News

Fishing!

A friend of mine moved into the ward and is a crazy fishing fanatic with 2 boats (bass boat and a 25foot mako). As time permits I go out with him on the ocean to do some fishing. The first time he caught 2 fish and I did not caught a single fish! (Though I had 6 huge bites on 15 inch long bait). The trip got worse. The huge fish that my friend caught I misidentified as a black jack. An undesirable fish that is known to have the algal toxin ciguaterra. We kept the fish for chum because it died before we could release it. I later correctly identified the fish as African pompano, which is one of the best tasting fish and often the most expensive fish to buy. We used 10lbs of it as chum! I have now become more serious in fish identification.

That was only the second time in my life that someone caught more fish than me. The next 2 fishing trips everything returned to normalcy when I caught 4 of 7 fish of the first trip and 4 of 6 fish on the second trip. We went out last week for sailfish and dolphin (mahi mahi) but no luck. We stumbled across a wreck and dropped down on it with live bait. No sooner than I dropped down, I caught a 30lb amberjack. They don't bite hard but rather grab the bait and hide in the wreck. I had to be very alert to when the fish bit and immediately start horsing the fish off the wreck. My friend would move the boat off the wreck to help pull the fish away into open water. If the fish makes it back into the wreck, getting the fish out again is nearly impossible because the fish uses the wreck as leverage. However, once the fight is on, it is arm-tiring, back-breaking work pulling him off the bottom because it wants to stay deep. They call them 'wreck donkeys' because pulling them off a wreck is like trying to get a donkey to walk forward when it does not want to. Altogether some great fishing.

Here are some pics.