Today’s blog really begins last evening. When we took Fuzzy ashore for his evening walk we went down by the Home Coming festivities and Bud looked for someone selling fresh conch salad. He found a guy and asked him if he had any of the trimmings that Bud could take for bait. The shells and guts were over at the edge of the water so Bud selected a couple of nice big guts and put them in his zip lock bag to take back to the boat for fishing. Then when we got back to the dock where we’d left our dinghy there were a few other guys, once of whom had conch he’d just caught and cleaned for sale. We bought a big bag (4 or 5 pounds) for $10.

Last evening Home Coming was going strong. Bud didn’t even try to sleep. He stayed out on deck and fished. And he caught two small snapper. He thought one was a mutton snapper and the other a grey snapper. At least two others got away. Bud has lost all the good hooks he got from Gary. He has a few others he brought from the States and a package of hooks he bought in Georgetown. He’s convinced the Georgetown hooks don’t work. He can only seem to land a fish with those if the fish swallows the hook. When that happens he can’t release the little ones as he can’t get the hook back out. He’ll be getting a lot more of the sharply curved hooks they use in Florida when we can find them.

Meanwhile, I hardboiled four eggs and dyed them with juice I drained off a can of beets. We bought four candy bars on our evening walk, so we had pale pink eggs and candy bars in a straw basket I’d bought from Mary in Bennett’s Harbour for our Easter basket. I didn’t get a picture before we ate two of the eggs and one of the candy bars and Bud put the rest in the refrigerator.

But I did take a picture of our Easter dinner just before we sat down to eat. We each had a little snapper Bud fried with lemon, garlic and ginger. I mashed a big batch of potatoes (with a hand masher) and we had cracked conch and cole slaw. The conch we bought was cleaned, but it still had to be tenderized. Bud used a plastic hammer he had in his tools. He put the conch on a cutting board cushioned underneath with a dishtowel and beat them with the hammer until he had them flattened. Then he cut them in strips, dipped them in egg and beer batter and fried them. I went on-line to find a dipping sauce recipe and Bud improvised an orange marmalade-horseradish sauce. He used juice from an orange and a lime and plum jam. Bud added the horseradish and then some cayenne pepper for good measure. It was good. The whole dinner was good, but certainly not the traditional Easter dinner we ate growing up. The little snapper I had may have been the best fish I’ve ever eaten.

This evening when we took Fuzzy ashore another guy was using a cast net off the dock. Bud watched him and asked for tips. Then while Fuzzy and I walked around a bit he went back to the boat and got his cast net (also from Gary) and tried his hand. I took some shots around town, but by the time I got back the light was too poor to catch Bud’s cast netting attempts. He did catch fish. He caught little fish too small for bait and one net full of little grunts. He caught one pretty little reef fish. He let all of them go and came home with no bait. He did have one little pilcher in the dinghy that the other guy had tossed there, and he’s out fishing with it. The Home Coming music has started again so maybe we’ll have more fish tomorrow!