Day 7: Ocean Motion

Today was an early start! After a night of staying up until 11:00pm (we even danced to a few Karaoke songs (we as in Krystle danced, Tyler took pictures)), we were up at 5:15am. An hour and fifteen minutes drive to the dock, we arrived at 7:00am and hopped straight onto our boat. It was a hazy morning, but our hopes were good, as the sea had settled from the past two days.


On board with Captain Jean Claude (above) and Skipper Nicholah (below).


We had SEVEN rods on the go! All with different weights, lines, reels, and hooks on them (hooks MUCH bigger than ours, I might add!). In the middle you can see "the fightin' chair." We had our hopes up for Tyler to catch a big ol' marlin (but not too high, as we're a few weeks early for marlin season.)


We were just over an hour in, still on our way further out to sea, when a pod if dolphins started swimming with our boat!!! I mean like 30+ of them!


(Bad pictures, but it was so neat!! We got a few better pics on cameras.)
It was so neat!!! They were jumping all around!


They stayed with us for about five minutes!

Then, just as that excitement started to wear off, Tyler got a bite! It took a while to reel that sucker in, but finally...


A dorado!!!


Against my wishes, there is no catch-and-release here, haha - Nicholah looked at me like I was crazy for asking (though I kinda got the impression they keep everything when they gaffed anything we got near the boat).

Already we were ahead of the game, as two days prior the guys were skunked, and yesterday they only caught one, as they were headed back in for the day. It was barely 9:30am and we already had a dorado in the boat and a frolic with dolphins!

About an hour later we got another hit, and I brought in a wahoo. Mark another one on the list for "the boss." Lol.


Around noon Tyler pulled in a little Kingfisher, and then around 1:30pm the birds just started pooping up everywhere!

You see, we had been looking for birds over the water all morning, but could mostly only find flocks of about 3-8. Now birds started popping up in flocks of 20-60! This was important because the birds show you where the fish are. The tuna swirl the feeder fish around in a circle and then push them up to the surface to eat them (the same way sharks get their fish); the birds can then dive in to eat the feeder fish, too (so the tuna really help the birds eat). Thus, the birds tell us where the tuna (and other larger fish) are.




It wasn't long and Jean Claude had us pulling in the Skipjack tuna like nobody's business (actually, it went in little waves, but we were having a blast and loved that we were catching anything - anything was better than nothing!).





Our final tally...



16 skipjack tunas
1 kingfisher (bottom, little)
1 wahoo
1 dorado


:)


Took us an hour and forty minutes to get "home," with rush hour, and we were fast asleep by 8:00pm, literally feeling the ocean-motion of the boat all through showers and supper.