Fish Tales

Fishing. When we began our trip we had dreams of all the fresh fish we would eat. Tuna, mahi, grouper, snapper...the bounty of the sea would sustain us. We would drop a lure in the water, fish would bite it, we’d reel them in, slap them on the grill and enjoy a free feast from the sea. We laughed that we’d get sick of fish...dreamed of the gazillions of ways to cook fish.  We bought the filet knife, the cutting board, the net, the gaff, the gloves... Lures and poles were donated to us as gifts. We were ready to slay the beasts of the sea.

At least, that’s what we thought.

Unfortunately, that is not the reality.

The last notable fish we caught (and ate) was the mahi mahi we got back in the Bahamas, which seems a lifetime ago. This is not for lack of trying, mind you. We throw a line out pretty much every day. We try all sorts of lures from the cedar plug to the squid to the skirt. At anchor Scott even throws out the cuban yoyo. You know what we have caught in the last two months?

Nada. Zip. Zilch.

Well, except for seaweed, that is. Do you have any idea how frustrating it is to hear the tell-tale vvvvvvvvzzzzzzzzzzzzz of the line only to reel in a chunk of seaweed? Once - no big deal. But when it happens over, and over, and over again, you might just look up at the sky, lure in hand, shake your fists at the sky and cry “Whyyyyyyyyy???!!!!”. You get a little loopy.

We’re beginning to think we are doing something wrong.

Do you have any idea how complicated fishing can be?! Do you have any idea how many lures there are?  Jigs, skirts, plugs, spoons, flies and squids...there are swimmers, divers, and surface trollers...And that’s just the beginning! Go into a fishing store and prepare to have your mind blown. Gone are the days where you rigged your Snoopy pole with an earthworm on a hook and pulled out a perch. Nope. Nowadays you actually need to put on a "ballyhoo" with a "skirt" (at least that is what one angler swears by) to get a nibble. Who would have thought that the best lure to catch a fish is another (fake) fish wearing a skirt?! Crazy.

Don’t get me wrong - we have caught a mahi, a skipjack, a tunney, a spanish mackerel and a barracuda - but if we were playing baseball, we’d be in the tee-ball league. Our batting average is that low. We get bites too. The other day Scott reeled in the cedar plug and pulled a tooth out of the dang thing. A teeny tiny sharp-as-a-knife tooth. From a fish. Imbedded in the plug like a splinter. All of our lures, in fact, have the tell-tale dings and gashes of a fish bite - we just haven’t hooked them. So we keep throwing lines back out...

I read somewhere that a woman’s spit on a lure is good luck, so Scott just tossed out the cedar plug with a wad of my saliva on it. How appetizing. Can’t wait to see what we catch...

Love,

Brittany & Scott

Post Script:  My spit did not work.  Sigh.