And we found that the fishing here is similar to taking nice colorful photos here. It didn't take much effort before we started seeing results. To the point where we could basically go out and catch fish just about any time we wanted. Oh, we didn't always know what they were, at first, but we learned fairly quickly.
A Cero Mackerel. We had never heard of a Cero Mackerel, and took it ashore and asked our friends at "Catch the Wave" if it was good to eat. They said "Oh yeah!, you gonna keep that one...?" We did. They are delicious.
And we caught a lot of them. We learned what lures they preferred, and even what bottom conditions and water depth. Daniel actually hooked this one while he was dozing in the boat. He's lucky that way. We had caught quite a few bottom fish, including grouper and snapper. But this was the first upper water edible fish we caught dragging lures around. We were so stupid in the early days....we did not know what we were doing. But we learned.
And we caught all kinds of things once we 'got the hang of it'. It's not really rocket surgery, either.
We don't eat the barracuda, but they're so easy to catch that we looked for someone who might want them. And we found plenty of local friends who love barracuda. Besides Dooley the Demented, of course. He thinks all fish are his. And that they all need biting.
We catch small yellowfin tuna in season, and they're always a lot of fun.
Some of the stuff we hook gets returned to the ocean. This one was just too pretty to eat. Besides, we didn't know if it was legal to eat..
We don't target sharks, but sometimes they grab the bait before we can stop them. We almost always throw them back, too.
Some of our visitors really like getting into a decent little tuna. These are just the right size. We couldn't handle much bigger on our little boat.
La Gringa hooked this nice wahoo and had to fight it for quite a while before getting it onto the boat. These things are fierce, and are even dangerous once they're on board.
Snapper, grouper, barracuda, wahoo...none of that matters to Dooley. His attitude is always "Fish? Yeah? Then Bite It!!"
We have to keep an eye on him. Some of these fish will bite back.
The yellowtails are so common, and tasty, that they sell them in packs of three at the local grocery store.
A boat for sale in Provo ( local slang for "Providenciales"). I just liked the name.
This is a catamaran that got overturned at the dock in a squall at Leeward Marina. We wrote a lot more about this episode later, with more photos. We were very unorganized in the early blogging days. We just picked the photos we liked and randomly posted them. We got better as we went along.
The folks on the fishing and boating forum wanted more boat photos. So we started keeping an eye out for unusual boats to show them. And we found plenty.
At this point people started to get the idea that living here full time was like a big Corona beer commercial. We had to start explaining that there was a lot more to island life than just catching fish and looking at boats.
Someone asked me how we spent our days when we were not fishing or diving. The question came at a good time, and I answered:
"I just spent two hours, sweating, slapping bugs both flying and crawling, lying in the dirt on the side of the road trying to get the starter off a Ford Expedition. Two dogs tried to move in, under the shade of the truck. It was 90 deg. Woulda been easier if I had known Ford is using metric freakin' bolts."
A new Bosch starter/solenoid for a 98 Ford V8 is $320 bucks here at Napa. The top bolt is a certified bitch to get out, especially if you don't wanna twist it off. Them suckers get froze up pretty good after 180,000 miles..."
Yeah, that's a pretty typical afternoon.
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