The old man and the sea

That's what my niece Melonie said about the pics of the marlin we caught when I posted them on Facebook.  And just like that character in Ernest Hemingway's novel I was feeling a respect for those wonderful fish as well as the people who pursue them...It's major league stuff for sure. I'd been out on the Marlin boat maybe 6 times without catching one and Slah had been out 20 times without success so it was a special day when we both caught one. And how couldn't it be when you start the day with the first light like this as we motor out ?

My good friend Tony has a new motor on his boat so he was itching to go and of course Slah is always itching to fish whenever and however...but me... having skippered the big water a bit myself I might have waited for a day with less than 6 foot seas but hey...that's just me. So after and hour and half crawling through the seas we arrive 18 miles out from our place. It's a bit like road hunting in Montana, you get beer and gas and then drive around looking for things.  And it doesn't take long for us to spot the telltale birds that are feeding off in the distance. As we arrive on scene we have a few dolphins in our wake, then a few more and then it's amazing, literally thousands of Spinner Dolphins flying through the air showing why they're called 'Spinner'. It's absolutely incredible how many, how close we were to them. Here's a pic of them which really doesn't do it justice but when I get better Internet I'll post a video I took that's just astounding. I promise.



The theory is that in front of the dolphins are tuna as the mammals use the fish to do their dirty work, slice up the bait into nice eating size. But this day there didn't seem to be any tuna with the dolphins after we fished through and around them for 20 minutes. So Tony says we're out of here and on to look for the Marlin and again we see a few birds in the distance. As we get close we see that 4 or 5 other boats are on them (all bigger than us I might add) and an Aries Fleet boat 1/4 mile away hooks up and his Marlin runs and jumps only a 100 feet away....yikes, it's like Eagle Rock on July 16 1995. Now with all this going on Tony has us 'watching' and I guess I'm not a very good watcher because I'm looking off into the horizon although the fact that our lines are only 40 feet behind the boat should have clued me into how this drill works...Slah sees it first on the port bow, we circle and the fish disappears....mmm....oooops there he is again in our wake chasing the bait and then, disappears. I look off to the right and there he is, we've darn near run over him and he's crashing the bait again and just keeps coming until Miguel gives Tony the 'lure, lure, lure' order and the boat goes from a walloping 20 mph to full throttle. In all my days, out of all the thousands of fish I've caught I've NEVER seen a fish that wanted to be caught so badly. They are just unbelievably aggressive and that makes it sooooo exciting. 

 

I've been working through a shoulder injury that has me kind of worried and I'll tell you the truth...30 minutes into fighting this fish I was about done up but I knew if  I handed the rod off I'd here about it for the next 1/4 century. So with my shoulder aching and my fingers tingling we finally put this fish to the boat. Here's a pic of Slah pulling on his and the final result. Just magnificent fish is all I can say.

You know one of my sayings is 'you just gotta want to do it' and this Marlin trip was one of those. I know the pics don't look like the water was all that rough but let me tell you....I got a little sun burned and MP asked why I didn't put sunscreen on. I told her 'are you kidding, I would've had to quit holding on". Here's a pic that might give you a flavor for what it was like.

And the 'Jer sea Girl' . She's a 21 foot Invader that's been set up for Mexico. As we say in  Cook Inlet she's a "swimmer' for sure. It's strange to me that with all I've been through with the ocean that here where it's warm (right now the in shore temp is 80 degrees) I just feel more at ease here. Maybe it's my swimming background or maybe just that I've hardened with age and although it still deserves all the respect you can give it this ol ocean is a pretty cool place to be.

And what would a blog entry be without a pic of a pretty girl and an expert fisherman?

The other day we got off the bus on the malecon to go to the dentist. I looked up the beach and holy moly for just a second I thought this could be my sister in law Paula, I mean how many people do you see with that many dogs. Well of course it wasn't Paula....but I gotta tell ya Paula,  we sure wish it was.