So neither of us have felt really great for quite some time. We both caught some sort of lurgy while hanging out at Gambier, and mine turned to freakin’ pneumonia. I got done taking the antibiotics for that around March 8th, but apparently it takes a really long time to completely recover. There are better days and worse days, but the slope (energy versus time) is in the positive direction, so I’m optimistic that things are improving. Isabel has been left with a lingering cough and she has better and worse days too, but she also seems to be getting better.
Sitting around mending slowly just isn’t our style, so we made the passage from Gambier to Nuku Hiva while just marginally better off than dead, and we left Nuku Hiva for Hawaii as soon as we figured we could muster enough energy to safely make the passage. So far things have worked out, but until today, between the rough butt sea state and how we felt, we haven’t bothered to toss a hook overboard. As well, Isabel had filled the freezer with pre-made passage meals, but we’ve depleted enough of those that if we catch a whopper, we can process and preserve the meat.
So, today Isabel waited until I felt like a nap and she rigged up both meat lines, both towing little squiddy skirt things with impressive hooks. Naturally, fish don’t bite unless one of us feels like a nap, so in no time flat we had something on the port lure. It looked small, but when we got it on board it was a female mahi-mahi about 60 centimeters long, perhaps enough for 3 or 4 meals. At first we thought nah, we should throw it back, but before we did something stupid we came to our senses and instead cut that sucker’s gills and into the Homer bucket head first she went, me hanging on for dear life while she quivered at increasingly higher frequency. That’s how you can tell they’re about done, when they’re vibrating so fast it feels like one of those hand massagers old time barbers used to use on your noggin after a haircut.
No sooner had we gotten that fish butchered and processed than both lines hooked up, and darned if we didn’t have a pair of yellow fin tuna, about 55-60 centimeters long each. Well, here we go again, and now we have maybe 9 meals of spankin’ fresh fish in the fridge. Being gluttons for punishment, the lures are back in the water, and I for one am hoping the next one is a big mahi-mahi, maybe a meter and a bit long, as that’ll about fill the freezer up and we can stop this silly fishing thing and get back to having a nap.
Looks like we’re having pan sauteed mahi-mahi for supper! What are YOU having?
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