INDIANANGLER

While a large majority of us are freshies, a lucky few are -SALTWATER men, here at IA
I guess we Freshwater anglers have enough hassles with permits and Thekedars and unfriendly locals?
A few thoughts on Saltwater fishing:
Would you prefer to encourage interterritorial salt water SPORT fishing?
Any existing laws?
What would your collective opinion be?

Taking off from the last post on another thread. I fully agree with Fred.

A country's territorial waters have to be respected. After all what is a country but lines and boundaries drawn on a map. Sport fishing is now a days more of a commercial venture than anything else. And allowing someone else to operate here (without permission) means depriving a local of an opportunity.

I cannot buy the argument that 'they' have million dollar boats and we don't. And till we don't get them we have to bear with this. We have the fish and they don't. Plain and simple.

The waters are respected, these boats are not like the Thai commercial boats that are sneaking in and stealing fish. Those people should be put in Jail and their boats impounded. Unfortunatley the amount of money made on each trip means they can afford to lose the boats. The fish onboard are worth more than the boat.

As I mentioned in the other thread we come into port blair and deal with all the bureaucracy before we can go fishing.

And again it's not depriving a local of any opportunity, it's not possible to have the boats in Andamans at the moment. Get the facilities in Port Blair the we can start discussing this issue.

For me I would love to see Indian operations that have these boats and crews with the same experiance.

At present they just arn't there, this will change one day and when it does I will happily use an Indian boat. At the moment local boats are only good for popping and jigging, and i'll happily use those and do. If it wasn't for the Thai operation I would never have come to Andamans in the first place.

I just wanna go fishing and will use the right boat for the job. In this case the Thai boat for serious Marlin fishing.

Smaller boats for popping and jigging or exploring mangroves and inshore waters.

Hey!

Operating from an Indian port with all the necessary legal stuff then it is perfectly fine. In fact bring your friends. What i am pissed off about is charters that operate from Thailand and Myanmar that come into Indian waters and fish. I am not talking about commercial fishermen but sporting charters.

These guys have no respect for borders, the environment or the fish they catch. It is all and only about money.

I totally agree, the boat I use is very proffessional they would not do that. You'd have to be a fool, if you get caught your boat can be impounded, not wise if your boat is brand new!!!!

There are boats that are fishing burma banks, one particular boat is called Ocean One. The way they fish absolutley disgusts me. They take everything back to port, 100 year old groupers, 50kg Dogtooths, sharks, eveything, they then sell them to restaurants to pay for the trip.

Do they not realise what they are doing to their future? How could the burmese let them do this. The Thai's have raped their own waters and now think it's ok to do the same to other countries waters.

The boat I go on is owned by a westerner, they fish catch and release and tag many fish at great expense. The vast majority of Thai owned boats take everything, females holding eggs, undersize, oversize, everything.

The last thing you want is these boats in your waters, they may very well try when they have exhausted the burmesse waters.

One other thing, there are very few of these serious imported sportfishing boats owned and operated by westerners using Thai crew. The vast majority of boats in Phuket used for sportfishing are locally built wooden boats. I very much doubt you will see these boats in your waters eigher legally or illegally. They wouldn;t do it legally as they couldn't deal with the bureaucracy, they're command of the english language is just not good enough, they wouldn't even know how to call up to report they're position, they wouldn't know the phonetic alphabet for starters. To deal with all the paperwork would quite simply be boyond any of the Thai captains, in Thailand only container ship captains could deal with something like that.

The other thing is I very much doubt you would get them fishing illegally. The reason for this is they know they can go to burma which is not as far and also they know full well that they stand a big chance of being caught and losing their boat. A charter doesn;t pay enough for that risk.

The majority of boats invading the waters around Andamans will almost certainly be fishing with nets, they will be Thai owned and the crews they use will more than likely be burmesse.

Reading the posts, i now understand why i am unable to find online a single INdian Charter to take me and my freinds fishing of the cost of Andaman. the moment I put andaman its Thai Charters that come up. If these Boats a re illegal cant we complain to the coast gaurd or some other authority?

Send Fred a PM.. now he has a boat in Mumbai.. if you wish, you can sail from Mumbai to Andaman's with a pit-stop in Goa..

There's two simple reasons why you can't find an Indian boat for charter in Andamans.

1.) Geography

Andamans is around 400 miles from Thailand, but over 1500 miles from Kolkatta or Chenai. The big 40 foot+ game fishing boats have around 500 miles of fuel, the only boat you could get from india to Andamans in is a sail boat or a huge motorboat that would make it cost prohibitive. Also sail boats are not built for fishing and very large motorboats don't fish well eigher.

2.) Facilities

Andamans has no facilities for repair of inboard motors that are used in the gamefishing boats. There are no marine engineers based there that are familiar with the engines, there is no where to buy spare parts. There is no marina.

You simply can't keep a big game boat there, at the moment, it's not possible.

All the boats you see advertised online are there legally. They have to check in to Port Blair first.

Instead of wasting your time trying to report these boats that have permission to be there, your time may be better spent lobbying your government to build the facilities needed to keep boats and also work on reducing the paperwork for indians keeping boats there.

Then perhaps you will see a few Indian owned game boats.

Thats quite an insight.
I was wondering on the Geography Part too. I dont think the Government will think about setting about a mrina unless some one informs them of huge profits. I will be meeting one of the Top Guys from Tourisim Dept during Navratri ( Oct 11 - 20) I will see try and sell the idea to him. Hope we have some Indian Boats in Indian waters.

hey Tosh ,,, pretty soon mate ... pretty soon .... this should be out by the end of the month ... then I take of from my Terrace

Hi Fred,

Your boat looks exactly like my first boat ( 18 footer ). Attaching a couple of pictures . Might get some idea about the T top canopy . T top leave you enough allaround space to make casting easy. I have a couple of Rod holders you can mount on your boat . will carry with me.







Jeen

Hey Guys,

If you don't mind me asking.. how much these boats cost in INDIA with motor and all that..
-Inder

Jeen

Yes she looks every bit like the one im building ... but this ones a centre console and the one im doing is not ...

Inder something in the range of 5 - 7L

The harbour master in Port Blair mentioned that there had been talk of putting in some moorings and a few basic facilities, but at the moment it's all talk, nothing happens quick in Andamans.

It seems that Andamans is slowly switching on to tourism, unemployment is high there, and the natural beauty is it's best asset, low impact high end tourism would be better than large scale low end tourism. Certainly better at keeping the enviroment pristine, which must be a major concern and tradeoff to be considered for any form of tourism.

The tourism minister mentioned last week that from March 2008 the first direct international flights will start between Port Blair and Bangkok and also Port Blair and Singapore. We'll have to wait and see tho, might take longer.

If facilities were built and game boats and sailing boats were available locally for charter I think it could prove to be quite popular. It would also be a great way to kick start a high end tourist industry. Andamans is also passed by many sailing vessels on their way accross Indian Ocean many don't bother to stop because of all the paperwork. If it was made easier for sailing boats to visit, so they can just arrive and get a visa stamp rather than spend a whole day messing around, many more would come and bring $ for the local economy and also help subsidise any boat facilities.

At present if you visit in a foriegn vessel you have to call Port control as you approach the harbour. When they give you permission to enter you have to anchor in a certain area a long way from the pier. You then have to wait onboard for inspection from various different departments. Immigration/customs, Harbour master and navy/coastguard. This can take hours as you have to fecth and return them from the pier and they all come seperately.

If there was a decent mooring area closer to the pier where there was a one stop shop for visiting vessels to vist and check in and out it would encourage many more boats to come. They could ofcourse be charged which would generate income for the facilities. This would help build the facilities up and intime encourage Indian boats and related business to openup or re-locate to andamans.

One of the problems is that no one in Andmans really has experiance in doing something like this or know how to set it up, also it seems that no one is really pushing it. I don't understand this as Andamans surely has some of the best fishing in Asia and big game fisherman spend big $. Many countries have realised that the fish are worth more alive as the boats fishing for them generate huge incomes for local business. There are a number of countries that have protection for billfish for this very reason. Imagine if Indian outruled killing of sportfish in Andamans, could you imagine in the future how much tourist $ that could be worth when all the other fishing destinations are running low due to overfishing.

There are ofcourse many ways for the government to make $ out of Andaman Islands and many ways to improve employment and wages for locals. I hope those incharge choose soemthing sustainable such as low impact high end tourism and boating/fishing It would be terrible if they opened up to mass tourism or even worse allowed large scale commercial fishing.

Hey Fred,

Thats a nice looking boat.. :)
how much offshore it can go ??

Santosh

Let us first set our own house in order by stopping the illegal fishing that takes place in India by Indians in the rivers, before we go on talk about foreign poachers.

Point noted!

Hi MichaelAGA,
I like how you shoot from the hip. yours is a nonbiased view, I like it, Henry

I am hip shooting because on two threads ha sip ha sip has repeadidly stated that he comes on charters which dock in Port Blair and obtain the required permission and formalities. But we keep going on as though he is responsible for the illegial trawler fishing. Are we trying to give him an inferiority complex????

Those boats are so beautiful .... I hope i can have one too for 2008

I had recently been to the boat show at Mumbai. I saw various boats from a few crores to a few lakhs. Incidnetly, I met up with Fred`s friendswho was representing a boat company. I think his name was lenny.

I saw a boat basic price 2.5 lakhs plus the outboard-motor ranging from 70thou to 2.50 lakhs.

Shall put up pictures of the same in the near future.

Freshwater for life dudes!

can i just say the indian govt. must enforce its fishery protection... the russians hoovered up almost all the fish from the north sea off the english coast taking everything and using it as fertiliser... im not saying the north sea is barren but it is no longer a prolific fishery simply because it wasnt policed properly... we were too busy looking after the oil to bother about the fish...
and it maters not whether you have the facilities to take these fish or not , they are your fish and should be protected... in my opinion no outside boats should be allowed to fish in your soverign waters... if you had gold on your land but no shovel, that doesnt give your neighbour any rights to it... the reason they want your fish is that their waters have been plucked clean... dont allow them anywhere near yours... yours will be there for your sons, and their sons, but not if you dont do something about it now... yes your local rivers need policing but surely that can be done as well as, not instead of...