WAHOO ! ! !

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       We like to fish.  More to the point- we love to harvest FREE SEAFOOD anytime possible.  So we often troll when the conditions are right during a sail.  We fish off the boat at anchor, too, when the bay is clean looking and edible types are spotted below while we check the anchor.  We fish a lot and every now and then we actually get lucky.  I say “lucky” because that is really what it takes.

 

      For example, one recent evening in a pristine bay of St. John-USVI (where fishing using traditional methods are allowed) one fish hit hard on my bait and managed to eat it clean off without getting hooked.  So I tied on a bigger hook with bait and dropped it off the side.  Within a minute I felt a strong tug again, then it let go as I pulled up the line.  This time the whole hook was gone! (At this point, the Captain was snickering at me from the galley…) But I was not done fishing yet and I aimed to be CATCHING soon.  So I put a new hook on a steel leader. Ha! Let’s see what this fish does now!   Once again, he hit and I began to pull. “It’s a big one,” I called out to the Captain who came up on deck just as my line when limp. This time the hook was still on the line, but it was bent beyond repair.  I have no idea what kind of fish it was, but I put my handline and tackle box away after that.  No luck that night.  Fun, but no luck.

 

      Now we’re circumnavigating the relatively small island of St. Martin.  We had the poll out between anchorages the other day rigged with an oddly colored lure that we’d never caught anything on before.  And wouldn’t you know it- we got a good hit!  I grabbed the pole and began to tighten down the drag, but whatever was on the line kept pulling it out. I finally got it tight enough, but I couldn’t reel it in even a fraction of an inch. The Captain slowed the boat down, got the gaff, his gloves, and a bottle of rum.  I watched the surface of the water and waited for the fish to jump or something so we might identify it, but it didn’t. After a couple of minutes I was at last able to reel it in at a good steady rate and noticed that the fish was being dragged along the surface of the water. At that point, we could tell it wasn’t a mahi mahi because it was silvery-colored. Dan was ready with the gaff and rum (to subdue it by pouring some into its gills), but it had no fight left by the time we got it on deck, so no rum was spilled.  Its tail was a mangled mess and the last quarter of the body was ripped open by huge teeth marks.  We think a larger fish- probably a barracuda- attacked it and that was why I couldn’t reel it in at the beginning.

 

      This was the very first WAHOO that we ever caught and although we threw away a quarter of its length, we’ll still have seven great meals out of it.   

W A H O O ! ! !