In the past we have made it quite clear that we are not very efficient at catching fish. That said, this year we managed to catch not one, but two fish with about 30 minutes of each other while moving around the island of Beqa from one anchorage to another. Unfortunately, since those two fish, we have gone back to our old ways of doing a lot of fishing and not any catching. So Cindy has been "encouraging" me to catch a fish so we can have fresh fish again.

On our return trip from Vanua Balavu I delivered! We caught a beautiful yellow fin tuna. I did however learn a few lessons that will stay with me (I hope), and that had me questioning if it really was worth it to catch fish vs just fish.

Fishing it ends up is the easy part of the equation. You put out the hand line and go back to what you were doing. The only things you have to do are 1) check to see if you have caught a fish and 2) bring the line in BEFORE you stop the boat and back up so you don't wrap the line in the prop (yes, we have learned that lesson the hard way). Once you actually catch a fish, the hard parts start. You have to pull the fish into the boat. We try to make this as simple as possible by not checking to see if we actually caught a fish very often. That way, when we do catch a fish, we have dragged it for a good while and it no longer fights you. When the fish is good and stiff it tends to slide through the water easily. The fact that we seldom catch a fish reinforces the fact that there isn't much of a reason to check if we have caught a fish. Eventually, you do notice you caught a fish, you get excited and bring it aboard. Once the fish is on-board then the real mess begins being made - I'm talking fish blood, fish slime and fish scales - everywhere! And then you have to process the fish, which means more blood, slime and scales. In our case, because of the location of the dinghy on the davits, we are not just making a mess on the boat, but also all over the dinghy. Filleting or in the case of the tuna, cutting out loins, is hard enough for me if the boat is still, but trying to do it while the boat is underway in a sea-way of any size at all makes for a real challenge. With this fish we added the additional degree of difficulty of doing all of this at night!

Now, after you have fish blood, slime, scales, etc all over you, you get to try and clean up a bit so you can get all of your hard work packed away in freezer bags and put in the fridge and freezer. Then you start the real clean up process. And since we have limited freshwater, you clean up with salt water, which means that the boat surfaces that you try to keep the salt water off of are now covered with saltwater - better than fish blood (I guess?). Then, Cindy is there to tell you that you must not have cleaned things well enough because she can still smell fish on everything - so you do another round of cleaning.

An hour or so later I suddenly realize that I'm not feeling quite as good as when I started all of this? At that point I began asking myself if catching fish is all that it is cracked up to be? I'm thinking that it might be a lot easier to just fish and not catch? However, the next day at lunch as we are dining on fresh tuna, I quickly change my mind - catching fish really IS all it is cracked up to be! However, I probably will not be fishing at night any more - at least I won't check to see if we have caught anything until daylight!