Saturday, December 22, 2012

Incredible Day at sea

Bobbi and Tom and family had graciously invited us to go fishing with them on the Pancho Villa. We jumped at the chance. We were concerned about how cold it might be in the morning while we were steaming out, but it was very mild. Before long we were down to our sweaters and jeans.

It was great just to be on a boat.

As we rode along and all woke up a bit, the crew started chopping up squid for bait. There was some joking around about sushi and finding a lime, but nobody actually ate raw squid. The Pelicans started appearing out of nowhere....how do they know?



There was a small pool collected, $5 each and whoever caught the biggest fish collected all. So when we stopped for our first line drop, there was a lot of excitement! Everyone was hauling fish in.





Tom the patriarch and I both caught large triggers at the same time as two sealions came by to visit and tried to steal the fish off someone's hook. There was a lot of excitement at that point. Upon measurement, Tom and I both had triggers that were exactly 16 inches long. A tie.

Just before we called it a day, Tom caught another 16 inch trigger, making him the big winner of the day. We headed back.

The crew got down to filleting and skinning the fish, and we ended up with about 45 lbs of fillets. Holy smoke! Just as they finished cleaning up, someone yelled, "Dolphins!" and we all ran up to the bow with our cameras. We saw a sight I'll never forget. Somewhere between 150 and 300 dolphins, not far away. Many came up and ran the bow wave, and others were close as well.










A perfect end to a perfect day.