Off to the Briny Deep

A while back we got an email from our good friend John Neff that his friends Murray and Ellen were coming to Melaque for 2 weeks.  We arranged to meet them at a palapa restaurant, and things have worked out famously.  They have a bungalow 1 block from the beach with an enormous rooftop terrace that must have the best view on the bay!  We've now had an evening on the town where we caught a great blues singer (from Okotoks, Alberta!) at Lucy's Paradise, and an afternoon of sun, pool, and beers at our hotel.  Murray is, however, determined to go fishing before he heads home. Deb and I have tried to make the fishing-thing work a couple times since we've been here.  The bottom line is that the whole fishing fleet here is composed of pangas, which are ca. 20' fibreglass skiffs with big outboards and bimini roofs.  They don't have bathrooms or cabins or anything, and Deb is loath to go out on a boat for 6 hours with a bunch of guys and a 1 gallon bucket.  I have managed to find exactly one boat that DOES have a cabin and some privacy (the Mary Chuy), but it's $600/day for up to 6 people and I've never been able to put it together with at least one more couple.  Turns out that this time of year the fishing for Dorado, Marlin, and Sailfish is pretty quiet, but Tuna is pretty good.  The bad news is they are much further offshore (ca. 25 miles).  After much discussion amongst the four of us, we eventually decide that Murray and Ellen and I will take a panga with someone Murray has met over in Melaque, and Debbi will give it a pass for this year.

7 am the next morning finds me at the Cabo Blanco marina just 1/2 km from where we live.  Everyone is there on time, our newest friend Gary the boat owner/captain seems quite nice, everything looks good, all the boat-parts that are supposed to make noise do and everything that's supposed to not make noise doesn't, so off we go.  It's a longish pull of about 45 minutes out to The Killing Ground, and it is increasingly bumpy on the way out; maybe a 3-4' swell with quite a bit of cross-chop on top of it.  It's bumpy enough that it gets the occasional "oof!" out of me; kinda like driving down a bumpy gravel road at 90 kph.  I can't help thinking "bucket be damned, Deb's back would have never put up with this!"   Suddenly I spot what looks like a helmet bobbing along in the water - "turtle" says Gary.  We let loose with an appropriate chorus of 'oohs' and 'ahs' and are then on the hunt for turtles, and it turns out there are quite a bunch of them out here.  Greens, mostly, by the looks of them; Gary says the populations of all turtle species have exploded over the past 10-15 years once the egg-laying beaches were protected.  This is good.  Clearly there ain't any depth-sounder on this boat (and we're in 10,000' of water, so it wouldn't help much anyway) and we've been out of sight of land for 20 minutes, so I ask Gary how we can tell when we're at the right place.  He replies..."we have to find the dolphins".  Hmmmn.  OK, time to start looking for dolphins.  After about another 10 minutes I see a dolphin, yell out, and am thinking "I hope this is the right one, what if it's the wrong dolphin or something?"  Then it becomes apparent that Mr. Dolphin has brought all his friends and family along.  Once we get into the middle of them, there are dolphins from the side of the boat to as far as the eye can see in all directions, and it seems to go on for miles.  50,000?  500,000?  I have no idea, but there are a shitload of dolphins out here!  Of course we all start madly snapping pictures and grinning and exclaiming to each other, whilst Gary just drives the boat and rigs the rods.  We must have taken 100+ photos of dolphins, and to my knowledge not one of them turned out!  It could be that they've got some weird mental ability to cloud digital cameras, but I'm guessing it's the 2-second delay in modern digital pocket cameras, combined with being slammed all over the boat by the swell and cross-chop.  In any event, I am now the proud owner of about 30 pics of where the dolphins used to be, will be, and aren't.  Honest, they were there!

Ellen enjoying the dolphins.  Honest!

Ellen and Murray watching the world go by.

So, the dynamic is dolphins and diving birds above, a gazillion baitfish in the middle, and tuna and whatever else below.  There's 6 other pangas out here, and we're spread over about a mile of water; we all steer towards wherever we see diving birds and hope the tuna are underneath.  Gary has rigged 4 roads off the back, 2 at 45' and 2 at 90'; the lures are on or just under the surface and we are humping along at about 15 kph.  He has a fishing chair for the first hookup, and we're wearing strap-on road holders in case we get multiple hookups.  After about 10 minutes Bang! a hookup on a long line, and Ellen gets in the chair, 5 seconds later Bang! and Murray gets a hookup on a short line.  Woohoo!  Murray gets his in fairly quickly, a 20-pounder, but Ellen has a struggle on her hands as her fish is out there, has sounded, and doesn't want to play with us.  After an extended grunt-fest she finally gets it to the boat, and it's a very nice 30-pounder!  Ha! she says.  Me next.  About 10 minutes later Bang! and I jump into the chair.  Bang! and Murray grabs the second rod.  Mine immediately pulls off as it wasn't a good hookup, and Murray brings a 25-pounder on board.  10 minutes later, another double-hookup; this time Murray's pulls off early and I've got a struggle on my hands with a very nice fish.  We got him just about to the side of the boat, maybe 20' away, and he pulled off.  Rats, a very nice fish but at least we got a good look at him.  10 minutes later, another hit that immediately broke the line off and lost us our lucky lure.  And that was the end of the bite, everything just went quiet for the rest of the day.  So we ended up with 7 fish on and 3 in the boat, all in about 40 minutes, and then we got to watch dolphins for about 4 hours. 

Gary with Murray's second fish.

After lunch we decided to go inshore a bit and see if we could scare up a sailfish or marlin, as Gary had taken 3-4 over the past week, but no luck.  

Captain Gary at the helm.

It was a great day, we saw about 20-30 turtles and a billion dolphins, the fishing was very exciting while it lasted, and it was all new and interesting.  Back to the dock at 2 pm and Gary filleted our catch while we unloaded our gear. 

Did this man really catch all those fish?
Yes, yes he did.

These things are basically all fillet.
The locals call them 'footballs'.