Beginners Luck; Gracefully Out-Fished by a Novice

(click photos to enlarge)

It’s been rather difficult finding fishing partners here in La Paz since Clive left for BVI. I’ve found many people willing to go, until they find out we leave Fishermen’s Fleet at 5am. Not many people seem interested in waking up at 4am, but I managed to con two great guys, Mike Brum and Philip Barbosa in to giving it a shot. Promising them an unforgettable experience, the fury was upon us.

The alarm goes off, it’s 4:20 am October 5th, 2005. I made sure to find out how much time they needed to get ready since I’m generally awake and out the door in 5 minutes. To my surprise everyone was sticking to the plan, I thought for sure I would lose at least one of them since there are only two chairs in the panga, but they were both awake and ready in no time. When we arrived at Fishermen’s Fleet we headed upstairs for some coffee and breakfast. Upstairs was the largest group I’ve seen, in total it would take four huge vans to shuttle us to La Ventana.

In the van it was the usual conversations you find on these trips. Where are you from? What do you do? Etc. One of the guys jokingly refers to us as “the new guys”, but I explained to him how I’ve been living here for a while and have gone out plenty of times. Since I don’t know this fellows name, we’ll just call him “the weekend warrior” since he later admitted it was his first day fishing on this trip. We’re joking back and forth, and before you know it, the ability to catch fish comes up. He makes a funny comment about our ability, and I kindly replied. “We’ll be looking for you on the beach.

By some strange occurrence of beginners luck and being dubbed “the new guys”. Phil, who has never actually caught a fish in his life, was our lucky charm.

When we arrived at the beach the sun was just starting to show over the mountains to the east. We quickly met our captain, loaded the boat and embarked on our adventure. As we were heading out I didn’t see the normal grouping of pangas selling Sardinas for bait like I have previously. Instead we drove around the point and the captain tied on an squid jig. I’ve seen these in the stores around town, but it wasn’t until now that I could say I’ve used one, and caught a squid on it. Basically, its like a large white plastic piece at the top and an array of hooks that go all the way around the bottom. You drop the bait to the bottom, pull up hard, and let it fall. It’s a simple tactic, but you have to know where the squid are, luckily for us our captain has been fishing these waters for 38 years.

We managed to boat two quick squid of about four or five feet long, including tentacles of course, I was jerking the bait up and down and passing the rod off to my friends when I knew I’d caught one. It was a good quick learning experience in how to hold the rod and the dynamics and tempo of fighting a sea creature. Squid don’t actually fight very much, in fact it’s like reeling in a bucket of water, but a perfect crash course to start the day with.

The captain made quick work of the squid once they were close to the boat. A strong hand on the gaff and a few fast strokes with his knife he could split the squid open, remove the pieces that wouldn’t be used for bait, and toss it on the boat. I hooked in to one more squid and handed the rod off to Mike, who hadn’t caught one yet. The squid surfaced about ten feet from the boat and all you could see was a dark crimson red blob. As he pulled it closer to the boat I realized that it was a Diablo Rojo, also known as the Humbolt Squid. I’ve previously read they are quite dangerous and have been known to attack squba divers on occasion. I asked the captain if it was Diablo Rojo and he confirmed it and agreed that it was dangerous. He spent a little more stabbing this one than the previous, making sure it was dead before he got his hands to close. Looking around at the other boats I could see other people hooking in to them, there was even a guy in a boat by himself catching these monsters with a thick monofilament and his bare hands.

We headed up the coast trolling two tentacles looking for dorado. A few hits here and there but nothing big enough to take the large pieces of tentacle, sure enough it was a couple of needlefish. Dazed from a few knocks on the head they were unhooked an tossed back. We continued trolling, stopping only for a moment for the captain to fix something when Phil hooks in to the first fish of the day.

I stand up on one of the platforms on the boat to get a better look, hoping to capture an awesome image of a dorado flying out of the water as they always do, but the fish never surfaced. It ran back and forth down the coast a few times, but never dove to the bottom so it couldn’t be a pargo. We were all getting very excited as the fish got closer and closer to the boat, Phil was about ten minutes in to the fight when the fish came close enough to identify. It was a Wahoo. A big wahoo at that! The captain quickly gaffed it and brought it on board for a few photos before stowing it away in the boat. Our captain explained that the wahoo and dorado are known to hangout around each other and that landing a wahoo without a wire leader is considered very good luck. The 40lb mono was extremely frayed but never lost integrity. The fury was definitely upon us, the day was already an amazing trip and it would only get better.