Christelle’s birthday fishing tournament
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| coke tin lure |
The talk between the skippers of Songerie
and Chaser II was lately a lot about fishing and the subject of teasers
specifically. Scott Bannerot (author :Cruisers Handbook of Fishing) says that a
teaser can enhance your chance of catching fish 100%, Phil Chapman of Chaser II
says ”100% better of nuffing is still nuffing…” So after we have seen the
locals trolling with a red wooden bird that splashes on the water we go look
for them in the tackle shops. Phil found a bright red one and I got an orange
one with silver wings.
The theory is that the fish down deep
notice the bird action and come to investigate and then take your lures.
Finnish friends Olli and Merja on S/V Fagel
Bla told me recently that a coke can cut to thin strips makes good skirt for lures. So while having a
Cuba Libre I was making a new lure.
All was ready for the trip to Tortuga with Chaser II. Songerie left marina on
Christelle’s birthday somewhat earlier as we are a lot slower .We kept VHF
radio contact and soon Phil was on reporting his first Dorado.
I was towing the “chicken” about 8 m behind
the boat and often changed the lures but halfway to Tortuga
still empty handed!
I hooked and landed a medium size Dorado
just when Phil reported his second one.
As we crossed the shelf (bottom coming
rapidly up from over 400m to less than 30m),
the big reel started screaming. We got the
jib sail in and I started to set the brake on the reel harder and harder but
the fish kept taking line out. Luckily I have about 300m braid on the reel and
slowly started to get the better of the fish.
Christelle had to reel in the last bit
while I got ready to gaff the enormous Wahoo.
The gaff was good and we saw that the fish
hook was almost completely opened up!
On my scale it weighed 17 kg but as we have
seen with S/V Yapa the scale is shy by 10-15% we estimate it closer to 20 kg.
We dropped anchor at Cayo Herradura and
immediately cut the Dorado for sashimi and opened a bottle of Chilean Champagne
to toast Christelle’s birthday.
We invited Phil and Yvonne over for dinner and
had BBQ fish (of course) and delicious strawberries and cream for desert
(courtesy Yvonne).
