agility @ sea

Jer:
Catching fish while sailing is not my favorite activity. Often there is something else going on – big wind shift, a repair, we’re sitting down for a meal – and – whirrr – the line goes accompanied by me saying oh no (or possibly a stronger word) we’ve got a fish. Then there is crazy scrambling around for the net, gloves, gaff hook, needle nose pliers, camera, etc, etc. Sometimes we have to take the sails down and turn the engine on.
Reeling the fish in can be exciting especially if it’s a jumper, but once it gets close to the boat, the panic sets in. I’m sure someone will fall or get knocked off the boat, or the fish will jump up and stab or bite us, and, of course, even if we’re going to let the fish go, we’ve got to save that lure. Retrieving the lure from a fighting fish in the water is more difficult than bringing the fish in.
Of course, I also have this little waterproof fish identification chart that I’m using to try to figure out what we have hooked. I think our success rate in correctly identifying the fish is about 50%. We’ve brought in fish that look like wonderful tuna, but they end up being very dark, oily meat that we can’t eat. We ate some sashimi from a fish Sven landed and all got sick. Then we got a yellow fin tuna and were too nervous to eat it without cooking, but it would have been so good raw. It’s hard to get it right.
I also feel bad for the fish.
I’ll get on with the story.
Tues morning I got up around 7 and sent Tim back to bed. Around 9:45 the line starts going and I holler for Tim, who is fortunately already up, but hadn’t made it out of the room yet. We could tell it was a strong, large fish and saw it jump about 300 yards out. Tim spent about 90 minutes reeling him in and when he got him to Agility (after some excitement with him going underneath the rudder that concerned me in regards to the line getting tangled up) Tim had a lasso set up around the fishing line and it smoothly went over the fish and he tightened it at the tail. We could potentially pull him over and get the hook out, although I would strongly argue for cutting the line. From what I’ve heard with the salt water, the hooks usually come out or deteriorate pretty quickly and aren’t a huge impediment for the fish. Struggling halfway into the ocean off the back of the boat with a several hundred pound angry fish sounds dangerous to me. However, we decided to land him. We’re very low on food as are a lot of people at our next anchorage so seemed like a great opportunity to have something to share and maybe weasel some vegetables or interesting side dishes out of some fellow sailors. We tied the end of the lasso to the aft halyard that I wrapped around the winch and started winching the beast in. We made sure he was dead prior to depositing him on the back of Agility. He was too heavy to pick up for photos so we got creative.
All in all, we worked on that fish for 6 hours before we got everything in the freezer. The vacuum sealer was a good move.
So there you have it!

—-
This e-mail was delivered via satellite phone using GMN’s XGate software. Please be kind and keep your replies short.