Since the beginning of our trip, any chance I had to get my fishing lines out I did. But with the exception of a few small catches in Biscayne Bay, I’ve only come up with a few patches of sargassum weed and a loss of morale. After a point, it became almost a personal insult. I was going to catch some damn fish if it killed me. My frustration was growing because we have been cruising in some of the best deep-sea fishing grounds in the world. Fortunately, my luck finally changed.

Upon leaving Nassau, one of the hands at the fuel dock said to me that if you can’t catch fish in the Bahamas then you might as well throw your gear away. Ouch! I knew that we were headed down to the Exumas, one of the most pristine collections of islands in the whole archipelago, and that just on the outside of this chain the water dropped deep and quick. This was going to be the testament of whether or not I was worthy of keeping my gear.

The first day I struck out yet again. Son of a bitch! I was trying a lot of the same lures, the ones that all the anglers I had met said were going to catch me some mahi-mahi or surface feeding tuna. The following day I said to hell with what the experts say, I am going to throw my $45 wahoo lure out there and see if that might get me some attention. About an hour out it most certainly did. Ironically, moments prior Tom told me that he would pony up and buy me a fishing charter trip to see if there was some bit of valuable information I was missing.

I got the bite on the conventional rod just after we put the sails away due to a wind shift that made sailing nearly impossible to get us to our destination. We were in about 1,500 ft. of water with the lure out about 100+ feet from the boat when I started to see the dolphin, aka mahi-mahi aka Dorado, jumping out of the water securely hooked on the line. Tom slowed the boat down and after a 10-minute fight, that beautiful golden-green fish landed on the boat. I finished him off with a couple of stabs to the brain, but with all the excitement I did it on the main deck and a ton of blood quickly spread along the recently cleaned boat, oops. No one seemed to care, they were just happy that I finally caught a fish worth eating.

It was fitting since it was Mother’s Day and I had assured Deb that I would catch her a fish for the occasion. Because of my lack of luck thus far, we had preemptively made dinner reservations on a small island called Little Farmer’s Cay, so the fish was bound for the freezer. After picking up a mooring ball in a very narrow cut just to the north of the island, Liz and I lowered the dinghy and headed over to their very rudimentary fish cleaning station. The Dorado I landed was about 14lbs. give or take, and took me about an hour to clean, gut and filet. Fortunately I was kept company by my lovely wife who supplied my filth ridden hands with a cold beer and an occasional smoke, and a local conch fisherman who was preparing conch salad for the only folks staying at the small yacht club on the island.

With 8 meaty filets in hand, we zipped back to the boat to freeze up the fish and don our Sunday finest for some dinner. A few days earlier I had given these guys a shout to see if they were serving on Mother’s Day, at which time they informed me they were. They had no menu, so I just told them to make us something delicious. That they did! Each couple got a combination of lobster and what I think was triggerfish to share and the usual assortment of rice ‘n’ peas, fried plantains, salad and coleslaw. It was truly some of the best food we had eaten yet.

The next day we got a slower start than anticipated. Liz and I went over to the charter sailboat adjacent to our mooring for some rum cocktails that lasted a little later than we thought, making our “dawn departure” more like 8:30. Nevertheless, we were out of the channel and on our way south towards Georgetown, the biggest town in the southern Bahamas, by 9:00. Reinvigorated with fishing, I had my lines out the second we rounded the bend and, within an hour, I got another mahi mahi on the spinner rod. I had put a pre-rigged ballyhoo on the line that I picked up in Nassau and had quite a time bringing her in. I found the spinner way more enjoyable to reel in because you don’t have to use your thumb to manually guide the line back in on the reel. After I landed this one, which was a bit smaller than the first, I promptly put it in the cooler where I proceeded to do the final killing. This made for almost no mess, a sharp contrast from my first kill shot.

At that point I should have called it quits, but we eat a good amount of fish on the boat and coming into a marina with some extras can make friends rather quickly, so I kept on going. After a couple of hours I hadn’t gotten much action, so I decided to resume my reading of Herman Melville’s classic Moby Dick. From my perch I could get a few pages in while at the same time checking my lines every so often. But after an hour or so of reading this wordy masterpiece, my eyelids filled with lead and I dozed off. I think I only got about a half hour of shut eye in before I awoke to find my conventional rod at the very end of its 300+ feet of monofilament line and at that very instant, the knot holding it on snapped and my lucky (and expensive) wahoo lure vanished with all of my line. It was rough. I felt bad for a number of reasons. I could have caught another fish, I lost all my tackle on the rod and most importantly, there was a fish swimming around in the sea with a lure stuck in it’s mouth and a shit ton of monofilament line behind him. I decided that, from this point forward, if I’m not manning my lines, no matter how boring and frustrating it can be, I shouldn’t have them out. I’m sure this has happened to many a fisherman, but my main objective is to only target and kill the ones I am going to eat and leave the rest alone to go about their existence in relative peace.

My spirits perked up after arriving at the Emerald Bay Marina. We met some interesting sailors at a cocktail party, who later came to the boat and dined with us on the day’s fresh catch. The fish turned out amazing as well as the company. This fantastic group of four was two French Canadian couples, 26 years in age, delivering a 49 ft. custom Hunter from St. Martin to Montreal. They were a breath of fresh air after seeing too many pretentious boaters at some of our previous stops. We might even have convinced these wonderful new friends to join our Burning Man camp. Only time will tell, but I am looking forward to seeing them again and most of all CATCHING MORE FISH!!!!