Fishing
In addition to entertainment this offer gives you an opportunity to experience a life conducted by a domestic fisherman at sea and to apply traditional methods of fishing. Get acquainted with autochthonous fish of the Adriatic Sea in a special way. Learn how our fishermen caught fish in the Adriatic in old times; try fishing with traditional Istrian fishing tools like fishing with nets, long-lining, angling and fishing with self-catchers.
Fishermen tales may be really exaggerated but a fishing experience is a completely different matter, this experience cannot be retold but experienced by you only. Fishing is not merely a trade branch; it is a favorite entertainment and sport, but you must remember it is primarily a skill which served for feeding and maintenance of the Istrian families in the past.
Besides various fishing skills you will get acquainted with fishing equipment and tools, learn how to prepare bait, how to throw a net, fish pots and long line.
Our additional offer “Fishing and spear fishing” is designed as a joint fishing of all members on board the ship, and it is even possible to make a combination of traditional fishing and spear fishing. Please note that a successful conduction of such specific kind of fishing mostly depends on a team work.
Foreign guests should attach their membership card issued by their respective union for gaining a fishing license. Fishing license is obligatory and a daily one may be obtained on spot:
1 day - 60 kn
3 days - 150 kn
7 days - 300 kn
It depends on your fishing skill what size and kind of fish you will catch. Would it be a pilchard, a sprat, a mackerel or, for those skillful and luckier maybe a dentex, a hake or a dory?
May you have a safe voyage and rich catch!
Spear fishing
Diving and spear fishing, as lines of tourism have been gaining in popularity from year to year and consequently bringing more tourists to our country among which are those seeking for some more excitement besides sun and beaches.
Spear fishing belongs to the most demanding and heaviest sports, and like diving in general, requires actually an extraordinary discipline and earnestness. When prudently approached it may become a beautiful recreation activity, enabling getting in touch with people and nature and it can be practiced for a number of years even in advanced age. Starting from this assumption what does mean one omitted fish or one unsuccessful fishing attempt?
One should a priori accept that apart from the caught fish there would also be some lost. With this presumption you will be free to enjoy spear fishing itself.
A person taking for the first time a spear-gun in his hands, thus making his first moves as a sport spear-fisherman, will usually try to notice a fish from the surface and then immerse immediately toward the fish with intention to catch it. These are instinctive actions experienced also by the first spear-fishermen in the Polynesian Islands at the time of the very beginnings of spear fishing that still survive today. Such fish hunting involving instinctive immersion toward the prey observed from the surface represents the origin of the first and oldest techniques of spear fishing-in plunging.
Spear-fishermen catch the fish according to methods allowed by the law, namely, applying breath-diving with a spear-gun only, during the day and within due time, possessing valid license for sport and recreation fishing and drawing along a signal buoy being obligatory for each single immersion.
There is a lot of big fish in the Adriatic Sea, but catching it with a spear-gun becomes harder and harder. We learnt that the fish has in the course of the years become craftier as it has been staying at greater depths, running away to the open sea and does not allow the diver to come closer, thus raising the challenge for the diver and increasing his satisfaction when it finally gets caught.
Finally, something about the equipment. Spear-fishing equipment should conform to requirements for diving in depths – diving mask of small inner volume, fins of great usability, usually called “harder fins” and diving weights of less weight. Type of diving-suit suitable for diving in depths will be the one with smooth outside as it has less resistance coefficient, preferably neoprene wetsuit getting less compressed in depths. Namely, too soft neoprene easily shrinking under pressure will cause abrupt acceleration at the moment of reaching relevant depth and moreover, calculation of necessary weight of diving weights is made more difficult. Choice of spear-gun has a great importance. Range, accuracy and speed are the main characteristics to be met and if we are going to catch big fish the fisherman’s strength may contribute, too.
May all you who catch and like fish enjoy good health and good sport luck!