Beginners Luck; Gracefully Out-Fished by a Novice

(click photos to enlarge)

We continued to troll the same area looking for dorado. Phil was a little tired from that wahoo so he offered to handle the camera for a while and take pictures. Most people don’t realize the power these fish have, and just how much work fishing can be. Mike and I both caught a few more needlefish and the captain decided to change our position and tactic. We pulled out a little further from the shore. I reeled in my bait, Mike was told to leave his out. The captain cut up a few pieces of the squid and tossed them in with my bait in the middle. We pulled out a ton of line so when we drifted away we wouldn’t pull the bait out of the group. The big white chunks of squid slowly sank together as we drifted away to be devoured by tuna.

With so much slack in the line, even after drifting away, we could actually watch the line being pulled out by the tuna it only took a split second and then the fight was on. Thus far the strongest fish I’ve fought here in La Paz have been Pargo, more commonly known as Snappers, and the tactics to catch them are very similar. However, Pargo and even the big Amberjack have no where near as much power as these Yellowfin Tuna. It could easily take over 10-15 minutes to bring a tuna within reach of the gaff. Once gaffed the tuna would completely freak out, not surprising, however it was more like an autonomic response in their tail and it would pulse at what looked like a hundred miles an hour. In every case somebody got a face full of water, and though it was mostly our captain he seemed to agree that it was amusing.

After a photo with my tuna I decided to get Phil back to fishing and have Mike sit next to the captain. Sure enough, it only took a few minutes before our captain had Mike hooked into a tuna. After a quick photo, we pulled back to the same spot to drop the bait and drift away. It was almost like clockwork, after about five minutes or so of drifting and the bait slowly falling, it was tuna time. One after another, Mike and I even had a double header, we pulled in tuna after tuna.

After catching 5 tuna in total, we realized that we were probably sitting on top of a school. We decided to try for one more and then move to targeting Roosterfish. After 10 minutes or so with no tuna we pulled in our lines and drove off to catch bait for big roosterfish. Heading back to the point at the end of the beach, not far from where the vans pick us up, we pulled up next to another boat and our captain asked if they had caught any Ladyfish for bait. The captain of the other boat threw one to us and wished us good luck.

Gildardo pulled out a block of wood with a bunch of monofilament on it, tied a hook to the end and put on a tiny piece of squid. He spun the hook and bait around in the air and threw about ten feet out. It took a few tries, but we found the bait we were looking for surrounded by almost a dozen needlefish. The needlefish were the most amazing colors under the water, when you pull them out they just look black and silver. But under the water you could see deep purples and blues, a few even had bright yellow portions on their nose and tails. Our captain caught five of the fish we were going to use as bait in the middle of all this chaos and didn’t hook into a single needlefish.

It was quickly approaching the hottest part of the day and were weren’t sure if we’d find a roosterfish before heading back in. We toughed it out, trolling around for almost half an hour before Phil had something. The reel screamed as Phil patiently waited for 10 seconds for the fish to swallow the bait before flipping the drag and setting the hook. He looked like a natural fishermen in a very exciting situation. It took nearly another half hour just to bring the fish close enough to see. Without any polarized glasses Phil couldn’t see below the surface, so when I saw the size of the fish I just kept telling him to relax, and “it’s just a little one.” Of course I knew full well just how big this fish was. Even Mike was able to see it thanks to his glasses and looked over at me with his eyes wide open, pointing and mouthing “Is that it?” I just nodded and laughed.

Finally the roosterfish was tired enough that we could bring him in. Our captain reached down and pulled the roosterfish up, posed for a quick photograph with Phil and put it in the water to be released. He held on to the fish for a while, but was unable to release it without it immediately going belly up. We tried massaging, and even knocking, its air bladder so that it could at least rest on the bottom. After about 15 minutes we realized that it wasn’t going to swim away from this fight, so we brought it in and gave it to the captain for him and his family to eat.

Back at the beach we hopped out of the boat and I immediately started looking for the “the weekend warrior”. Unfortunately, he wasn’t in yet so we started pulling out our catch and laying them in the shadow of the boat so they wouldn’t cook in the sun.

We walked around a bit to see what other people had caught, almost everyone had a few tuna, but no other wahoo were brought in. So far it was looking good, we had out fished everyone on the trip, all that was left to do was wait for “the weekend warrior”.

After a few beers and some laughs with some of other fishermen on the trip, we saw the final boat coming in. Sure enough it was him. His boat crashed the shore right next to ours and when I looked over he had a big smile on his face.

Me: “So, how did you guys do?”

Him: “Oh, you know pretty good, a few tuna. How about you?” He said.

Me: “Well, I’d rather just see the look on your face. Check the other side of our boat.”

His face lit up when he saw the stock pile of fish and the huge roosterfish. There were of course no hard feelings, we shook hands and shared the stories on the ride home.