"Thai score" or what to do if you don't have a boat….

The idea of going to Thailand on a hunting trip over New Year came up in December. Originally the plan was to go after groupers in Israel with a good buddy of mine, who happens to be Jewish and, on the side, a supplier of spearfishing gear in that region who's well known in narrow circles - Stas aka Grass. But bad weather, and as a result limited underwater visibility in the land of the Wailing Wall, kept those grand plans from coming true. So we quickly made a reckless decision to make an emergency splashdown in Thailand.

After digging around the internet and quizzing "seasoned" hunter friends who had already been there, I found out that basically our whole crowd of hunters goes to the island of Lipe. But, first, it's a marine reserve, and hunting in reserves, just like hunting at night, is not our way, and second, the place is already well known, and the fish situation there was described with elaborate, long-winded reasoning along the lines of: either the fish are there, or they might not be there for two weeks. I had absolutely no desire to beg for mercy from nature and hunting luck, so I went searching the English-speaking side of the underwater internet on the big topic of spearfishing in Thailand. After going through the sites of diving clubs and just plain fanatics of the sport, it turned out that the fish you mostly run into are not big and hard to get, and on top of all that, in the waters of the Gulf of Siam you also have to catch the right visibility.

After a while of searching, through one of the European spearfishers I managed to find an Englishman – an expat who has been living in Thailand for 6 years and makes his living from spearfishing. Surprisingly quickly I got in touch with him, and we started writing back and forth with tons of questions and swapping photos. Charlie – that's the name of our new friend – explained everything in great detail and in plain terms and offered his services to organize the hunting. The program included every kind of hunting, including bluewater, around remote islands and banks that only he knows about. His services cost from 3 to 5 thousand local money a day (almost the equivalent of a ruble) depending on the distance from shore (the fuel burned). We agreed on a date, I mentally prepared him for every possible request and whim when it came to spearfishing and its support, and we virtually shook hands. "I buy the tickets, our guide to the world of Thai fish - Charlie - meets us at the airport, and then everything goes according to the script we agreed on in advance" - a plan grand in its simplicity, but one that never came true…

Charlie's boat is small, for 4 people, so I wasn't planning on a big group, and it was decided to bring my wife on the team, so as to have all the pleasures on uninhabited islands right away, plus one more hunter or a couple, so that the girl would have something to entertain herself with on shore besides a credit card. Time was relentlessly closing in on New Year, and there were no tickets for reasonable money. Charlie was writing practically several times a week, telling about the hunts he was running with clients at the time, sending photos that made us want to hunt more and more. None of my partners in crime from the MPO team or time-tested hunters could come, so the ranks of those pining for fish were joined by an old Ryazan friend from the town of Mikhaylov, a big expert at organizing hunting leisure during the goose migration season, and of course a spearfisher who still has everything ahead of him, and just a good guy - Mishka Zavalikhin.

After exhausting searches and bookings with different agencies, the hope of going cheap and in January was fading by the day, but with the help of secret info from Andryusha Kosenkov (thanks, bro!) three direct tickets Domodedovo-Phuket-Domodedovo at $650 for January 12 were in my pocket. That was almost 2 weeks later than planned, but better late than never. Because of that delay a big nuisance happened, completely out of the blue, where nobody expected it, but more on that a bit later.

The last gear check was done as usual at seahunter.ru with my good pal Sasha Sidorin, in his shop that specializes specifically in sea hunting, which is a big rarity these days, especially right in the center of Moscow. A couple of hours of pleasant chatter, analyzing and tuning my Mediterranean gear together, picking up some small bits like heavy-duty snap clips between the line and the shooting line, a 3 mm suit, a sleeve crimping tool and a new Bush bag from the latest collection brightened up the second-to-last frosty day in the capital I was sick of. On top of that I got a warm send-off and Sasha's personal hard case for transporting the gun.

An endless traffic jam on the MKAD, a race against time and the plane at the airport, priceless help from my close friend the Jedi (hi, Denis!), who, using his official position and pulling "credentials" out of every pocket on the run, like a magician conjures up our check-in over the phone, good seats on the plane, skipping the line and a lobby of a different class, and takes the car… – that's it, we made it! …the bar, a bottle of whiskey, a solid alco-hit to the head, and a miracle happens – THE VACATION BEGINS!!! To hell with everything, we're finally off to smash some fish!

9 hours of flying, and the hangover catches up with us at the airport in Phuket. For an hour I call Charlie's phone with zero result – "the number you have dialed is not available", and it's not clear what to do. Heat, sly slant-eyed locals all around, and I really want a cold beer… Charlie stood us up, and he'll need a very good reason not to get a right hook to the jaw. I decide to go into open space. Right at passport control they hand all of us free local SIM cards with a small balance on them. We need a taxi; we take our first steps towards the airport exit and instantly the whole mob of natives pounces on us, from taxi drivers to accommodation managers of every stripe. We patiently listen to numerous monologues about how "it's cheaper here and why", politely tell everyone where to go, change dollars into the local currency – baht – and with wads of play money we get stuck at the airport exit. This is usually the moment when guys like us get scammed out of everything possible, but luckily we have plenty of experience, and after a few minutes of haggling with the taxi drivers we get an excellent taxi for below the list price – 800 baht to our destination. We get in and ask to be taken to the very south of the island, closer to the open sea and the islands. From the airport it's about 40-50 kilometers; air conditioning, leather interior, our happy mugs, ice-cold beer relaxing us, and we all start singing songs together. On the way I grill the driver about everything we're interested in, from prices for boats and fish to the weather and "youth fashion".

We drive across the whole island, periodically stopping by all of our driver's acquaintances, who try to push a hotel, a yacht or a big Buddha head on us. We patiently listen to everyone, tell them about the social situation of sexual minorities in Ryazan Oblast and grill them all on every burning issue, because the driver quickly ran out of vocabulary, and we kept running out of beer. Along the way we pick up a phone charger, forgotten somewhere in another life, top-up cards for the local SIMs and other bits and pieces.

In the end, we drive by taxi along the whole southern coast of Phuket from Karon to Chalong port, where the main mooring for all the island's watercraft is, and find out that the more or less interesting place for us is on the Kata coast. In the east of the island it's shallow with no visibility, in the west there are no islands and the water is boiling with speedboats and jet skis, so basically – Kata it is, we drop anchor there. The taxi ride with visits to hotels, bungalows, booze and snacks took about 5 hours. We give the driver 2000 baht, shake his hand and let him go in peace… he's not happy – what is this country coming to?

But the sly driver still managed to screw us a little more, dragging us into the classic Thai hotel scam, but there was no avoiding it. We quickly figured out the situation and fixed it the very next day. The essence of the scam is this – if they didn't get you with a "cheap hotel" at the airport, and you're riding in a taxi choosing hotels, then a standard scenario will be played out in front of you – they'll just drive you around the most expensive hotels. Prices start from 5000 up to 30000 a night. There was even a moment when the heat hit especially hard and wore me down so much that I was ready to take a super cool bungalow with its own pool in a green paradise for 12000, but common sense and kicks from my friends brought me back to reality from my rich-kid persona. The main idea was not to get stuck in the clutches of a luxury hotel, but to get a decent place to sleep and keep moving, moving, moving. After several hours of such rides, the taxi brings you to a "special" hotel, for 2500! Only a "symbolic" 2500 for a room! We haggle down to 1800 and, happy, finally check in, and then… then the driver gets his percentage from the hotel for bringing in yet another bunch of suckers.

Everything became crystal clear with the Thais once we adapted a little and began noticing small stickers with hieroglyphs and swastikas in biker style reading "Support your locals!", which loosely translates as "Locals, remember – without a sucker (farang) life is bad!". Our observations were fully confirmed when we started talking to the locals more closely. All farangs are sacred animals. You have to smile at them, feed them and bow to them, and not forget to milk them regularly. Thanks to farangs, these slant-eyed brothers of the Vietnamese have risen over the last 10 years from poverty and slums to their own jeeps and townhouses… Accordingly, the mentality and attitude towards farangs is changing too – "why so little?", i.e. we're about 10 years late for Asia… I hope the fish here hasn't evolved as much!

In the evening we found the price for our hotel online and, as expected, booking through the internet it came to only 1000 baht… Anyway, let's skip this boring everyday stuff and get back to the purpose of our trip.

Right after checking in I write Charlie an email and go to the beach to find out "how much is the fish"?

At the beach, nothing but disappointment – visibility about 5 meters, there are boats, but the prices are anything but kind. Fast speedboats from 18 000 a day, ordinary long-tail boats 1500 an hour if near Phuket, and for a full day (6 hours) with no distance limit – 10 000. That was already a bit harsh – two weeks at 10 000 and the fish would turn to gold. I decide to spend a day adapting and then do a warm-up recon around the nearest island without a boat. The distance to the island from the beach is roughly a kilometer. From the far end of the beach, about 600 meters. The island itself is small, it can be worked in two hours… already tempting – there's a plan. Evening swim in steamy water, water temperature +28C, the plankton bites now and then (like in the Caribbean), a powerful low tide going out some 100 meters from the shore… all in all, a first fairy-tale evening. We walk barefoot knee-deep in the water under the stars and, like kids, catch speedy sand crabs darting across the wet sand, their wet shells gleaming in the light of the brightest moon… dreams come true.

In the evening I answered Charlie's email. The news wasn't encouraging - as it turned out, two days before we flew in he'd been diving with a client on the reef and scratched his hand a bit, and as a result he's now in intensive care in a hospital in Krabi. They operated on him and removed an abscess that had started, but then he got blood poisoning with everything that goes with it. A week later they moved him to a more expensive hospital in Phuket, because his condition kept getting worse; in the end he got better, but they promised to discharge him only in mid-February, and he'd be able to dive in a month at the earliest, or something like that, as far as we understood him. He can't help us, or even talk on the phone – "no strength, I'm in a coma, adios amigos, I'm very sorry…" - the bastard! As they say - our English sportsman's fins broke and he's out of the race… should've bought pricier carbon.

Day one – "reconnaissance by fire".

The first day started at dawn with a swim out to an island I'd spotted opposite Kata Beach. My gear was my standard Mediterranean kit: main gun – a Greek carbon from "Bluetec" with a reversed trigger, 110 long, with two 16 bands and a short lightweight 7mm Trigon shaft and a reel from "Xxone" with 60 meters of line; on the float, a modified 75 from Bush for close combat. My biggest caliber from Bluetec - the OceanBorn, which throws 8mm shafts 9 meters with huge accuracy and lightning speed - would have been very awkward here, just as Charlie had written. Back in the room there was one more gun that might be needed for the boat - a 130 Riffe with a direct line attachment, plus three shafts for each gun.

Once I was in the sea, I was immediately struck by the number of fish species and their variety. Life on a tropical coral reef is just boiling. All kinds of pufferfish, needlefish, parrotfish, beavers and other fishy riffraff of every stripe and color surround you, peek out, hide practically everywhere you look. Sea snakes are a common sight. All in all, life is just bubbling, not as wildly as in the Red Sea of course, but here you can feel the closeness of the ocean in everything. After a couple of hours of hunting it became clear that you'd have to chase around for decent fish here. Nothing bigger than a kilo came my way. Lots of fish, but all of it very skittish, and proper edible reef fish is absent as a class. Fish that isn't part of the local natives' diet swims freely around in big numbers, letting you get within arm's reach. After 5 hours of hunting I managed to bag a couple of meter-long oversized garfish at about a kilo and a half (sorry, Pasha!), which with the right technique you can take in large numbers, a gorgeous scorpionfish of a kilo at 18 meters, and one cuttlefish. I also had contact with a big black fish with a bump on its head, edible, judging by how it bolted from me out of a crevice and instantly vanished in an unknown direction. There were barracudas up to a kilo, but that wasn't my size.

Visibility across the area varied from 3 to 15 meters. Water temperature was the same everywhere: 28C. No thermocline, currents in places, and they keep changing direction during the day. The currents are very strong in places, so for example you can be prepping for a dive in one spot, and after two minutes lift your head and find yourself a kilometer from where you were prepping. Depths up to 17 meters. In one place I found a crevice at 18, that's where I took the scorpionfish and spooked a couple of small groupers.

Around the mouth of a stinky little creek off the beach there was a lot of big mullet and other semi-edible fish hanging around, but that was all not it. The conclusion was not encouraging – judging by everything, all the resident fish around Phuket was wiped out long ago, and not by us, which is a shame, so you either have to find a boat or find spots to hunt pelagics. Coming ashore with these sad thoughts, I still managed to draw a crowd of natives and tourists who, as usual, gathered to look at the fish. I got talking with the locals; with gestures they showed the eye size of what they catch, which made it clear that the people of Thailand hunt practically everything, big and small, and my catch today wasn't bad at all by their standards. And such a big scorpionfish is top-notch, because it's very tasty… and then some barely understandable babble in Thai.

The picture in oils – "no fish".

We took the fish to the hotel restaurant, where the crooked hands of the local cooks finally ruined this second-rate fish, but as they say, with beer\wine\vodka (underline as appropriate) - it'll do. We found a hotel across the road for 800 baht a night, not as "posh", but with friendly staff and a bunch of nice little perks you can only get by chatting with the hotel owner and winning over the broad Russian soul of this Thai, plus knowing something about Buddhism and geopolitics. After lunch we head to the beach to sunbathe…

The beach is a whole other story… hot white sand that's hard to walk on barefoot… warm sea… a sun lounger for 200 baht, shade from an umbrella, and narrow-eyed guys hauling over coconuts and other cocktails. And at this blissful moment for a Russian soul worn out by the frost, one remarkable event happens that becomes the first step on the road to our venture's success.

Namely, the following picture unfolds before my eyes: one of the many boats scurrying around with tourists of every kind pulls up to shore not far from me. On the boat, two local natives in tank tops and bandanas are yelling something toward the shore. At their shout, two locals in shorts with speargins come running from different ends of the beach. It was a sign, and I instantly dash to cut one of them off. I run up and literally jump on him, grabbing his arm:

- Hey, guys, where you going?

- To sea, hunting.

- Hunting?! Can I come with you? I'll pay!

- No, farangs not allowed, we're in a hurry, the captain's there, not allowed.

- Well, you son of a bitch…

I'm standing by the water watching them load into the boat. A bit more thinking it over, and I swim out and catch up with the boat as it slowly maneuvers between the other vessels, grab onto the side and demand the captain. Five minutes of explaining things to the skipper with hand gestures while hanging off the side, and I've arranged to go out to sea with them. I run in my swim trunks to a taxi, 3 minutes and I'm at the hotel. I grab my gear, on the way I grab Mishka, who's boozing at the bar, along with his camera, and it's a race back to the beach. 15 minutes have passed and we're in the boat… good on the slant-eyed guys, they waited. Besides us there turn out to be 3 people in the boat: a skipper who doesn't dive and two Thais with crossbows with the spear tied directly to the gun, and judging by their gear the guys are experienced and sure of themselves. We head for the island where I'd already dived that morning, sunshine, 3 in the afternoon… On the way I suit up, and at the first stop I tumble overboard together with the locals. The plan is simple – blast this whole zoo to figure out which fish are worth anything and get acquainted with the local hunting technique.

But the Thais' technique doesn't exactly shine with novelty and is called – high-speed survey of the reefs at 5 meters depth, shooting at anything bigger than a saucer. Again, not our method, so I head deeper, to around 15 meters. I do long bottom waits and, not getting anything worthwhile on the ascents, I shoot 4 fish – two small trevally and a couple of green diamond-shaped scaleless fish of about 500 grams each, somewhat resembling piranhas. Having already tried the needlefish, and having found their weak spot (they can easily be lured in using one of the Mediterranean techniques), I stop noticing them altogether. The boat comes up, we pull out. The locals' catch is a riot of rainbow colors – a big fish resembling a parrotfish, a couple of green ones like mine, and a big cuttlefish. I ask in detail about each fish, and it turns out you should shoot everything – whatever can't be fried and eaten, you boil first, then fry and eat…

The cuttlefish of about a kilo and a half gets special mention, the price for it is 250 baht a kilogram – useful information.

About 20 minutes later we arrive at the second spot, pretty far from the first. They show me which direction to go, and the local combat squad takes off along the shoreline at huge speed. There's nothing to do near the shore after a gang like that, so I start hitting the drop-offs at depth. I have no desire whatsoever to race around with the locals, and besides, judging by the length of the lines on their direct tie-ins, they dive to 10 at most. Visibility drops to zero, loads of small fish, I leave a few mullet up to a kilo alone, silty bottom, still no thermocline. After going about a kilometer after the boat that had moved off, I find excellent silty banks at 15-17 meters. Visibility from 3 to 6 meters, and every sign of predators being present. I start methodically doing bottom waits, and on almost every one I'm constantly met by sharp sounds of powerful tail strikes and the movement of huge schools of small fish. On every dive the schools of small fish press up against me, and I find myself in a dense blanket of their bodies. The fish are scared and instinctively look to me for protection – excellent signs! This fish, as I later figured out, is the main food for many local predators. Trevally, or caranx, simply adore them. The fish is bright yellow and resembles the Black Sea damselfish, only up to 200-300 grams in size. They hold in dense herds in areas that are feeding spots for them.

I feel I've ended up in the right place, I keep waiting and turning my head, the strikes are getting closer to me and more frequent. All around it's half-dark and everything has yellow sunset glints. All the small fry are on constant alert and feel fear, while I get a rush of adrenaline… it's about to happen… and sure enough, at the limit of visibility, in the gloom, the outlines of gray ghosts appear. There it is – now that's a fish!

I keep lying there, and a ghost goes past me at the limit of visibility at high speed – or rather, I only saw a skeleton, because the evening light and poor visibility hid the fish's body from me; all that was visible was the powerful lower jaw thrust forward and the outlines of the upper and lower fins. After that everything happens on autopilot, practically without the participation of consciousness. It's as if I'm watching the whole process from the outside and getting the ultimate pleasure from the harmony of it – a smooth swing of the arm with the gun, a fast lead, moving the aiming point half a body length ahead of the fish, and when it's already dissolving into the murk, the shot!

The juicy sound of a hard hit on bone signals a hit, the reel automatically loosens and the line flies off in the direction opposite to where I'm surfacing. At the surface I start braking the reel, and when I feel it's stopped, I start smoothly bringing it in… The main thing is not to overdo it; judging by the fish's strength for its far-from-giant size, it could easily come off. 5 minutes of playing it and the obligatory mercy stab from under the gills so as not to spoil the taste of the fish. That's it, the first fish worth counting!

Here I'd especially like to point out the long-range shooting technique that I developed over many years of hunting in the Mediterranean. Among many serious hunters there's a mistaken opinion that you can't shoot a crossbow at distances over 5 meters. Supposedly the fish dodges, etc., etc…

In reality, though, constantly practicing shooting in the Mediterranean at distances of 6 to 8 meters with high-power guns, I can say that such shooting is a modern reality. Sometimes it's simply a necessity, when you're hunting my favorite kind of fish – dentex. You need to understand well that even if your gun has that kind of range, accuracy and spear energy reserve, the flight time over such a distance, depending on your gun setup, is about 1 second. So you need to correct your aiming point and have well-developed intuition, knowledge of the specific species and skill in judging how the fish might move. Shooting caranx or trevally at medium distances presents no difficulty at all, because the fish doesn't dodge and doesn't have time to react, you just need to take its speed of movement into account.

In the end, I end up in the boat… The locals got a couple of needlefish and a couple more wrasse. My fish throws them into slight embarrassment and you can start to read respect in their eyes – a rare trophy for this spot… which is a shame. Never mind, guys, you've got it all ahead of you… you just need to learn ambush hunting. We come to shore and unload our stuff. My darling Tanechka has already worn herself out waiting for us to get back. The mood picks up considerably, and as a thank-you we gather everyone from the swim around a table at a café. Sandwiches, beer, all on us. We start chatting, and I find out that they've been hunting for a long time, with mixed success, but basically they don't shoot anything serious, and they mostly bang away at anything that moves for fairly prosaic reasons – for food. The coolest hunter among the locals on this part of the island is a certain "Mister Noi". He runs one of the tourist boats and is on the beach almost every day; they promised to introduce us when the chance came up. We finish our beer, swap phone numbers, agree on the next hunt in two days, grab my two biggest trevally and head down the beach towards the hotel. But apparently the stars were really on my side that day, and on the way off the beach, where the local boatmen hang out, they spot me and stop me with excited local shouts, and ask to see the fish. A conversation gets going and it turns out that one of these dashing lads is "Mister Noi" himself – speak of the devil!

He jealously looks over the fish, then gestures with his hands and says that yesterday somewhere "over there" he shot four fish like mine, and in general the best spots are far from here, and there's not much to catch around here. His English is awful and very limited, but from the gleam in both our eyes we immediately understood that we badly needed something from each other. All that remained was to figure out who needed what and how much. A long conversation and haggling, and we knock the boat price down from 12 to 10, then to 8 thousand. If we go out several days in a row, then 7500, but he can't go lower – fuel and all that… we start drinking beer. Misha joins the conversation in Russian, but whether it's his bracelets, his chains, or the impulsive Russian speech, nothing lets him budge Noi from his bottom price.

In the end, the key to our mercenary friend was found – I offered to "make a bet" with him for money. The terms are simple – we go the day after tomorrow, him with a friend, the three of us, we go to good spots, "his" spots. We bang away at fish, the two of them, me alone. At the end of the day we tally up, everything counts. If they beat me, we pay 10. If I beat them, we pay 5. If there's a lot of fish – we sell it, the money's mine, and if it's more than the cost of the boat – we "split" it… Noi was delighted with the deal we'd struck, we shook hands, paid a deposit, swapped phone numbers, that's it… the party kicks off at the restaurant, fish, a night on the town. Rest, not work…

Day two – "reboot".

At 6 a.m. we're standing on the beach in the dark. We hauled the bags ourselves, a bit short on sleep, but in great spirits and our whole team is feeling fantastic. Everyone is waiting for adventures, each for their own. I dial Noi… phone doesn't answer… the bastard. Nobody gets too upset, life here is so wonderful that we don't notice small annoyances, too lazy to drag the bags back… we set up some sun loungers and all collapse onto them together to catch up on sleep.

Not even 10 minutes pass before the first motorbike with a sidecar pulls up. Noi jumps out with a comrade, apologizes that it took him a long time to buy food for us and he couldn't talk while riding the motorbike, and we start loading the boat. Ice, gear, food, booze, water, we load up to the brim. It's already getting light, the engine's warmed up, but we're waiting for someone else. I find out who we're waiting for – turns out, another comrade. I ask them to buy us some coconuts for the road. Another motorbike pulls up, with two more locals on it, and all of them with spearguns… sneaky bastards – let's count: one in the boat, three diving… not a fair game, but there's nothing to be done – it'll be more interesting. Let's see how many local amateurs it takes to handle one Russian "semi-pro"! The will to win is in our blood.

We head out to sea. In Thailand at this time of year the sea is at its roughest in the morning and, surprisingly, calms down completely by lunchtime, and in the evening there's a dead calm. I.e. we were going through the biggest waves, pumped up by a good onshore wind, in places reaching up to two meters. The experienced locals spotted them in advance and dropped the speed to zero, but it was a pretty wild ride all the same. Our team settled in at the bow of the boat, in the most comfortable and spray-protected spot, but even we were soaked to the bone and yelped at every new impact that tossed the boat up… Our friends at the stern, meanwhile, were constantly getting drenched. On top of that, going through such heavy waves demanded constant tension and attention from them, and quickly wore out the helmsman physically because of the way Thai longboats are steered. One clumsy move – and we're in the water.

After two hours under way we reached the first island. Noah had promised us an encounter with the mythical red snappers at this spot — from what I gathered from his stories, one of the most prized and tasty fish in the region. We came in on the sheltered side of the island and dropped anchor. I was already in my suit; the locals dive in T-shirts and shorts. They pointed me in a direction and then, as expected, all jumped in together and cheerfully paddled off the opposite way, toward the foaming breakers that marked the reef. Chasing them, as experience showed, is completely impossible, so I started working the direction I'd been given. The first thing that struck me was the nice visibility. Compared to Phuket, it was a steady 15 meters here. Water — a solid 28 degrees. The bottom turned out to have no significant drops, and I set about looking for fish, varying depth and direction. No sharp depth changes, average depth 15 meters, slopes. About 200 meters on I heard the telltale sound of regulators. A bit further and I saw pearl divers trudging along the bottom, crawling around with baskets and with air hoses running from a small boat — I'd ended up right in the middle of an oyster farm being worked. Thanks, kind Tajiks, great spot. I quickly change direction. For a long time I can't find depth, nothing big in sight. I shift closer to shore and find a good drop-off with picturesque corals. I notice movement, dive, drop, and follow the line right onto a meter-long nurse shark. Leopard-patterned, it's unhurriedly exploring the coral beds in search of prey. Beautiful. More and more often I come across numerous schools of small barracuda, which come close and surround me in a breathtaking whirlpool of countless bodies moving in synchronized circles. But nothing resembling a target so far. Another dive, lying in wait in the coral grass, and a school of small white speckled fish comes out at me — at first glance an exact copy of our Black Sea croaker. A small family. I watch them for about twenty seconds, and the temptation to open the score battles with the thought that I'd have to load 2 powerful bands and spend 4 to 6 minutes on the whole procedure, including moving the fish to the float… no, too small. And at that moment I sense a presence behind me, smoothly turn my head and see, 3 meters away, exactly the same "croakers", but now a whole herd with fish close to a kilo. Now these I have to take — smoothly, along a wide arc, I slowly swing the gun around and take a confident shot behind me at the fish, which have drifted slightly away. The biggest one ends up on the stringer. I keep moving and run into a kilo-sized black sweetlips with white spots. Thanks to preliminary info from Kosenkov I identify it right away and remember it's a very tasty fish, but you can't shoot straight down with a powerful speargun, and buoying it and taking the short gun off the float… also not an option — the fish is small, and if I get distracted by fish around a kilo, which my rivals will be taking, I have zero chance of beating them. I decide to let it go. I work another 100 meters, come out onto a good ridge, and instantly sense prey. The tactical dive I'd honed on groupers and dentex, the one that doesn't spook the fish — "I iz fishy with no teeth" — and I lie in wait by the ridge at 17 meters. I start looking for what triggered that reaction in me, and right away I spot a decent fish patrolling in circles 15 meters away. I keep watching indifferently, and then an amazing discovery hits me — I'm a hundred percent sure I'm looking at… a dentex! Same body shape, same movement pattern and that so familiar grace. Its color is closer to red than gold, like one of the rarest and most prized dentex varieties. What an encounter!

The fish is very cautious and won't come closer than 12 meters. I have to surface, but every move is calculated so as not to spook my new friend. Breathing up in fast mode, another tactical dive along a tangential line, and I manage to get another 5 meters closer to the target than my last lying spot. The dentex, keeping its distance, moved off to its allotted 15 meters, made a small circle and disappeared behind huge corals. Taking advantage of this lucky chance, I dash 5 meters and hide behind a small rock. Distance closed, now I just wait. The dentex comes out on the other side of the coral and makes a pass toward me. It winds circles, changes direction, but won't come closer than 10 meters… main thing is don't look at it and don't aim, don't look and don't aim…. I start shaking from lack of oxygen, but I have to push back those urges and force my muscles to relax — any tension, physical or mental, instantly alerts the fish, especially one like this. Another 10 seconds that felt like an eternity, and there's my red one carefully tracing circles nearby, but on the next circle it can't hold out and cautiously starts closing in 9…8… now 7 meters… Still a bit far — that's nearly the limit of my gun, but I clearly understand it won't get any closer, and in this situation it's better to shoot and miss than to pass on the shot. Smoothly but confidently I take aim, from the way it's moving I can tell where it will bolt, I lead by half a body length, shot, hit! I shoot to the surface, breath and dive merge into a single motion, powerful approach to the thrashing fish. Got it in my hands, yes! Opened its mouth — it's him! Toothy! What a rush… I let myself lie by the float for a few minutes admiring its beauty.

After that everything goes much more cheerfully. Got a fish, can keep taking more. Nearby, in the current, I found a few more rocks and between them a grazing herd of the same dentex, a bit smaller, but I couldn't sneak up on them. The strong current won't let me drop to the chosen spot and I have to correct with my fins — that kind of maneuver they won't tolerate. A few dives and the school dissolves into the distance. The boat is approaching, looks like that's it for the first spot…

I hand up the speargun, climb into the boat and the first thing I ask is – how are the "Tajiks" doing with fish? Noi proudly says he's got one red snapper. I ask to see it and they open the ice box for me… and on the ice, who do you think? Yep, the little brother of my red friend is lying all alone on the ice bags. I pull in the float and delightedly haul out my beauty. Right away there's an exchange of impressions, congratulations and short stories to each other in sign language along the lines of "who saw what, and how many times". I weigh up my chances – 2 fish against one smaller one… well then, guys, looks like you're in trouble.

We head to the second spot, and on the way I see some decent reefs marked by powerful breakers 100 meters from the island. I suggest checking them out, they drop me off and head off in the boat behind the island where there are no waves. The swell really is strong, a strong wind and current. The float with the speargun and fish stringer hanging off it gets very heavy. Diving is hard, I explore the reef, but it's empty. All around this ridge there's sand, depth up to 12 meters, visibility about 11 meters, the spot really was a bad choice, the devils… couldn't talk me out of it. Schools of needlefish and, as usual, schools of fishy riffraff… Found a nice big cuttlefish – it'll come in handy. I decide not to waste any more energy fighting the elements, since the day is only just starting, and begin drifting back the other way along the edge of the reef on the sand line, now and then doing ambushes in promising spots near rocks and corals..

On one of the dives I feel movement behind me, turn to the right and notice a gray shadow over the sand, another instant and I recognize the outline of a gray reef shark passing me at high speed. A slight turn of my body toward the target and the shark, clearly having registered my presence, picks up speed. In my head, one after another, the target's specs flash by in an instant – distance about 6 meters, medium size, danger minimal, and if anything happens there's the second speargun – got to take it. The shark sensed my intention and speeds up, I bring my arm around toward the target, lead of 10 cm in front of the snout, shot.

The spear catches up with the fish's body, lagging 50 centimeters behind the aiming point, and with a juicy sound punches through the shark, coming out half a meter on the other side. Right in the liver area. The fish instantly changes direction and heads for the open sea. The reel is paying out and, easing its pull, I go full speed along the surface after it. In case the reel runs out, I clip the float to the speargun. We fly about 50 meters and I start tightening the line, putting load on the fish. The lucky placement of the spear gives it great drag. Seeing that it's a kill shot, I manage to put the right pressure on the spear, and the shark switches to circling. Like a kite on a string, the fish circles around me, wrapping the float line around its jaws and the spear along the way, which puts extra strain on it, and it can't take it and gives up. It starts spinning around its axis, winding the lines onto its body, and, completely tangled, the fish sinks to the bottom. Landed on its back – that's good, because in that position it loses its orientation, and without moving it doesn't get oxygen. I give it 10 minutes to get "ready", and meanwhile I climb onto the float and start calling the boat with shouts and the flag. The boat pulls up anchor and races over to me. I decide not to use the second speargun and dive down to the fish. Closing in and grabbing the spear on both sides, got it. I don't dare finish it off and hand the fish up into the boat that's come over. In the boat the Thais are squealing something in their own language and just can't pin the fish down. In the air the fish comes to and puts on a farewell show for everyone. The long spear getting in the way, the sharp jaws and the fish standing up on its thrashing tail keep our pirate crew from finding any peace. I jump into the boat and join the fight on the move, work my way closer to the fish, mentally draw the tricky triangle on its head, find its center and with a hard blow drive the blade into the skull. The knife doesn't go through the skull and gets stuck in the thick bone. A second blow with my fist on the knife handle and the blade pierces the skull and comes out of the mouth. Right in the brain, done instantly… old man Hemingway knew how to kill sharks.

Noi and his crew took one small spotted grouper. On points I pull way out in front. All the way to the next spot we discuss sharks, their market price and how they taste. The crew's mood picks up, they tossed another couple of ice bags out of the fish box. Somali pirates have nothing on us, we're the best!

Third stop is by a small vertical island rising sheer out of the sea. Around the island there's a strong current and deep blue water. I can feel this is a great spot. We don't drop anchor; the boat drifts in the lee, out of the wind. My friends jump into the water, go straight in tight against the island and work their way around it towards each other. The walls are vertical, and since they don't dive deep, there's not much room for them to spread out here. Still, they manage to take a small sweetlips and a green grouper. Mind you, my first dives don't go well either - it's really awkward diving with a float. The line snags on the wall and keeps getting in the way of the descent. I ditch the float and do a series of dives along the wall, looking for groupers: 17, 22, 27 meters. The bottom is somewhere around 20-25. No groupers in sight, loads of small fry, so I start doing ambush dives. Here comes a good barracuda up out of the depths and hangs in midwater. Shot, got it. A few more dives and I realize there's no fish here, so I have to move to the leeward side. Visibility gets worse from the surface to the bottom, going from 15 to 10 meters. I come out to the edge of the current and the water and straight away run into my old friends – schools of the yellow fish that trevally love so much. The very first ambush in the rocks at 16 meters, and 5 trevally come at me out of midwater. I pick a bigger one, shot, got it. A short fight and the fish is on the stringer. I start working this patch and take two more just like it. All the shots are measured and aimed right at the spine just behind the head. I.e. they give no trouble. Everything quick and clean. On the next dive I glue myself to the wall at 22, lie there for a very long time and let the small ones pass without paying them any attention, and it pays off: straight out of the darkness comes a really decent fish from the same bunch. From the black coloring of its super-long fins you can already tell it's a seasoned specimen. I start lining it up, but the fish reacts to the movements of my gun by jerking from side to side and I can't keep up with it. It speeds up and passes over my gun practically a meter from me. I let it go, manage to swing the gun around and take a going-away shot at the fast-departing target, just at the silhouette by now. I feel the hit, the fish vanishes from sight in an explosion, the reel opens and the line and I head in opposite directions. On the surface all I can do is brake the line slightly with my hand in a leather glove, watching it peel off the reel at a 45-degree angle. Without a visible hit I've got no right to use a brutal method of playing the fish, so I delicately let it run. Almost the whole reel has paid out, and I frantically grab the float that's nearby so I'm ready to clip it to the gun if need be. I start braking, feel jerks and knocks, and without even noticing I'm drifting away from the island. I start hauling in the line - it's coming in well. I've hauled in about 20 meters and ended up 50 meters from the island. The line won't come any further, it feels snagged on the bottom. Now that's a bummer… Visibility in this spot was about 10 meters at the surface; I haul the line in tight and lock the reel. The gun's handle is sticking out above the surface, I have to dive. First dive, current, I have to hold on to the line and help myself along with my hands, 20 meters, I pull the float down with effort, 22 – that's it, the float line has run out, 22 meters. Decent current, I give it a few yanks – the snag is dead solid. Can't see the bottom or the line, visibility is about 3 meters. Well now… I surface and decide to try once more; ditching a catch like this with an expensive spear, and during a "competition" at that, is a luxury I can't afford. I call the boat over, throw everyone into the water, and we splice their two 12-meter float lines to mine. I brief everyone on who does what – one holds the gun and pulls it up if it comes free. The second one is on the float lines, waiting for the signal from Mishka with the watch, and after two minutes starts hauling up to help me come out. The third holds me against the current while I breathe up. The plan is simple, but as it turned out, simplicity was out of place here – we should have done a "lift"… I rest for 5 minutes and go down. The current is getting in the way a lot, so even after going into freefall I still have to help myself with my fins so as not to lose the line from the spear. Visibility drops with every meter 20, 25, 30… visibility has dropped to a meter … 30 was my psychological barrier, and on top of that everything's in a white fog, time to drop this and head up! I start turning around, and while I'm changing body position I drop another two meters by inertia, and just as I was about to start kicking, I saw the sleeve connecting the line to the spear's cord. A couple more seconds of doing nothing and I land knees first on the bottom, right on some sea urchins. But amazingly I don't feel them right now, because the feeling of my lungs being stuck to my back and equalizing are taking up all my attention. I see a coral in front of me, the dead fish with the spear under the coral and a few turns of line around the coral's branches. Calmly I make the decision - go up or free it? I realize I'm hardly going to come down here a second time, so crawling on my knees, I get to work. The spear line is very thick and untangles, or rather unhooks from the coral, fairly easily. In one circle on my knees I managed to go all the way around and free the whole line – all movements smooth and slow, practically effortless. I drag the fish away from the coral, done! Great job, time to head up… but then came a series of mistakes that kind of spoiled the party. First, I took the fish by the spear and started bringing it up… – that was mistake number one. The bright idea of dropping my belt somehow didn't occur to me – mistake number two. The first signs of oxygen hunger showed up, but I made myself not look at the computer so as not to know the time and depth. I start the ascent… I feel I'm starting to lose the visual picture in my head, it's just trying to narrow, refract and sort of simply float away out of my consciousness. With an effort of will I concentrated and pulled my mind back together, now I couldn't help looking at my wrist – 20 meters… yeah, that's not hard anymore, that's a piece of cake for me… passively I notice the float line moving upward, the one they're pulling me up with, and just as passively I realize they're pulling too slowly and are lagging about 15 meters behind me… zero emotions.

Then a tingling in every muscle and an endless fight to keep my mind focused, while it treacherously tries to leave me at the worst possible moment. The feeling is like the coma you can slip into when you're sooooooo very drunk, when you clearly understand that just a little more and you'll lose the last edge of consciousness. I enter the zone of positive buoyancy and stop moving, because any sharp movement would have made me black out instantly. All my senses are sharpened to the limit, and the water column barely moves, it felt like I was clawing my way up a centimetre at a time, images of unfinished thoughts appear, flying past over the picture in a huge procession… It felt like the light of consciousness inside me was shrinking down to the size of my skull. I see the surface, just the last few metres left, I'm working only with the tips of my toes so as not to pass out, I feel someone grab me under the armpits and squeeze my chest hard, I surface and take a micro-breath – someone's strong embrace won't let me take a bigger one – still, I breathed in too much… darkness… reboot… samba… how cool it is to watch everything from the outside… I've become terribly heavy, but somehow they manage to haul me into the boat by one arm. I come to with a terrible pain in the back of my head, pack my head with ice and lie down. For a few minutes I'm coming round, everything's in a fog, my consciousness keeps flickering. The boat is in a stupor, everyone's gone grey… our people are in hysterics.

After 15 minutes everyone was already trying to laugh and congratulating each other on the happy ending. Tanya kept crying, then going quiet, then shouting at the locals and saying we had to go home right away. But our Tajiks were looking at me quite unambiguously and hinting that the competition wouldn't count if we didn't carry on. I had no desire left to dive, I'd long since taken off my jacket and just decided to watch how and where they'd hunt next. Having reached a compromise with my sweetheart and my conscience, we refuelled with the Thai food we'd stocked up on, and I decoded for everyone the logs from my device with the data on that dive - 35.2, 2:49. Not bad for the second day at sea. 30 minutes later we set out for a new spot. It was a small rock with a lighthouse on it, which doubled as a dive site packed with divers and dive boats. We drifted and waited another hour for the civilians to leave the coral. Ice, a short nap and lots of fluids did their job and I felt better. After spending about 15 minutes persuading her, I managed to get my wetsuit out of my wife's hands and pull it on again. I understood perfectly well what injuries I could have got and what the consequences could be, so I didn't plan to dive at all. I wanted to swim around the lighthouse over the shallows and check out the new spot. I did a couple of test dives to 1, 3 and 5 metres to check how I was. 5 metres was the possible limit. A couple of times barracudas showed up, and I managed to graze one of them, an annoying miss due to lost concentration. And then at 12 metres I spotted a decent grouper, dove on it and hung in the water column. The grouper came out to meet me, trying to scare me off its territory. And so, the right technique let me take a shot at the grouper from a depth of 5 metres, right in the forehead. Kill shot!

That's enough for me, I'm getting in the boat! The grouper is the biggest of all the ones in the boat! The Tajiks finally got sad - everything's heading towards the farang not paying.

But they don't give up and stubbornly head to one more island, the sun starts to set and the best hunting time in Thailand begins – the "evening dawn". The fish, as it turned out, weren't big, but there were loads of them. During sunset, for about 30 minutes all the fish come out onto the banks and shallows and everyone starts their evening dinner. Depths of 2-5 metres, twilight, visibility about 6 metres, but there are so many fish that you lie on the bottom for two minutes choosing what to shoot every second, and if you take everything in a row, every dive would be productive. A short gun would have come in really handy here, but I was too lazy to swim back to the boat for it, and there was no need for that kind of stocking up anyway. So I chose my targets carefully and tried to take something big or something I didn't have yet – a rainbow runner, a kingfish or a similar fish with three horizontal stripes. The Tajiks took another 4-6 fish for the whole gang, but all at the bottom of the qualifying limit, while our team added a couple of good rainbow runners and a couple of kingfish… the sun is setting, and we race home across a totally calm sea, full of impressions.

After a couple of days of rehab we went the same route several more times. We sorted our Tajiks out – brought them to their senses and taught them good manners. We even expanded the group with Andrey Ivanov, who joined us thanks to a tip from Kosenkov, and, being in Thailand at the same time as us, strengthened the already dominant Russian team a bit. Cobia, kingfish, giant groupers, mackerel, white snappers… we took and tried everything. There were new spots, uninhabited islands, shore hunting… Many boat drivers, passing along word-of-mouth stories about our hunting successes, wanted to greet us and waited in the dark for our boat to return so they could see our catch. The only thing we didn't manage to try in the remaining two weeks was organising some bluewater. But I guess we'll do that another time.

Recommendations for hunters:

Best time: December to April

Wetsuit: 1.5-3 mm

Gun: speargun 110-120, definitely with the shaft tied directly

Fins: sea fins

When hunting from the shore, you must have a float with a big bottle of water. You also absolutely need to take stuff for treating (healing) your ears. Everyone has their own remedies, but you need to understand that the water in Thailand is teeming with plankton of all sizes, and after every full day spent in the water we had to take a day off and deal with the inflammation caused by microorganisms getting onto the eardrum. If you don't do this – you'll get an ear infection with +30C outside.

When hunting big groupers you need a torch, a short speargun, a gaff and a LOT of spare shafts. My short ones ran out straight away on the very first grouper, around 15 kg, which I never managed to get out from under a bus-sized coral head at 6 metres. That said, I wouldn't get too hung up on groupers — surprisingly, they taste nothing like their Mediterranean cousins. Thai grouper is very fatty and loses badly on taste, which shows in its price too. A 4-kilo grouper "goes" for 500 baht. For eating, you apparently need to shoot ones up to a kilo.

Flight cost: $ 500-1000 depending on the route and airline

Accommodation: 500-5000 baht per night, but booking it yourself online works out cheaper

Escort services: from 2000 baht

Massage: from 250 baht

Average restaurant bill for two: 1000-1500 baht. The local food is rare crap, so I recommend going straight for European or American chain places — McDonald's, KingBurger, Steak House, etc.

Having a restaurant cook your fish: 200-400 baht (any amount)

Or cook it yourselves, like we often did, renting a kitchen at a restaurant so as not to risk the delicious red snappers. Mackerel has a great, just superb taste, but you have to fry it in thick steaks.

Thailand gets pricier and more trashed every year, so hunting there is already really hard work — no freebies, the fish adapt and get smarter in their sacred desire to survive next to humans, so they bolt instantly from anything that looks like a person. There are still spots and there's still something to hunt. Next time I'm going to explore the local bluewater. So I wish everyone to catch this departing train and get their pass in Thai fish.

With respect to everyone who doesn't shoot fish at night

Alexey Kalinin, especially for seahunter.ru