After visiting Madeira for the first time last year making the most of the direct flights from Jersey we decided to go back for a week at the end of September. Having traveled all over the island last year and ticking off most of the tourist stops, this was to be a beach holiday, just a week chilling out. It wasn’t a fishing holiday – my long suffering wife is enough of a fishing widow here – but I was granted permission to take a couple of travel rods and fish for a couple of hours each morning on the concrete blocks that run alongside the beach at Calheta. We were staying at Paul Do Mar which if you know Madeira is on the south western corner of the island about an hours drive from Funchal.
Being so far from the capital was likely to make getting bait a challenge so after arriving at our apartment on the Wednesday afternoon I took a walk to the local supermarket to see what I could source which was just a small pack of pretty manky Calamari squid and some frozen prawns, not perfect but it would have to do.
I had packed 2 travel rods, a heavy beach rod and a medium weight spinning rod with the idea being I would chuck a big bait out on the heavy rod and use the light rod for a mixture of light ledger, float and lure fishing to try and add a few new species to the list. I did a bit of research online but there wasn’t a lot of information on shore fishing in Madeira, especially in the area we were staying so I didn’t really know what to expect.
On the first full day I stopped on the way to the beach at a larger shop and managed to get some frozen sardines to supplement my bait. I started the first day with a big bait and touch ledgering with the light rod managing just 2 species, a Bastard Grunt – that is its actual name! – and an Ornate Wrasse but it quickly became clear the size 8 hooks I had taken were too big as the smaller fish constantly stripped the hooks. I packed up at lunchtime and later in the afternoon I took a walk down the road and found a bigger supermarket that had a fish counter, result!
The next day I stopped at the fish counter to pick up some Mackerel before heading back to the beach. I managed a couple more species on the light rod, a Comber and a Lizardfish before a bait check on the big rod found me hooked into a Stingray. It was a really strange fight, it didn’t feel like a massive fish and it didn’t really feel like a Ray which made sense when it surfaced and was foul hooked and coming in backwards. It was around 20lb so I traced it out and quickly unhooked it and let it go. I then discovered a set of tiny Sabiki’s I had forgotten I had packed so changed the lighter rod to much smaller hooks which made a huge difference and I went on to add quite a few new species including a small Amberjack.
The next few days I chopped and changed the lighter rod between ledger, float and lure adding a few extra species and had 2 takes on the big bait.
The first screamed off and when I wound into it it absolutely tore off at real speed, more like a Tope than a Ray. It then kited right and took another load of line at speed, at one point I reckon it was close to 200 yards out. I was a bit worried as it had run a long way across and with the swell was getting pushed towards the concrete blocks. Luckily it swam back out and after an epic battle I finally saw an Eagle Ray surface a fair way out. As someone with no experience of this kind of fishing it looked absolutely enormous, I have no idea what it would have weighed but was certainly the heaviest shore fish I have ever caught. I hadn’t taken a gaff with me, instead I had taken a t-bar with the idea being if I caught a big Ray rather than trying to drag it out single handed I would climb down and t-bar it off. Unfortunately the swell made it too dangerous for me to get that close, so I did the next best thing I could and cut the trace as close to the fish as I could get.
The second hook up was a different experience and I think most likely a standard Stingray as opposed to an Eagle Ray. It was really powerful and really heavy but nowhere near as fast. I had it on for quite a while but it had also ran a long way across the shore but on this occasion the swell took it to close to the concrete blocks and I ended up getting snagged. Because of the nature of the blocks it’s not easy to move along with a fish on.
I made a little video of the fishing while I was there which you can watch here:
Here are a few stills taken from the video.
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