At Benoa Marina only two days previously, we had admired an impressive line-up of yachts of various shapes and sizes, enjoyed the tinkle and creak of their stays as we boarded the little Grand Banks. Tanjung Benoa, on the other hand, is the centre of paragliding, jetskiing and sausage riding in Bali. That the Putri Nyale docked here rather than at Benoa Marina signified that Waterworld's fishing tour was to be something quite different to what we had experienced on the Blue Marlin.

The Putri Nyale is a nine-meter fibreglass dynamo, with two hefty 200 horse power outboards which were rumbling and puffing away as we boarded from the shore of the beach. Seating up to six passengers, it can be booked for fishing, diving or snorkling (all equipment and staff plus a packed lunch included) for US$700 per six hours, or $125 per head per three hours. For more than six passengers, Waterworld has a larger boat, the Blue Horizon, the capacity of which is fifteen passengers. We were granted a three-hour fishing trip off the coast of Nusa Dua, between 9am and 12pm, which included use of the Putri Nyale's four trawling reels, lures and bait of prawns and sardines for stationary fishing.

No sooner had we perched on our white terry-towling covered cushions than this marine torpedo was off, making good use of the outboards to contest the swell, jumping the rolls of the ocean like some waterborn BMX. Doing 20 knots (the Putri Nyale can go as fast as 50 knots), it didn't take long for us to pass Nusa Dua by and for the coast of Bali to become little more than a strip on the horizon, but not before several unstowed towels had been lost to the ocean and each passenger had received their fair share of sea spray. When one of the deckhands spied a dolphin fin, we slowed to a dawdle, and circled in search of the school. Soon enough, scores of fins started emerging around the boat.

Tacking back in towards the coast, headed for the Bali Cliff Hotel, we put the trawling lines out in the hope of snaring - so the deckhand told me - some tuna, for it was the wrong time of day for trevalley, which tend to bite in the evening around 6pm-7pm. But as we neared the coast it became evident that the swell was too large for trawling, so we headed for Nusa Dua for some reef fishing, making use of the Putri Nyale's constantly bleeping depth finder which, on encountering a fish, displayed their location in black dots across an LCD screen and upped its rate of bleeping - presumably to alert passengers to get their lines in quick. Being an obedient lot, we did as the depth finder told us, grusomely impaling fat prawns onto our hand lines, and waited. A local in his outrigger passed and, looking at the four flash trawling rods planted at the Putri Nyale's stern, advised us to go back to Bali Cliff and trawl. We ignored him, choosing to place our trust in the depth finder instead, and thus picking our way north along the reef.

Indeed, the depth finder did not fail us! As we chewed our crustless tuna and tomato sauce sandwiches, and sucked on limp potato crisps that had been wrapped in glad wrap, we hauled in several tiny, inedible (pretty but useless) reef fish, bits of coral and... a brick-shaped creature with a pointed nose that just about snapped Benny's precious rod, but finally broke the surface with the hook well into its gizzards. Thank god for the depth-finder-cum-fish mapper!

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