PICS
• 4 lb Snapper for supper
• 5 foot shark; sorry, too busy to photo barracuda
• Nancy’s beachglass mobile factory
• No, but if I had the crabs, you’d be the first to know!
Wow! Tonight will make ten days off of Little Harbor Cay. We’ve almost eaten up all the cracked conch at Flo’s. Well, one of us almost has; Nancy is not really a conch fan. I did finally provide our table with a really tasty mutton snapper for supper recently. I’ve been catching a lot of big fish, but nothing edible to speak of. I seem to have an affinity for attracting the big predator fish, like the barracuda and jack, which all tend to be poisonous, aka ciguatera. But they are still fun to catch & release.
I hooked onto a huge 4 1/2-5 foot barracuda a couple of days ago that totally freaked me out. My lure had just splashed the surface about a hundred feet away from the dink when my rod was literally almost jerked out of my hands. The line on my reel just starts smokin’ off of the reel as I frantically try to tighten the drag to slow down my next victim. Seconds later a barracuda breaks the surface about 250 feet away doing a classic ten foot out of the water marlin/sailfish head-shaking jump. It wasn’t until the third rooftop vault that I recognized that it wasn’t a marlin or tarpon or some awesome big gamefish. But what I did realize, was that I, my little dink, and my lightweight rod & reel were way out of our class on this one. We had a monster and I was probably going to lose all of the line off of my reel on this fight, and I would be out of business as far as fishing is concerned until we reach Nassau, whenever. Fortunately, I think the barracuda probably realized early on that the geek in the dink was trying to humble his fifty pounds of muscle with an 8-pound test line, so I think the table turned quickly to where I was the victim on the end of the line, not him. Anyway, we had a blast! Thirty minutes later, as my hands were getting sorer and sorer, and my poor little reel was acting like it was going to break during every retrieval, I had actually worked mister toothy up close to the dink. We looked into each other’s eyes for a moment as he lay along side, appearing to be about as long as the dink itself, but that was just my heart rate and imagination playing tricks. The inch-long razor teeth were only two feet from my face when I remembered that only minutes before he was able to launch himself airborne with a flick of his tail. Fortunately, he simply smiled, spit out my lure, and, graciously leaving me with a full spoon of line, he disappeared with one wiggle. He had landed me.
With any luck, we will be sailing on for Nassau in the next day or so. We’re ready. In fact, if you receive these last four blogs, it means we’ve made it back to internet civilization. We’ve hiked the shores and beaches of Little Harbor Cay multiple times; Nancy is so bored, she’s taken up reading the new one-volume encyclopedia she recently bought for the boat. She has consumed 10 novels thus far, and the boat interior at times looks like a beachglass, hanging-mobile factory. Anyway, the past three days have been very trying. Sitting out the nasty northers that have been slamming us daily and every night has taken a toll on our spirits. Three days ago I was snorkeling; now we’re trembling under the down bags at night wishing we were back at home. Enough of winter already!
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