December 22, 2012 – The Old Men and The Sea
I’ve been wanting to go out fishing ever since we got here, but the boys went out the day we arrived here, and I had to wait for the next time around. That’s today! Four of us from the villa (Bob, Joe, Terry, and yours truly) are off to kill a mess of dorado (maybe) and, if we get lucky, a sailfish or marlin or three. The boat is a SuperPanga, which is a 26′ open fibreglass boat with a canvas bimini top and twin 75hp outboards. A seven-hour cruise is 3000 pesos ($3000p) plus tip, and you bring your own food and drinks. With a healthy tip and a half-dozen Pacificos, it’s $70 Cdn for a full day’s fishing. Can’t beat that! We’re leaving from the Barra de Navidad lagoon at 7:00, so it’s up at 5:30 and into Bob’s car at 6:30; I knew there was a catch…. It’s a gorgeous morning with Venus putting on a very pretty show as the morning star, and the lagoon is a hive of activity on arrival, with water taxis bringing locals to work and fishermen heading out for the day.
The lagoon from my favorite lunch spot. This is brackish water behind Barra de Navidad.
Our pilot/guide/deckhand is Rodrigo, a 30-ish local who turns out to be a very hard-working and knowledgeable fishing guide, albeit with very limited English. We chatter our way offshore until we clear the last rocks about three or four miles from the lagoon, and then it’s time to get out the rods and get down to business. Rodrigo works five rods; one center rod on a short line with bait just below the surface, two middle rods on medium lines with plugs skipping on the surface, and two outer rods on long lines with baited plugs right on the surface. Trolling for dorado is about eight miles per hour, and for billfish it’s up to twelve miles per hour! Rodrigo handles all the rods and the boat and sets the hooks on the fish. Our job is to look pretty, wait nicely, and reel the fish in. The four of us whip out coins to determine the order for getting into The Fishing Seat; after much discussion of what’s a head and what’s a tail on these things, what determines a win and a loss, and what to do when Steve drops his coin (again), it is determined that The Fishing Seat will be occupied in order by Joe, Bob, Steve, and Terry. This appears auspicious, as Joe has only been out once before in his life and he caught a sailfish; we consider this to mean that he’s on an unbroken winning streak….
After about 45 minutes, there is a terrific wank! on one of the outboard rods, and Rodrigo leaps back, yanks on the rod, and reels in at a ferocious pace. Nothing. Then he puts the reel in neutral and spools out line to stop the bait in the water; when he locks it up again, the fish is there, and he sets the hook, and it immediately comes about four feet out of the water. It’s a sailfish, and Joe cranks it in, a very pretty sight. It’s a female about fifty or sixty pounds, and Joe is now two-for-two!
Joe and Rodrigo with The Victim.
We’re all pretty energized after that, as we’re forty-five minutes into a seven-hour charter and we’ve already got a nice fish in the boat. So, of course, that’s it for the day. Not for lack of trying; Rodrigo took us all the way out to twenty-seven miles offshore (12,000 feet deep, I am told), zigzagged us all over the surface of the ocean, changed lures and bait about ten times, and changed speed constantly. We got six or eight more bites, most of which were probably dorado, but we couldn’t hook anything up. One was definitely a sailfish; it came up to one bait on the surface and gave it a whack, stormed over to the other bait and gave it a whack, but just couldn’t manage the hook-in-the-mouth thing. At about 2 pm, Rodrigo had trolled us back to where we started, and it was time to get back to the lagoon and close out the day.
It was a joint effort.
Steve, Bob, Rodrigo The Dwarf, Terry, and Killer Joe.
It turned out we were one of only two or three boats that got anything today; it’s just pretty slow out there right now. Rodrigo hung the beast up for us, and after the mandatory photo-op, he processed the fish into fillets whilst we sucked on cold beers and watched. A fascinating process on a big fish of this shape; turns out it was a female, as it has a very big skein of roe, which the locals are delighted to take home with them. We were all a bit disappointed not to get into more fish, but we had a good day out there anyway and we’re all looking forward to doing it again.
Ick, or Yum, depending on your point of view.
My share (the smallest 1/4 I could find) fed four of us last night with three pieces left over, so it would have easily fed 6, and that was exactly half of it. I was somewhat leery of it, as I have heard that marlin is a low-end fish from an eating perspective. Deb marinated this stuff in lime juice, cilantro, and lemon-pepper spice, and then grilled it on the barbecue and it was excellent! So I don’t know about marlin, but sailfish is perfectly OK.