MY SEVEN-YEAR itch finally found solace down a Wan Chai alley. Just a few lanes back from the neon-drenched strip lies a half-hidden store serving as a gateway to the South China Sea and visceral thrills of a very different nature.
A fisherman's lot in Hong Kong is a sorry one. The mouth of the Pearl River with its clustered islets was once a piscatorial paradise - a tropical breeding ground of the highest order - that has been raped, netted, gutted and polluted into oblivion.
Having fished many of the world's seas and spent countless hours in a vain attempt to place a fresh fillet on my Shek O table, I am perpetually shocked at how ravaged local waters are.
Then I chanced upon a website full of monster pelagics - surface-dwelling ocean fish for the uninitiated - that sent me scuttling down Hennessy Road in search of a crew called Crazy Fishermen, and booked myself on a fishing junk that takes recreational anglers to a chain of oil rigs, 100km southwest of Hong Kong.
At first, red-haired Ship Road shop attendant Kim Fung declared that all expeditions were full. But after some pestering, he acceded to phone the ship's captain, Chiu Ming. After a long conversation, he quietly explained that the group's 'guide' did not speak English, which would make things difficult for me. Smiling, I explained I did not have to speak to anyone, only to watch, then fish.
Fung swung back to the phone and 10 minutes later turned to me again: the cook served only noodles, and did not cater to Western palates. This did not perturb me either, and so their first gweilo customer gently nudged his way past the polite objections to an angling experience that was thoroughly surreal, a word not normally part of the lexicon.
The junk sets sail from Shau Kei Wan fishing harbour around 10pm each Friday, weather permitting, heads towards the rigs through the night and arrives shortly after sunrise. The 14 punters fish until the ship begins its return journey around 6am on Sunday. I awaited the 24-hour marathon angling session with eager, if somewhat naive, anticipation.