SKUNKED!!!

I got SKUNKED yesterday - not one fish on the offshore rod or the flyrod - an extremely rare event indeed. I am okay with this - 3 of the 4 fish landed on the boat yesterday (one yellowfin and two bonito) took the lures I offered, I just didn't get to reel them in. Everyone needs a little humility every now and then to keep them humble - Saturday was my humble pie eating day.

Heavy Price for Fishing

I paid up today - two lures lost to big fish. They have to win sometimes too huh? Well it didn't stop there - in total we lost another two hookups. I felt like a complete loser today. So here we go - "SHAKE-IT-OFF" - and with that, we started catching and you can see the total for the boat in the picture. Not a bad day (for us - for the one yellowfin, it was a really bad day - bitten in half by a shark is not enviable), but not as good as last weekend.

Fishing Call Signs

This is not common knowledge, but the core guys that are as crazy as I am to go fishing the way and in the frequency that I do are pilots. One Navy, the other Air Force - but neither one has a call sign. From having other Aviators around, I have come to learn carrier aviators and helicopter pilots are the only ones that hang on to call signs.

So today, we had bad weather - but there was a window to get out and we were on the small boats and fishing in a matter of minutes. I brought in a pretty big Jobfish on the offshore trolling reel I have. Good chance to test out the knots I tied between the monofilament and the braid (it held). Then I switched to a smaller lure because we were moving over shallower water - before I could get the lure down, a big mouth came up to the surface and pulled the lure under - and broke off the swivel. We turned around and Mike hooked into a good sized grouper (probably the culprit that took my lure).

Then he got a hit on a second pole he had out with a squid skirt lure on it. When he took it into the boat, it was a pretty small Bonito. This coupled with the barracuda he caught yesterday, establishes a trend of reliably catching smaller fish (when going for the big sea monsters). It is in situations just like this when call signs are born -

And just for the record, here are some rules for fishing call signs:
- people cannot give themselves call signs
- two other people have to agree to the call sign (Rodney agreed with me on this one)
- call signs can change, but only after trends are established/are broken/a profound event occurs

Mike's honorary Navy Call Sign is "Small Fry" (sorry Mike for publishing this, but I couldn't pass this up!!!).

Fishing Trip (Thursday)

Took a break on Thursday morning -

Dolphins (a type of spinner)

Humpbacks breeching

Wahoo - Yellowfin - Bonito

and

the Booby Crew

Fish, Fish and more Fish

Here's what the final product of the bonefish lumpia looked like.

And next to it is a pot of Bonito Adobo (man was that good!).

Dinner - Bonita Adobo

I spoke with my Dad over the weekend on Skype.

I was able to get his recipe for making adobo.

I applied it to the bonito I had in the freezer. Bonito usually has a very strong fish taste, but in adobo it was neutralized very well.

Nice dinner!