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Câmara de Lobos

Bay · Salt water · in Madeira

A small bay under a headland on Madeira's south coast, with a shingle landing for the open boats, rock platform on both flanks and the submarine slope falling to abyssal depth a short distance offshore.

Safety: cliffs and rock platforms — can cause serious injury or death.

What each one does, and what reduces it ↓

FishingHQ describes what this place is, not whether you may fish it. Access, permits and who to ask.

What you can catch here

Documented at this place, grouped by how you would be fishing, with how strongly the sources support each one. This is what has been written down, not a forecast, and being listed is never permission to fish.

From the shore · 9

Also documented from the shore: Atlantic mackerel

From a boat · 1

What these strengths mean
Established quarry
Fishing sources describe this as a normal local target here, not merely as caught.
Repeatedly reported
Several independent public accounts. Enough to say it happens more than once; not enough to call it a fishery.
Recorded here
At least one credible public account of this species being caught here. That is all it means.
Places, accounts and sources are counted separately
A fish documented once at each of six marks is still documented once at each of six marks. Breadth is reported as a place count and never raises the strength, and sources are deduplicated across places so one publisher covering a whole coast counts as one. A fishery account is a source describing the fishing; a recorded catch is a report of a specific catch. They are counted apart because they are not the same evidence.

Also associated with this ground

Recorded as present here without a documented method or strength behind them.

Common dentex

Fish documented nearby, not here

Nothing below has been documented at Câmara de Lobos itself. Each one has been documented at a named place on the same ground, and the places are listed with it. Treat this as what the water around here holds rather than as a catch list for this mark.

Also documented at neighbouring places

One or two accounts each, on the ground around here. Enough to know the fish is caught in these waters; not enough to say anything about this place.

From the shore

How people fish it

Practised here: Sea fishing.

Methods the sources name for this ground. Each one is explained in full on its own page.

  • Float fishing

    Suspending a bait at a controlled depth beneath a buoyant indicator — the most visual, most controllable and most widely applicable method in angling.

  • Spinning

    Casting an artificial lure and retrieving it so that it moves like something alive — the most direct form of lure fishing.

  • Ledgering

    Fishing a bait on the bottom held by a weight, with no float — the simplest way to fish at distance, in depth, or in wind.

The ground and the water

The ground
A small bay under a headland on Madeira's south coast, with a shingle landing for the open boats, rock platform on both flanks and the submarine slope falling to abyssal depth a short distance offshore.
Exposure
Sheltered by the island's mountain spine from the prevailing north-easterly, which is the whole reason a small-boat fishery works from an open bay here.
Depth
The slope falls away steeply offshore and reaches the depths the town's black scabbardfish fishery is worked at — eight hundred metres and more — within a short run of the bay. That is deep-water longline ground and nothing a rod reaches.

Getting there

What public sources describe, last checked 2026-08-26. Car parks fill, services change and a path existing is not a path anybody may use — none of this is a guarantee of availability and none of it is permission to be anywhere.

Getting to it
A fishing town built around a small bay under a headland on Madeira's south coast, with a shingle landing where the open boats are drawn up and rock platform on both flanks of it. The waterfront, the beach and the boats are one place and everything is within a few minutes of everything else.
The walk in
The town is reachable on foot from Funchal without touching a road: a made pedestrian promenade runs 2.2 kilometres along the sea from the Lido to the bay. That is a walk rather than an approach to a mark — the fishing ground is the bay and the rock either side of it, both at the end of it.
Public transport
Rodoeste, the regional operator on Madeira's western routes, serves the town's Cabine stop from Funchal on eleven services, seven days a week, first bus 05:45 and last after midnight. THE FUNCHAL CITY SERVICE DOES NOT REACH IT: Line 1 ends at Ponta da Laranjeira, ten minutes' walk short of the harbour, though some travel guides say otherwise. Times and fares are the operators'.
Where this access information comes from
  • Rodoeste: the scheduled services calling at Câmara de Lobos — Rodoeste — Transportadora Rodoviária da Madeira, Lda., 2026 (Local authority, harbour or protected-area body)Relied on for: The regional bus operator's own locality schedule, establishing which scheduled services reach the town and on which days of the week.States this directlyPassage read and verified
  • Visit Madeira: Câmara de Lobos, the bay, the promenade and the beach — Madeira Islands Tourism Board (Direção Regional do Turismo), 2026 (Local authority, harbour or protected-area body)Relied on for: The regional tourism board on the 2.2 km sea-front promenade linking Funchal to the bay, and on the town's free public beach.States this directlyPassage read and verified

What is there

  • Food or shelter

    A working town around the bay. The tourism board describes the town beach — Câmara de Lobos, also called Vigário — as free to use with several services beside it. What is open and when is the businesses' affair.

Safety

Cliffs and rock platforms — Can cause serious injury or death

The north coast is cliff-bound and takes Atlantic swell with almost no shelf to dissipate it, so waves at exposed platforms are larger and less regular than the wind suggests. The sheltered south coast on the same day gives no warning of it.

What reduces it: Check swell rather than wind, and check it for the coast you are going to rather than for the island. Watch a platform for a sustained period before committing. Never fish a position you could not leave immediately.

Rules and access

FishingHQ does not know the current access position here. Madeira is an autonomous region of Portugal with its own fisheries administration, and recreational sea and underwater fishing are licensed regionally rather than by the mainland directorate. Species, size, quantity and gear measures apply and change, and marine protected areas around the archipelago constrain access independently. Check the current position with the regional fisheries directorate before going.

Particular to this water: A working fishing harbour with an active small-boat fleet. Where a person may stand on the quay or the landing is the harbour authority's decision and is not a matter of public right.

Who holds the answer:

  • The Regional Directorate for Fisheries of Madeira, which licenses and regulates recreational sea and underwater fishing in the archipelago.
  • The port authority, for access to harbour structures.
  • The Regional Directorate for Fisheries of Madeira, for recreational licences, sizes and species rules
  • The managing authority of any marine protected area or nature reserve, whose zoning governs what is permitted inside it
  • The regional forestry and nature-conservation authority, for the levadas and the mountain streams
  • Harbour and port authorities, for access to quays, moles and slipways

Nearby fishing

Other publicly documented places within about 40 km, by distance. Positions are approximate public geography and are never exact marks.

Câmara de LobosThe Funchal waterfrontRibeira Brava, MadeiraPorto Novo, MadeiraPorto da Cruz, MadeiraMachicoSeixalPaul do MarPonta de São Lourenço
Câmara de Lobos and the publicly documented places around it. Approximate positions, not marks. Positions are approximate by design — they are capped at about a hundred metres and describe where a named public place is, not where fish are and not a mark. Everything plotted here is also listed below.

Sources for this place

  • JNCC species and habitat conservation advice — Joint Nature Conservation Committee (Conservation authority)Relied on for: Description, designation and habitat characterisation of the named coastal and marine features of the United Kingdom, and the species characteristically associated with them.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
  • Cefas science, advice and data on marine and freshwater environments — Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Government fisheries body)Relied on for: Marine environmental science for UK shelf seas: sediment characterisation, estuarine process, shellfish bed distribution, tidal range and the monitoring that describes them.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
  • Sea Angler — Bauer Media (Specialist angling publication)Relied on for: Long-running published description of British sea angling practice by region, ground type and named mark.FishingHQ's interpretation of what it saysCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
  • General angling website restatements of established technique — Various (Credible secondary source)Relied on for: Widely restated public descriptions of which places are conventionally fished and how, recorded as practitioner consensus rather than as scholarship, and not relied on for access, permission or any current rule.Background and mechanism onlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
  • Fishing Madeira, and jigging and popping the Azores islands — GT Fishing (Practitioner report)Relied on for: That the named Madeiran locations are fished from the shore or from a boat for the species given, and the technique and season the operator attaches to each.FishingHQ's interpretation of what it saysPassage read and verified
  • Rodoeste: the scheduled services calling at Câmara de Lobos — Rodoeste — Transportadora Rodoviária da Madeira, Lda., 2026 (Local authority, harbour or protected-area body)Relied on for: The regional operator's own locality schedule, establishing which services reach the town and on which days.States this directlyPassage read and verified
  • Importance of recreational shore angling in the archipelago of Madeira (northeast Atlantic) — Scientia Marina (CSIC), vol. 84 no. 4, 2020 (Scientific literature)Relied on for: The catch composition of the Madeira archipelago's recreational shore fishery by species and by share of the estimated annual total, from a 2017 creel survey of 653 anglers.States this directlyPassage read and verified

How FishingHQ labels evidence is explained in the evidence policy. Last reviewed 2026-08-16.

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