Longtail Boat Charter

[Big Guy]

Have any of the forum members had any experience of chartering boats for fishing off phuket?

Have asked the boatmen at Patong and they tell me 3500-5500 per day. This may be the tourist price but far more than I am willing to pay.

Does anyone have an exerience, know what the real costs might be or have someone they could recommend as a skipper. If it is good this will be a regular trip. Was thinking of buying a boat but will probably be better just to charter whenever i want to go to sea.

[donna]

i could be wrong, but fuel costs are pretty high now and these boats do use up a fair bit of fuel. you could try bargaining the boatman down, but i would maybe expect 2500 a day as being reasonable.

i used to work on koh yao noi and we rented our boat out for that price.

[zoltannyc]

I was out on a longtail fishing trip two weeks ago from Chalong and paid 2000Baht for the charter. The boat owner looked very happy, the charter included gear (not very good) and bait, true we did not get any fish bigger than my palm.

Couple of days later we went diving just off the Kata Noi beach and we did not see any large fish. I think if we want to get some sizable saltwater fish we should go offshore.

After this trip I really felt that I should catch some bigger fish and found this website: http://www.fishing-khaolak.com/freshwater_...ing/phuket.html

I mobilized our friends to find this lake, we went to Soi Par Lai and we could not find any lake nearby, anyway I decided to figure out this mystery lake and emailed the tour operator he called me back right away and made an appointment for the next morning. A driver picked me up at my house and took me to the Phuket Zoo !!!!!! in Chalong. Few minutes later Andy the tour organizer showed up and later Peter, the fishing guide, joined us. We fished in the Phuket Zoo lake !!!!!!, actually the lake is full of fish mainly pacu, catfish, snakehead, tilapia and saw some giant turtles too.

The fishing was good I hooked at least 15 fish and landed around 8 (pacu-s 3-5 kgs very good fighters, and catfish around 10-13 kgs) it was a good day. I paid 2900B (and some tip) and that is included the transportation Patong – Chalong – Patong, a full time very helpful fishing guide (Peter from England) , fishing gear (Shimano) and bait (banana and bread). The fishing is catch-and-release, we started at 8:00am and finished around 6:00pm.

[donna]

another guy i know goes to ko rok on a regular basis, but this is in krabi province, closer to trang really (he departs from trang province). i was with him one day when he caught a sailfish off of his longtail boat! took ages to land it, but what an experience THAT was!

if you are interested, pm me and i will give you his contact details.

Edited December 10, 2006 by donna

[smartecosse]

we hire a fishing charter boat occasionally for both fishing and diving off. The full day charter is 8400 for a boat ( not longtail) that takes about 10 people comfortably. Its your for the day and you simply tell the captain where you want to go or listen to his ideas.

when we have hired longtails we normally pay about 1300 to 1800 a day from rawai beach for them

[Big Guy]

Thanks smartecosse that was the sort of figure i was expecting as had been offered charters from Laem Hin for 1500 so thought the other side of the island should be similar. !300 to 1800 and supply fuel depending on how far you are wanting to go.