kind of depths tend to be kelp rich which naturally attracts marine life. Where there's small fish you'll find larger predatory fish feeding on them.

Most new spearos get into the mindset that they need to go deeper for longer in order to find that fish of a lifetime. This really couldn't be further from the truth. All of the biggest fish I've seen taken were within about 7 metres of the surface. Instead of thinking about depth, think more about the type of environment that your fish is going to be in.

Obviously flat fish like sandy bottoms. If you can find that next to a row of kelp then that is going to be great hunting ground for that type of flatfish. If you're looking for mullet, they like stringweed and that dusty kelp instead of that lush green looking kelp so you want to focus your attention on those kind of areas. Lobsters and crabs have little caves and holes slightly sheltered by kelp and away from the tidal flows and strong currents. Scallops again like sandy dusty bottoms. So it's not about how deep can you go to get that fish, it's more about getting in tune with your hunting mentality and investigating the different types of terrain and scenarios where you think they're likely going to be.

Other things are, where's the current coming from? Are you at headland? Is this going to be an area where a shoal of fish can rest after a feed and can they pick off food that's stuck in these stronger currents getting pushed past them? Again it's all about thinking about the habitat that these type of fish are likely to be in, as oppose to just thinking, 'oh if I could only get to 25 metres i'm sure that big fish is going to be sat there waiting' - because it's really not the case.

Spearfishing is a method of fishing that involves using a spear or a specialised spear gun to catch fish underwater. Usually this is done whole snorkeling / free diving.