Given my love of fishing, the interactions I have with fish have always been largely inter-dimensional. The inherent boundary between the fish in the water and my presence beside or floating (assisted) above it starts to blur slightly when wade fishing but the water surface still presents a barrier between fish and fisher. An ever-changing, off-focus window between worlds. For me, successfully looking through this window in pursuit of our quarry and seeing a fish before presenting a fly, lure or bait to it is the pinnacle of fishing.

The natural extension of this endeavour is to cross over into the fish’s world so that there is no barrier between us and them. At a basic level, this is the essence of spearfishing, a pursuit that I have crossed paths with multiple times through my fishing exploits.

From a historical perspective, both techniques for catching fish date back thousands of years. The Greek historian Polybius wrote of spears used for catching swordfish around 200BC to 100BC, and the famous Cosquer cave near Marseille contains depictions of spearfishing that have been dated to the Paleolithic period, around 16,000 years ago. Fishing in all its forms has a far longer history but rod-and-line fishing, in contrast, dates back ‘only’ about 4,000 years.

A basic knowledge of freediving is fundamental to being a competent spearo

Like fishing, spearfishing has undergone a continuous (albeit punctuated) evolution over the millennia, resulting in the sport we see today. The equipment used started with simple harpoons or sharpened, barbed poles, through pole spears (a hand spear with a rubber sling attached to the back) and Hawaiian slings (similar to a pole spear but the shaft of the spear feeds into a tube) through to the modern speargun. The origin of the last can be traced back to the mid- 1930s, when Alex Kramarenko patented a gun where a compressed spring propelled a spear. After this a speargun that used elastic bands for propulsion was invented in France by Georges Beuchat in 1947.

Today most spearguns are of this ‘banded’ form, with the propulsion of the spear provided by one or more thick rubber bands. These are positioned against the back end of the spear, pulled back to load the gun and then held in place by a simple mechanism that is released by pulling the trigger, propelling the spear forward.

‘Spearos’ liken the sport to stalking as both demand stealth and patience

Hunting not fishing

In the right hands, this simple mechanical system is a highly effective way of hunting fish. This use of the term ‘hunting’ is exactly how avid spearfisherman (or ‘spearo’ in the sport’s parlance) Mat Coombe describes spearfishing to me when we speak. An all-round fieldsportsman (with a recently found passion for falconry), he likens spearfishing to deerstalking: “UK spearfishing is about hunting. If you can imagine stalking a deer in water, that is a close analogy to how I view spearfishing.”

For Coombe the appeal of spearfishing is this feeling of hunting your quarry and the sustainability of being able to be hugely selective with the fish that you take. Reading the conditions, learning fish behaviour and movement patterns, and knowing where and when to go is a huge part of the buzz of the sport. As an angler, this all feels very familiar. I recognised this shared skill set years ago when an avid spearo told me a story of his most recent spearfishing exploit. Out in pursuit of bass, he had dived down about 20 feet to the seabed on a favourite reef in Cornwall. Seeing a few bass darting about, he concealed himself in some seaweed, draping the fronds across himself before waiting until one came close enough to take a shot and secure supper.

Bass are a choice species for spearfishmen, as are pollack and plaice

At the time I remember being amazed. The thought of freediving down 20 feet to the bottom seemed quite impressive enough, but to then craft some kind of elaborate disguise of seaweed while holding one’s breath before waiting (for around a minute) until a bass came in range seemed like a scene from a James Bond movie.

For those who spearfish, this story doesn’t cause much of a raised eyebrow. In fact, it is one of the advantages of spearfishing in the UK, according to Ian Donald, a freediver and spearo who has been teaching both pursuits for almost two decades. “Almost all (probably 95%) of the spearfishing in the UK is in shallow water less than 30 feet deep. In many cases you can do it in water much shallower than that. This makes it relatively easy to spearfish here, so the barrier to entry from a technical freediving perspective is relatively small,” he explains.

This requirement for fairly basic freediving abilities is in contrast to many other places in the world where spearos often dive to much greater depths. When I caught up with Donald he had recently returned from the Canaries, where he bumped into a spearfisherman with a nice bonito that he had just shot. The diver in question had freedived down 40 metres and had then stayed on the bottom for 30 to 40 seconds. A pretty incredible feat for those who don’t freedive and, according to Donald, one that is simply not necessary in the UK for the vast majority of spearos.

Blessed as we are in the UK with much shallow, inshore habitat, there are a multitude of places to go spearfishing. Where to go at a holistic level is predicated on being able to see the fish. Cornwall, Devon, west Wales and much of Scotland are therefore fertile hunting grounds. Areas such as the Bristol Channel or the east end of the English Channel (where water clarity is much lower) are a tough bet.

When asked about exactly where to go, all the spearos I asked echoed the same advice, which was to head to places that will be familiar to any seasoned angler. Inshore reefs, rocky headlands and spots where sandy bays give way to rocks and reef – the kind of habitat frequented by bass but also other choice targets like pollack, gilthead bream and flatfish such as plaice. There are also other more unusual species turning up on UK shores now that spearos are running into, amberjack and bonito being a couple of them.

While there are a multitude of places to go spearfishing in the UK, Cornwall’s clear waters and rocky reefs make it a particular hotspot

Perhaps, predictably, the best time of year to go overlaps with the peak of the fishing season – May to October is optimal, possibly November for the very keen or very hardy. This is to maximise the chance of finding your target but is also a case of simple logistics. Donald explains this to me clearly: “A spearfishing session may often last for several hours. You therefore don’t want to get cold quickly. Going out in the summer into autumn months means that the water is warmest and you are able to stay out for a decent period of time.”

Getting started

Given the inherent risks with a pursuit like spearfishing, getting out there on your own and ‘having a crack’ is probably not a wise idea. Most experienced spearos will give you the same recommendation when asked: take an introductory course, even one just a day or two long, to help familiarise oneself with the basics. In particular, becoming acquainted with the kit and starting to learn to freedive are important first steps for newcomers to the sport.

The actual entry barriers to spearfishing are, however, relatively low. As both Donald and Coombe comment, the kind of habitat that most spearos hunt in the UK is relatively shallow, so having the ability to dive to huge depths is not critical. Being confident in the water is a necessary prerequisite, as is the ability to swim to a reasonable standard. Nevertheless, Donald explains that having a basic knowledge of freediving is fundamental to being a competent spearo. Being able to freedive even moderately well just opens up the opportunities for spearfishing and at least gives one the potential to explore habitat that is more than a brief duck beneath the water surface.

The sport is relatively lightly regulated and, from a legal perspective, the age at which one can take up spearfishing is something of a grey area. It is illegal to buy a speargun below the age of 16 in the UK but there isn’t a specific age restriction for using one. Many spearfishing organisations do specify a minimum age of around 12 to 16 to take up the sport. The British Spearfishing Association, for example, specifies juniors as being between 14 and 18 years old. For any budding youngsters chomping at the bit to get in the water to pursue supper with a spear, a pole spear can potentially be used from a much younger age: Coombe was using one from about the age of six.

Given the abundant opportunities in the UK and the apparent ease with which one can practice the sport, it is something of a surprise that there aren’t more spearos here. It is, however, a hobby that is rapidly growing in popularity. This is driven in part by the high level of sustainability that the sport can boast but also the inherent connection to wilderness. In a country where we have little true wilderness and what we do have is often tightly controlled, with limited or restricted access, anyone can go out into the largest area of accessible wilderness that the UK has to offer and hunt themselves some supper. If that isn’t enough of a reason to try it, then I don’t know what is. (Read The Field’s best fish recipes here.)

Spearfishing guides and courses

The oldest freediving club in the UK, Apneists UK offers spearfishing and foraging courses in North Wales, the east of England and Scotland, taught by a range of experienced instructors.

FreediveUK is run by Ian Donald, who has been teaching freediving, underwater foraging and spearfishing since 2009. He runs introductory two-day courses to pole-spear spearfishing and underwater foraging, based out of Newquay in Cornwall.

Based in Plymouth, Sound Diving offers courses on freediving and spearfishing, including the ‘give it a go’ spearfishing introductory course. It is shortly opening a café called the ‘Nudibrunch’ where it will offer catch-and-cook courses, enabling budding spearos to head out, hunt their fish and then learn how to cook it.

Spearfishing UK is an online retail store that is also a resource for a wide range of information for spearfishing enthusiasts. In addition to selling and renting spearfishing kit, the company runs introductory courses of either one or two days in Cornwall.