Pressed Down and Shaken Together and Running Over

My old man wanted to fish, so fish we did. Did we have a good day? You could say so.

Maybe a cellphone shot of the blood in the cockpit will give you an idea.

That’s Val Prieto on the right. Evidently he thinks wearing a belt will queer the fishing.

It’s really sad that the sticks in the mud who make the fish rules put a size and bag limit on dolphin. Had they not, we would have come home with maybe 50 of them. I’m not even sure how many schools we hit. At least four. Maybe six. It got to the point where I was secretly hoping the fish would go away. We caught fish after fish, and because the fish know the size limit is 20″, about 90% of them were 19.92″ long. Over the side they went. By the dozen. I think. I’m not sure. I’m still wiped out. I just got back. There is fish blood on every part of me that was not covered, and some parts that were.

The day surprised us. We started with a school that produced one keeper, and then we had like four hours of nothing. We were so desperate, we started casting at a floating pallet, trying to catch ocean tallies and tripletails. The tallies were too small to eat, and here is the pathetic tripletail I caught. I’ve seen oscars that were bigger.

We were sort of heading in when we decided to try some patches of sargassum in about 1100 feet. We hooked a huge cow. Val’s 88-year-old godfather was with us, and he’s not doing well, and he got to reel it in, which was nice. It was well over three feet long. Judging from past fish of similar length, I’d say it weighed 35 pounds. Maybe 30. That’s a big dolphin. She brought a school with her, but they were tiny. When that school pooped out, we hit another and another. By the end of the day we had the cow plus five little fish.

I still have to wrap my share in foil and freeze it. Here’s a photo of the fish. That’s a 50-gallon cooler. The fish had to be bent to fit.

Saw a sailfish and a bunch of tuna jumping, but we couldn’t troll up anything but dolphin.

I have to go drink more water. I’ve been chugging tiny bottles of store water all day and my mouth is still dry. Kind of warm out there, and I’ve been busy.

Better fish photos later.