The steady donations in lures, hooks, and swivels she has been making to
the fish community since then could have kept us in fish n’ chips, 3 times a
week for the rest of our lives, and we intend living a long time.
But to be fair, her strike rate has gone up a lot since starting this passage across
the Pacific.
We can be rockin’ and rollin’ with an awful following sea and she’ll be sitting there, grumpy as hell, exhausted from the strain of hanging on all the time and too little sleep, and suddenly the rod will sing as the line runs out.
The transformation has to be seen to be believed. It’s nothing short of
miraculous. It’s as though Harry Potter has just wacked her with his wand and
Sandy the Fearsome Fish Slayer leaps into action.
Her face lights up with the biggest grin you’ve ever seen and she jumps up,
scrambles to the back of the boat and starts reeling in.
She’ll let that line run and wind back in for half an hour, arms aching,
like someone possessed until the fish is skipping along just behind the boat.
Between the 2 of us we lose more than we land and part of the reason is our
net is too short and our transom is high, but we are enjoying a lot of fresh fish now. Usually Mahi Mahi but last night we just lost a huge Skipjack tuna. In fact he was so heavy he left his gills on the hook as we were wrestling him up the side of the boat! Other fish will dine well on our dinner.
Once on board they are quickly dispatched with a dash of alcohol in the gills, and she fillets them right away.
And the awful rocky, rolly Wind Wanderer is forgiven for a while...
She has 2 lines going most of the time, one on a rod in a rod holder, and the other is a rig she learned about from Leo and Ben, our Panama Canal gurus who swore by it... “Do you want to play fishing, or do you want to eat fish?” was their pitch, from memory.
Their system was so simple and fool proof you could just pull the line in and remove the fish, already devoid of fight, anytime you felt like fresh fish for dinner. Just like plucking it from a supermarket shelf.
The rig is a few meters of shock cord in a loop and firmly attached to the boat,
then 50 meters of strong nylon, at least 150 pound breaking strain, a swivel,
some trace wire, and a cedar plug.
We’d never heard of cedar plugs but were assured the fish will be queuing up,
cash in their fins to have a chomp on a cedar plug.
So we bought a couple of cedar plugs in Panama, real good looking ones with
smooth lead ‘heads’ and fine tapered cedar bodies, and a vicious hook sticking
out of the end where the fins would be, if it was a torpedo.
I think they were both gone before we made it out of the Las Perlas Islands.
Looking at the remaining bits of trace wire, we probably didn’t want those
monsters on board anyway! I suspect one of them was probably snagged on
one of the many logs that were floating by.
But the simplicity of the rig had struck a chord so lures were added.
No success worth mentioning.
Then the bounty of the sea started providing. Every morning Sandy does a
round of the deck to collect any squid on board, and there often are a few.
At the same time she tosses the flying fish overboard.
They are smelly things with poor navigation. I have no idea how the squid
get on board. They must be good jumpers.
The squid make good bait and she immediately started catching fish.
The trouble is we run out of squid very quickly.
I made the remark that it might be worth trying a flying fish and she
had been wondering the same thing.
Well, Dorado, also known as Mahi Mahi, like flying fish!
Who needs a $15 cedar plug when you have flying fish delivered,
airmail overnight?
In fact now the word is out they are flocking... they are flying fish
after all, to join us.
The other night I was on the verge of sleep when I heard Sandy shriek
and a scuffling noise on the floor of the cockpit. One had flown straight
in through the gap of an unzipped cockpit cover. “Not my watch” doesn’t
cover flying fish invasion, apparently, so I ended up wrapping tomorrow’s
bait in a paper towel and putting it out on the side deck.
Sometimes she is such a girl!
Last night it was my watch and I was leaning up against the doghouse window,
feeling drowsy and lost in Mark Twain’s meanderings down the Mississippi,
when there was a loud BANG right next to my head.
Once I‘d climbed back down from the roof I grabbed a torch to see what had
broken this time.
You guessed it. There flapping on the side deck was a stupid flying fish.
I turned to Sandy... “Madam, your bait delivery has arrived...”
Until next time...