I don’t know about you, but when I get the chance to go on holiday one of the first things I do is find out where I can go fishing. I love taking the opportunity to get out on a charter boat and target some of the exotic sporting species that swim the oceans. A constant problem I have had is finding a charter boat in the area I am going to. Often you have to wait till you get to your hotel, and there you normally have limited choice on what boats you can book at short notice.

Wouldn’t it be great if there was a website that gave you a list of charter boats in the area you are visiting, one that also allowed previous customers the ability to leave feedback on their experience. Well the good news is that just such a site exists. I had seen a number of adverts for fishfishme, on a few of the fishing website that I read. I decided to get in touch with the guys that run it and find out a bit more.

 

Kingfish Jose

 

The company is run by Abdullah Alshalabi and co-founder Jose Gil Zafra pictured above. Both guys are mad keen anglers, and have landed numerous fantastic hard fighting fish in their time. I am delighted to say that Abdullah was kind enough to take time out of his busy day to grant me an interview.

Q. What is fishfishme?

Fishfishme is an online platform to help people find and book fishing charter boats around the world. Basically, we make it super easy for people to book a fishing trip. Currently our charter partners are spread over more than 30 destinations around the world, including Spain, UAE, USA and South Africa to name a few.

Q. How did you come up with such an idea?

I have always loved fishing, but never owned a boat. I always struggled to find someone who owns a boat to go fishing with. I repeatedly searched the web to find a charter boat to rent, but found nothing. This was when I was living in Kuwait. Then when I moved to Hong Kong, I had the same problem. After that I moved to Spain, and I encountered the same issue. It was super hard to find a fishing charter boat. The prices were always hidden, the information was insufficient and the websites looked crappy. So I thought, why not create a website that contains the details of all of the fishing charter boats around the world and that has a very simple procedure to make a booking. And this is how fishfishme was born

Q. So tell us more about the destinations your website covers?

Currently our charter boat partners are mostly concentrated in UAE, Spain and Oman. However, we already have solid presence in markets such as Italy, Thailand, South Africa and Florida, USA.

At present we operate from two regional offices; one in Dubai, UAE and the other in Malaga, Spain. Soon we are going to have physical presence in other bigger markets to keep up with the demands arising from these countries.

Q. What is unique about your services?

Technology is changing everything around us, often for the better. However, fishermen and captains seem to struggle to keep pace with these developments. Many of these charter operators have no presence in the web and even now depend on old ways to present their services. In addition, booking a fishing trip online was very hard. With fishfishme you’ll find all the information you need to make your call and you can book your trip online in 3 simple steps.

Q. So how does it work?

After landing at fishfishme.com you choose the country and city you want to go fishing in. After that you can browse through all the fishing charters in the city and select the best charter that fits your need. After that you can follow a few more easy steps to make the booking and they go like;

  1. Choose the date and no. of passengers and click book now.
  2. Enter your personal details.
  3. Make the deposit payment (you only need to pay a deposit payment not the full price, between 15-50% depending on the boat policy)
  4. Done! You’ll receive a confirmation email shortly after that.

For charter skippers that want to list their own boats on fishfishme then you can simply send an email to list@fishfishme.com

IMG_3765

 

It really is a great concept, and the pictures speak for themselves. One of the features I really like is the ability to go on the site to the area I want to fish, look at when the fishing is best for the species I am most interested in and find out which months are the best. Then I can do the more mundane tasks such as booking a hotel. That is exactly what I have done for my trip to the River Ebro Delta in Spain next year. It is one of the best areas in Europe for lure and fly fishing for Tuna and huge Leerfish, but that’s another story. If you want to find out more information on how to book a charter and what is available around the world then follow the link to fishfishme.com

Tune_alhomin

 

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