Ponta de São Lourenço

Headland · Salt water · in Madeira

The long, narrow, treeless peninsula running east from Madeira's eastern end, a spine of eroded volcanic rock dropping in cliffs on both sides with deep water and strong streams round its point.

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 · 7

What these strengths mean

Established quarry: Fishing sources describe this as a normal local target here, not merely as caught.
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.

Great barracuda · Bluefish · Greater amberjack

Fish documented nearby, not here

Nothing below has been documented at Ponta de São Lourenço 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

Atlantic bonito — documented at Paul do Mar
Dusky grouper — documented at Seixal
Atlantic mackerel — documented at Câmara de Lobos; Machico
Atlantic chub mackerel — documented at Ribeira Brava, Madeira
Atlantic lizardfish — documented at Porto Moniz
Big-scale sand smelt — documented at Ribeira Brava, Madeira
Canary damselfish — documented at Porto Moniz
Common pandora — documented at Porto Novo, Madeira
Diamond lizardfish — documented at Porto Moniz
Lesser weever — documented at Seixal
Madeira rockfish — documented at Porto Moniz
Ornate wrasse — documented at Porto Moniz

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.

Spinning
Casting an artificial lure and retrieving it so that it moves like something alive — the most direct form of lure fishing.
Jigging
Working a weighted lure with a rising-and-falling motion, usually vertically, so it behaves like a wounded or fleeing baitfish.

The ground and the water

The ground: The long, narrow, treeless peninsula running east from Madeira's eastern end, a spine of eroded volcanic rock dropping in cliffs on both sides with deep water and strong streams round its point.
Exposure: Exposed on both faces with the north side taking the full prevailing wind and Atlantic swell. The peninsula is a nature reserve and the ground is open and unsheltered along its whole length.
Tide and flow: Streams run hard round the point where the island's two coasts exchange water, which is the reason pelagic fish work the ground.

Safety

Cliffs and rock platforms — Can cause serious injury or death

A narrow, unsheltered rock spine with cliffs on both flanks, exposed to Atlantic swell that reaches it with no shelf to take the energy out of it.

What reduces it: Check swell rather than wind, keep to the waymarked ground, and treat any position near the edge as within reach of the sea in a swell.

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: The peninsula is a protected natural area with waymarked routes and constraints on where people may go. Those are the reserve manager's and are independent of anything about fishing.

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.

Machico — 5–10 km · Bay
Porto da Cruz, Madeira — 10–25 km · Rock mark
Porto Novo, Madeira — 10–25 km · Pier
The Funchal waterfront — 10–25 km · Harbour wall
Câmara de Lobos — 25–40 km · Bay
The Desertas — 25–40 km · Island
Ribeira Brava, Madeira — 25–40 km · Harbour wall
Seixal — 25–40 km · Cove

Ponta de São Lourenço 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
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
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.

Share this page