Day 6:
How To Catch A Fish At Sea: A Facetiously Fallacious Treatise
With a mere thirteen hundred and forty two miles to go, I have discovered the scientific recipe for catching fish at sea. In fact, having caught two fish in three days, which now officially makes me an expert, although I have been inexplicably banished from fishing until we have more room in the freezer.
Inconceivable!
But in the process, I’ve noticed a pattern. When I caught the Dolphin Fish today, the conditions were exactly the same as those when I caught the Mahi two days ago.
So now that I have a completely unrepresentative sample size of spurious correlations, I’m well armed with my broad sweeping generalizations.
First, in both cases I put the lures out the day before Fish-Catching Day and had no luck with either one, Greenie or Pinky.
This, one can only assume, was part of the grand scheme to lure the fish into a false sense of security. Well done you sexy lures!
On Fish-Catching Day, the lure goes out at dawn to no effect, until about 3 in the afternoon.
During this interim period, I do believe it is important to talk bad about the lack of productivity of your stupid lures, and how the guy who sold them to you probably didn’t even work there because clearly he sold you a Christmas ornament and not a true fish catching lure.
Next. You must sit on the back of your boat with a glass of not-wine, preferably chilled white not-wine, and enjoy the day. Once you are fully relaxed, give in to the fact that you’re never going to catch anything and fishing's really not for you anyway… that’s when it happens.
Zzzinnnggg, Fish On!
Then you have to roll off your folding chair, wipe up the beverage you spilled on you wife, and clamber over to your rod where it will then be up to you to land the monster.
Given the soundness of the Scientific Method used to determine the Fish-Catching process, it should surprise zero people that there is one last thing. We had a secret weapon that I will only reveal because I love you all.
On our passage from North Carolina to the Virgin Islands, we had a certain person as crew, and I caught a few fish on that passage. However, I haven’t caught any since then, until now. Guess who returned to be crew on our boat on this passage??
So I’m totally not telling you their name because there are plainly limits to our love, and I’m not letting you snatch my Mahi Magnet and Tuna Talisman out from under me. Get your own secret weapon. 😉
By the way, the fish today was a 30ish pound beautiful dolphin fish, with an iridescent turquoise body and bright yellow tail fins. He fought hard for 40 minutes.
Tonight was dolphin fish filets with cracked black pepper in browned butter, and tomorrow is fresh ceviche for lunch. As the delicate white meat flaked gently from the fork, we raised a glass in gratitude for this gorgeous gift from the sea.
Cheers my friend.
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