Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Jan's Paint By Words Wednesday, June 11, 2008 1:27 pm

Something fishy is going on. . . or so we wished.
Bill's fishing pole consists of a flat paddle-like spool, about 8" x 12" with a handle sticking out the middle of one side. When you hold the handle, the paddle can spin around. This is the 'reel', so to speak. There is no rod.
The fish lure is a rubber squiddy thingy that dangles over a double hook attached to about 10-15 feet of very heavy (about 2 1/2 ton test?) mono-filament line. This is attached to about 147.32 feet of parachute cord which is attached to the reel. A few feet from the reel is a bungee cord loop tied onto the parachute cord. This bungee cord gets looped onto a cleat and acts as a shock absorber. Whew! I hope you got the picture.
We trailed this in the water all day Sunday and Monday with no luck. Tuesday was so rough, no one felt like putting it out.
This morning (Wednesday) Chuck put out the line about 6:30 am. About an hour later, Chuck saw a fish! . . . bungee jumping in our wake!!! I was at the helm (remember? My watch is 6 to 9, am & pm).
As Chuck started pulling the fish in, hand over hand method, Bill came up the companion way with gaffe hook in hand. Chuck got the fish to the boat and after a brief wrestling match, the fish found itself on the cockpit floor pinned down with one of Bill's boots on its head and the other boot on its body. The 2 1/2 foot long fish showed its extreme displeasure by thrashing its tail, to no avail.
What kind of fish was it? Well. . . I've never seen one in person before, but I thought it was a Rare Sparkling Yellow Bellied, Blue Parrot Headed, Spiky tailed Bungee Jumping Fish. Bill called it a Mahi-Mahi.
I cleaned it, filleted it, sliced some for sushi and put it in the oven for lunch. Delicious !!!!
If you ever have the inclination to go bungee jumping, I would advise you to think twice!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Jan,
As usual, I'm enjoying your "paint by words". That's some fishing contraption that has been rigged up. I had to read it a couple times to figure it out. Way to go, Chuck, for catching that Mahi-Mahi! Fresh fish for lunch...boy that sure sounds yummy. Your fish-identification skills are...interesting. By the way, another reason I check the blog daily is because I'm quite interested in your (and Chuck's) adventures and am also living vicariously through you at the moment. It's hard to do my regular job when my head is partly in the middle of the ocean, though.
Love, Dawna

Julie F said...

Sounds like your having fun...got the picture of the fish. That's a cool fish. It took me awhile to figure out how to write back, but I got it figured out now. Birch Bay was nice last weekend. The sun was out everyday from noon on. There was a red tide, so we had to improvise and buy some clams. We traded our truck in for a car, have to show you it later. Rachel found out she's having a girl. Al and Jamie had their boy a week ago tues. He's a cute little kid with a head full of hair and a nice tan already:) I had an MRI on my left knee and everything looks good...should be able to go back to the academy in Aug. I've had a lot of fun reading over everyones experiences. And it very easy to visualize from your writing what it looks like. Keep up the good work overcoming some of those fears and enjoy the rest of your trip.