So I Forgot About the Fish

One part of the Aruba to Panama trip I totally forgot to mention was the pestilential six foot long sail fish we caught.

Sure, it’s a “Sport” fish…but guess what – I’m not looking for sport, I’m looking for dinner!

When we make passages if it’s not too rough I like to trail a line behind the boat.  We’ve caught a few nice meals this way in the form of the occasional Mahi Mahi.  I have hopes for a nice tuna some day, but the only one we caught I thought was too small (silly me) so I let it go.  But in the open ocean you never know what you might get, there are some scary big fish out there.  Our tackle is reasonably heavy (Penn International 50T reel on a 5’6″ Local Hooker Acid Wrapped rod stout enough for 50-100 lb test line), but you can rest assured that if I can not get it in with 80 lb test line I DO NOT WANT IT ON THE BOAT.  Or even near it.

It’s always a thrill when you hear the shrill buzz of line peeling off the reel.  Some of the little fish don’t do that, they sort of get skipped along the surface since they don’t have the muscle to counteract eight knots of boat and the drag.  When something RUNS with the line you know it is big.

Not what it looks like. Really.

When fishing I’m not in any danger of winning any style contests.  I am generally wearing my sailing hat (a Tilley, known as my “big goofy hat” on board), and a “fighting belt” around my waist.  This is a strap on belt that has a socket for the end of the rod butt to stick into so you don’t have to dig it into your own soft personal parts to apply leverage to the rod.

The reel screams and up I jump, grabbing the belt and strapping it on as I scramble to the back of the boat.  The job of the helmsman is to slow the boat down to reduce drag.  Even reeling in an empty lure when barreling along a 7-8 knots is a bit of work, attach even a small fish to that and it ramps up exponentially.  It makes my job as fish-hauler much more difficult.  After all we are trying to get the fish to the boat to eat it, not drag it to death and troll for sharks with it.

As I grab the rod and Will slows down the boat the line is still screaming off the reel…Bzzzzzzzzzzzzz!  Finally I start tightening down the drag thinking that I have to reel all of this back in.  Then I get a look at what is on the line.  With a spectacular leap clear out of the water I see a good sized sailfish trying to throw the hook, and it is really, really far behind the boat because it has stripped off so much line.

My immediate reaction was “damn” because I knew three things immediately:  1) Sailfish are not widely regarded as being tasty and 2) it is a large fish with a pointy nose I don’t want to grab and 3) having caught one other of these beasties from a charter boat years ago I have my work cut out for me if I want my line and my $12.00 lure back.  Which if course I do, I am too cheap these days to contemplate any other course of action.

We didn’t check a watch so I’m not sure how long it took to get it to the boat.  It gave me a few more good jumps before we got it up close though.  Then the fun began…how do I get my $12.00 lure back without harming this fish?  I can’t gaff it like I would something I am going to eat, that would likely kill the fish.  Though it is clearly capable of gaffing me with that razor sharp proboscis or my own lure if I wasn’t careful.  And of course we’re about five feet above the water which means I can’t just reach down and grab the hook anyway.  So we decided the best course of action would be for the women to try and get a loop of rope around its tail with the boat hook so we could lift it out of the water so I could grab the lure.

While we were deciding and rigging this we saw another large, dark shadow glide under the fish.  We thought it might be a shark, about to obviate the whole “how do we not harm it” question, but it was another sail fish.  Apparently they travel in pairs or small groups.

The tail roping was a dismal failure.  However the sailfish was so displeased by the entire process that it trashed itself into enough exhaustion that I was able to work the hook loose from the deck, moving the pole around to change the hook’s angle until it worked its way out of the bony jaw.  The fish didn’t realize it was free right away, then it glided off to join its companion in the cobalt depths.

For me, my arms stopped shaking from the effort eventually.  But the fish were safe for the rest of the day as I’m pretty sure I couldn’t have hauled in a guppy.

But I got my lure back.