Fishing Trip

The trip did not get off to a good start. At eight o’clock I was sitting in a cafe with a pot of tea and a cigarette, looking bleary eyed at the windblown and rain swept palm trees that shielded us from the full force of the storm that was blowing across the island.

Yesterday had been very different. We had spent another day on the sun-baked beach swimming, lazing in the shade under the palm trees, eating and relaxing. When someone suggested organising a fishing trip it seemed perfect; a day in a boat cruising around the surrounding islands, with some fishing for entertainment and plenty of food and drink to consume. That evening we strolled into the village, found a guy who could provide us with a boat, four shark rods, and most importantly, beer. His wife would prepare lunch, we would pay him 800 baht each, he would make sure we catch number one big fish, and everyone would be happy.

Today we had lost one person to dysentery, another to an eye infection, and the two of us still up for it were facing the prospect of being out in an open boat in shark infested waters during a tropical storm, with hangovers.

When we arrived to meet Daeng, our Captain for the day, far from being annoyed at losing half of his fare paying passengers, he was delighted to see that the pair of crazy farang had turned up at all. ‘I think maybe you stay away’ he grinned from under a mop of unruly hair, ‘farang think the rain too dangerous for fishing’.

Daeng was confident that the rain would stop soon, and continued packing crates and cool boxes with hooks, lines, beer, water and ice. We occupied ourselves with watching some girls shampooing their hair in the rain, half wishing for the rain to stop, half hoping that it wouldn’t.

Thirty minutes later, as we put the last of the kit into the boat the rain started to ease off. Graham and I cast an anxious glance at the sky, and climbed aboard. As we headed out into the open sea, away from the protection of the towering limestone outcrops that form Kho Phi Phi and the surrounding islands, the remnants of the storm started to become noticeable. The last time that I had been out on the open water was during the previous week, when the ferry crossing from Phuket had been a leisurely sun soaked cruise. Although the rain had stopped, the sea was still rolling too much for my liking, and with the heavy clouds shielding the sun it was more like a typical April day in London than a September morning in southern Thailand.

We spent the first hour catching small fish to use as bait. Graham and I were fishing with short hand lines, each about five metres long and trailing a dozen small hooks baited with small balls of rice. Gradually we moved further out into the open sea, stopping in total four times to drop our lines over the side of the boat. As we pulled in each fish Daeng would glance at it and decide if it was suitable bait or not, keeping half of the catch, and putting the rest back into the sea. When we eventually had ten snapper swimming in the wooden fish trap in the bottom of the boat we pulled in our lines for the last time and headed north, following the east coast of Koh Phi-Phi Don to our destination off Koh Yung - Mosquito Island, a small coral atoll five kilometres to the north-east.

The sun finally broke through the clouds as we anchored above a reef just off the shore of the small island, and we opened the cool boxes and ate a lunch of chicken, rice and fruit, washed down with several bottles of ice cold beer. After eating we fired the engine again, and slowly motored around the island, 300 metres from the land, Daeng scanning the surface of the water looking for a place to cast for the bigger fish.

Eventually we reached a spot that was deemed to be suitable, and after cutting the engine and dropping the anchor, Daeng selected two fish from our mornings catch, put the hooks through their dorsal fins, threw them into the sea, and played out the lines. The two rods were placed in brackets fitted to the side of the boat, and we sat back and waited for the bait to be taken.

We waited for two hours, passing the time chatting with Daeng, who told us about his life. He was fifty, originally from Koh Jam, a large island forty kilometres further south, populated mainly by Chao Leh - sea gypsies. He had been brought up in a fishing family, but in his teens had studied at a Muay Thai school in Had Yai, and had spent ten years earning a living as a Thai Boxer. After marrying he had given up boxing, moved to Kho Phi Phi, and returned to his roots; fishing, hiring his boat to tourists for snorkelling and fishing trips around the surrounding islands.

It was getting late in the afternoon when the fish took the bait. Graham and I were sitting on the raised prow at the front of the boat, soaking up the sun, Daeng, being Thai, was asleep in a hammock slung under the canopy in the centre of the boat. The silence was shattered by the sound of the reel on one of the rods spinning. As we looked up the rod arched and Daeng, with a smile cracking his weather beaten features, leapt out of the hammock, grabbed the rod and started playing out the line. ‘Sailfish’ he said knowingly, apparently possessing eyesight that could penetrate the sea to a depth of twenty metres.

For the next thirty minutes the three of us took turns in playing the fish, gradually reeling in the line to bring our catch nearer to the boat, but allowing the fish enough line to fight and tire itself out. The rod was carbon fibre, two metres long, tapering from a whip-like tip to a thick handle that fitted into the harnesses that we wore around our waists. The reel was heavy, geared to allow fast reeling and strong enough to take your finger off if you were rash enough to allow your hand to stray between the line and the rod. As the line was reeled in, the torque generated became harder to fight. To keep the fish from diving and dropping the hook the rod had to be kept vertical, no easy task with a twenty kilo fish fighting for its life on the end of the line.

Our first sight of the fish came twenty minutes after the bite. I was reeling in as fast as possible, fighting to keep the rod upright, when the fish suddenly arced out of the water thirty feet from the side of the boat. The black fish was almost two metres long from the tip of its sword to the end of its tail, and the sun reflecting on the black scales gave it a shimmering iridescence. The sail-like dorsal fin that gave the fish its name ran for more than half the length of its body.

Daeng was shouting instructions from the rear of the boat.
‘Keep the rod straight, reel in the line as fast as possible’ he called, standing precariously on the side of the boat, holding a long wooden gaff with a particularly vicious looking hook on the end. Graham and I passed the rod between us, each reeling in with all the power we could muster, literally dragging the fish towards the boat. Once we had the fish on two metres of line, almost against the side of the boat, Daeng leaned out, brought the gaff down, and in one movement hooked the fish and dragged it into the boat. A sharp blow to its head knocked the remaining life from it, and stretched across the width of the boat, its sword and tail fins extending over each side, we were finally able to see what we had caught. A member of the swordfish family, Sailfish are very common on this part of the world, and whilst not being overly aggressive, the sharp sword could cause a nasty wound if you were unlucky enough to tangle with one in the water.

After a celebratory beer, Daeng announced that as the sun was beginning to drop we had to start making our way back to Kho Phi Phi. The other rod was pulled in, but before we started off Daeng set up two trawling lines from the back of the boat, hoping to hook some tuna on the return journey.

We arrived back at Tonsai at seven, just as the tourists were starting to go out for the evening. Graham and I carried the fish between us, loving every minute of our walk through the centre of the village; men were looking on enviously and women were looking on lustfully. Back at Daengs place we hung the fish from a sprung scale and were delighted to see that it weighed twenty four kilos. Daeng’s brother-in-law owned one of the local restaurants, so it was decided that the fish would be taken there for cooking whilst we went back to our bungalows to shower, change and round up some people to help us eat it.

The rest of the evening rapidly became a party, with ten of us, including Daeng and his wife, doing our best to consume the entire fish, along with large plates of rice and salad, washing it all down with plenty of beer and Mekong, the powerful Thai whisky which is distilled from rice. Toasts to Anglo-Thai fishing solidarity were drunk, the tale of the fishing trip became more and more exaggerated, and the night finished with drunken partying on the beach until well after the sun came up.