The best fishing day ever

Written March 26, 2010:

Today was the best fishing day we’ve had on our entire trip.
We woke up at around 6 AM this morning, ate breakfast, drank a lot of coffee, and closed up all the portholes arsehole tight. Upping anchor was complicated a bit when the windlass decided to be persnickity, and Mom had to go below and jiggle the cord to the control.

When we got a bit further offshore we pulled up the main, mizzen and jib sails. It went pretty smoothly. With that done we set a course of 260 degrees, toward Isla Monjes. The wind was at a good angle for sailing, so we didn’t have to jibe, and we were doing 7.5-8 knots motorsailing with the motor at 1300 rpm. When we were on course, Dylan started letting out the fishing lines. Before he could get the fourth line out, the heavy trolling rod started screaming! Dylan ran to reel it in, I started reeling in the other rod, and Dad was pulling in the handline.

After a short fight, Dylan swung the fish over and on to the deck. We knew, at a distance it was a tuna, and upon closer inspection, deduced that it was an Albacore Tuna. It weighed in at 8 lbs. Dylan immediately began filleting it on the aft deck. I was the “Hoser”, I sat nearby and occasionally sprayed the blood and all the other lovely little fish organs overboard. When Dylan got the first fillet off, we noticed that the fish’s stomache was full, overfull really. Naturally, he sliced it open and pulled out a good sized mullet and baby mullet. They hadn’t even begun the break down, which was pretty funny. Little piggy learned not to overindulge the hard way...

We let the lines back out, and after five minutes, I decided to go down for a quick nap. As soon as I got down below, the medium trolling rod started screaming! I ran up and started to reel it in, when the other rod started screaming too! So, Dylan leaped on it and started reeling. After a few minutes, Dylan landed his fish, a 3 lb. Mahi Mahi. When he had it bagged, I finished reeling in my fish, a little 2 lb. Tuna. We decided to keep both.

So, after Dylan filleted both, we were pretty tuckered out, so we grabbed a drink and layed down on the back cushion. I’m not kidding you, less than a minute later the heavy trolling rod started screaming yet again. Since Dylan had reeled in two, and I one, I ran over and started reeling. It was another small fish, a 3 lb. Tuna. Instead of filleting it, this time Dylan just gutted it and cut off the head and tail. So, we put all the lines out again, and I went below for a nap. By now we were 10 miles offshore. During the next 35 miles, we only got two strikes, but after a few seconds the fish got off.

I finally got a chance to rest and read my book. I think I slept for a bit, i’m not sure. When we got close, Mom and Dad were getting things ready figuring out who to call on Isla Monjes. I was laying on the couch, half asleep, we were only a few miles offshore........ and then all of a sudden I heard a rod screaming! I leaped up, threw on my life jacket halfassed, and ran up the companionway. When I got up, Dylan was in a frazzle, as both rods were screaming. I ran over to the medium trolling rod and increased the drag so the fish would stop taking line. By the time I got there, the fish had taken over half of the line on the spool. With a grin on my face i started reeling. And reeling. And reeling some more. This guy was pretty big, I knew, he was putting up a hell of a fight. While i was reeling in, Dylan realized that both of the handlines had fish on them, too! With a woop and shout, I reeled in even harder. Dylan’s rod’s drag was able to hold the fish, so he left it and started pulling in the port handline. A bit later, Mom ran over to the heavy reel and started reeling in the fish. Dylan landed the 10 lb. Tuna, stabbed it in the brains, and left to get the other hand line, but the fish, despite having it’s brain scrambled, had some life in it and started flopping around the deck. Dylan noticed, but too late. A big wave heeled us over pretty good, Dylan dove for the fish, the fish flopped around mindlessly and fell over the side, and Dylan managed to cut himself on the arm with the ice pick we use for killing fish. After a few swear words that would make an old sailor proud, he ran over to the other hand line and began pulling it in.

And all the while, I was reeling. That damn fish took off a hell of a lot of line, and progress was slow. Dylan landed the fish on the other handline and stuffed it in a garbage bag before running over to the heavy reel and taking over for Mom. After a few minutes, the fish were getting closer, and Dylan and I found ourselves in a minor predicament. My fish was crossed over to the left, his to the right, and we couldn’t quite figure out which line was under. So, we stopped reeling and tried to figure it out. It took a little while, but finally deduced that mine had crossed over his, so he reeled in. While he was reeling it in, landing it, and braining it (Our expression for stabbing a fish in the brains.), I had my fish dragging 20 feet behind the boat. I said to him: “Well, you put up a hell of a fight, but your ass is grass.”

While all this was happening, mind you, Mom and Dad were trying to call the Port Captain on Isla Monjes. All we ever really got back from him was: “No copy, no copy, no speak English, no hablas English...”.

When Dylan had the fish bagged, Mom threw some ice in the bag to keep them somewhat cool. I reeled in my fish the rest of the way, Dylan grabbed the leader, and I grabbed the gaff hook. I had never really gaffed a fish before, so it took me a few minutes to get him in the gills and haul him up. Dylan says I did pretty good gaffing him. When he was in the boat, we brained him, which was easy as he was pretty tired after being dragged by the boat. When he was dead, we bagged him, put the lines away, rinsed off the deck, and got ready to tie up in Isla Monjes. By the time we had done all that, we were entering the harbour. Tying up in Isla Monjes is.... different, to say the least. They strung a 200 foot line in front of the damn they built to block the seas. You had to go up, really close into shore, pick up one of the lines hanging off of the main line with the boat hook, tie two bow lines on it, and throw it back in the water. Sounds easy, right?

Oh, I forgot to mention the 25 knot wind pushing you away when you’re trying to do this.
So, we go up, Dylan tries to grab the line, we drift back, the boat hook falls overboard, and we’re drifting sideways. Grrrrrreat! So, we tried to go up again, no luck. We backed out some, and let Rum Boogie tie up. They did, and then were told they couldn’t be there (Naturally). SO, they back out, and then one of the crew from the fishing boat tied off to the left jumped in the water and swam over to tie up some lines on the main line, because on the right side of it there were no other lines hanging off. When we tied them both up, we came up to the main line, tossed him one of our bow lines, and he tied it up. Yay! Oh, wait, now we’re held sideways to the wind because we could only tie the starboard bow line on. ****.

Now, feeling moderately frustrated, we motored up, Dylan picked up the loop, I ran the port bow line through, ran over to the port bow cleat and tied it off. Dad came up to the bow and spent a few minutes adjusting and centering the lines.

Now, we were tied up nicely. Rum Boogie came up and tied off perfectly..... those ********... With both boats tied up nicely, Dylan and I began to gut the three tuna. We weighed them out beforehand. The two Dylan pulled in were 10 lbs each, mine was 12 lbs. We decided to steak them, as it wastes very little of the fish. I took up the humble role of the hoser, and Dylan set to work steaking the Tuna. What he did was chop off their heads and tails, and then cut around the body with the fillet knife to cut the meat, and Dad used the cleaver to cut the spine. I tell you, we got a **** load of tuna steaks from those three fish!

Once that was all done, me and Dylan had a nice shower. Dylan still smelled a bit like fish afterwards, though. Because we wanted to have a drink and dinner with Rum Boogie, but didn’t want to get a dinghy in the water, we decided to raft up together. After 20 minutes of attempts, Mike somehow got their boat close enough that we could tie on to them. The end result was a sort of stern to side thing. It worked. They had to do a bit of tightrope walking to get over :). For dinner, Mom and Mike fried up the Mahi Mahi as an appetizer, and the Tuna fillets for dinner. It was very, very delicious.

After dinner, we sat around the laptop planning the next day’s cruise. After a while, we settled on going to Cabo de la Vela. It was about 90 miles away. That meant, to get there we need to leave at 5-5:30 AM!

We went to bed early, trying to get as many precious minutes of sleep as we could.

Brett,

The Dutch Dreamers

(By the way, we are currently in Cartegena. I´m not done typing up about the last week though. I´ll try to be done in a few days, then i´ll post it all up.)