(Daniel) Another beautiful day on Phi Phi Island this morning! I woke and packed into my dry bag everything that we would need for a day of fishing on the boat. Martin and I went for some breakfast, and returned to the room to wait for Rowan and Gabby, who had arranged to meet us here at 10.30am.

Well 10.30 came and went, although I wasn’t very surprised, I left the others in the bar last night, and they looked like they had no intention of leaving any time soon! Martin started to get impatient, so I agreed to go anyway, as long as we could wait a bit longer to see if the others showed up.  We stayed until 11.30, at which time I decided that they had overslept or decided not to come. I had already made arrangements with a friend of Kit, our guesthouse owner.

When we arrived at the boat, it was obvious that these guys were pretty cool, they had spearguns of their own and had brought fishing rods and bait. Rather than just the boat driver, there were four guys and one of them had brought his little daughter, she looked to be around 3 years old.

We headed out across the bay in a longtail boat, the Thai people have used these for thousands of years.  They are small boats with deep hulls, capable of handling the fast changing seas.

Our boat motored out to a clear spot on the reef a few kms to the West of the Island. Jumping in we and began to look around.  There was s strong current which we followed along, saving energy.  I managed to shoot a snapper, Martin had borrowed another gun.  I spotted him flapping towards me exitedly, he had shot a fish.  On closer inspection, it turned out that he had gone against all words of advice, and shot a Parrot fish.  These beautiful coral feeders are not good food, as they have very thick scales and tough meat.  Also they are far more valuable to see on the reef than to shoot.

I gave Martin a lot of stick, telling him that he should never of shot such a beautiful fish, but couldn't help but feel sorry for him, he didn't know what to look for, and now everyone was having a go at him.

We moved to another site, far out between the islands.  A reef sat in between the islands, shimmering under the suface.  In the water I spotted Moray and Grouper almost immediatley.  I decided to split of from the others, trying to find a good size fish is harder with more people around.

As I approched the deep water, a huge shape loomed, black and forboding, next to it another smaller shape shadowed it.  At first I thought it was a shark, but then spotted that it was infact a pair of giant kingfish, another inhabitant of these waters.

I managed to bag another snapper before returning to the boat.  The others had caught fish with lines.  The Captian was worried, a strom front had moved in while we hunted, he wanted to leave. Everyone was happy that it was time to leave so we pulled anchor and motored off.

Not 5 minutes later, the rain and wind began, lashing the boat and it's occupants.  Thick fog rolled in around us, until all we could see was 20 meters of water in any direction.

There was nothing for it, we had to anchor up and try to hold out, to move in this rough water would surely capsize the boat.  We tied up to a buoy and sat into the boat to weather the storm.  The rain got harder, powered into us by the wind.  Waves crashed over the side of the boat slowly filling it up.  I looked around at the other occupantrs of the boat.  Everyone was trying to keep in high spirits, but I could see fear in everyones eyes.

Our anchor point began to move, suddenly 30 meters away, a lobster cage surfaced, this was our buoy, we had to move now.

Motoring in such big waves is always a bad idea, but I could see that our Captain was one of the best.  He carefully rode the waves, throwing us ten feet in the air, to drop the boat down with a huge splash.

30 Minutes later, we rounded the island, the wind and rain softened by the cliffs.  We rode back to the bay in silence, thanking our verious gods for sparing our lives.  In all the time that the weather smashed and tore at us, never once did the little girl cry, not once in the whole journey.  I was in awe.

Later we ate the fish BBQ with rice.  The Parrot fish I scaled myself, it was a huge job taking over 25 minutes.  The meat was pasty and had a bad taste.  These fish are definatley not worth eating! 

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