It was this big: how sport fishing in Hong Kong keeps on growing
When a member of the city's first sport fishing club caught a 158kg marlin off Sai Kung in 1985, fishermen knew they were onto something big. Since then the pursuit has grown exponentially.
"Joe, right here on the right. Just go real slow. Put it in neutral and just let it roll in," says Carmine Vastola as he watches a screen showing the seabed conditions and the number of fish around us.
Joe Lee, a marine captain of three decades who retired last year, turns off the Thai Lady's engine. For the past hour since our 32-foot sport fishing boat left the marina at the Clearwater Bay Golf and Country Club, we've been searching for "structure" adjacent to Basalt Island on the Sai Kung Peninsula.
"The screen shows the depth of the seabed and where the schools of fish may be hiding," Lee explains. "We're trying to find good structure - a good bottom with rocks."
Vastola knows Hong Kong's waters well. The New Jersey native, from a family of avid anglers, has been fishing locally since he moved here in 1993. Frustrated with the lack of suitable boat charter options for deep sea sport fishing, he bought the Thai Lady for US$200,000 in 2006 and began offering commercial sport fishing trips through his company Hong Kong Deep Sea Fishing.
Vastola's business has picked up in recent years along with interest in sport fishing - in particular deep sea fishing - in Hong Kong. These days, he and business partner Charles Dunford arrange eight to 10 fishing trips a month, including inshore bottom fishing (what we were doing) and overnight trips to the oil rigs (that's where the big fish hide), for an average of four anglers each time.