Day Trippin’

The weather over the past week has been very nice, with lower winds, great temperatures, and sunny days (until yesterday...it’s been raining for the past 24 hours).  This reprieve from high winds allowed us to enjoy several day trips.  The first was back to the lionfish hole to try to catch dinner.  Lionfish are an invasive species that are causing problems along the reefs in the Bahamas, and the southern coasts of the US.  They have a high rate of reproduction, a voracious appetite, and few predators.  Therefore, everyone is encouraged to help manage the lionfish population.  

The preferred way of capturing lionfish is by diving down and stabbing them with a pole spear.  You would think they could easily escape or hide, but no they just look at you...then give this WTH (what the heck) expression when you stab them. We were able to remove three from the environment, but they were fairly small so they were turned into an appetizer instead of dinner! My filleting skills were tested with these small, strange fish.  Additionally, lionfish require special handling, as many of their spines are venomous so Keith carefully removed all spines before I got to work with the fillet knife.

We have been making a concerted effort to dispose of fish carcasses away from the boat to avoid attracting additional shark traffic.  For some reason, on this day, we decided to fish with the lion fish carcass.  Within 30 minutes we had two sharks tracking the scent behind the boat.  We kept pulling the bait in closer to discourage them from getting hooked, but this guy came within a few feet of the swim platform so we had to discontinue our fishing attempts.  We did not want to unnecessarily hook a shark.  As you might imagine, neither of us readily volunteers for hook removal duty in a mouth this large!

While sitting on the swim platform, cleaning conch, Keith attempted to get a picture of the barracuda that had been ‘hanging out’ under his feet.  At the time he didn’t realize the barracuda might have been interested in this conch attempting to escape.

Clearly freshly dispatched conch also release ‘smells’ into the water.  Within minutes of dropping this shell in the water, this huge starfish came to investigate the possibility of a free lunch.  It was very interesting to watch this starfish make a ’bee line’ for this shell.  They move much faster than I thought was possible.

After being anchored behind Hoffman’s Cay for 6 weeks, it was time to take a trip into deeper water (a few miles offshore) to dump our black water holding tanks (sewage).  We selected a nice calm day, and decided that while we were out there we would try our luck at trolling.  Until this point, we had only fished in relatively shallow water near the islands.  In this location, there is a ledge about 5 miles out that changes in depth from 75 ft to 2,500+ over a short quarter mile distance.  We decided that trolling along that ledge might be a good place to catch something.  We set up the rods with ballyhoo rigs and slowed our speed to 4.5 mph.  Since we are new to all of this, we were just making up the ‘rules’ as we went.  We do have a book onboard that we each perused, but we had no ‘tried and true’ methods to fall back on.

Beginners luck is a wonderful thing!  We quickly pulled this feisty fellow onboard and headed to the literature for identification.  After some discussion we both agreed this was a king mackerel.  It that good or bad?  If memory serves me correctly, I have read that mackerel is an ‘oily’ fish. I’m not exactly sure what that descriptor means, but I have always mentally equated ‘oily’ with ‘fishy’ or possibly ‘mushy’. We really hope that is not true, because this fish provided 4 large fillets (another filleting first with a fish that has a clearly delineated back-strap and a belly-strap fillet on each side), which means we will be eating it at least 4 times.  With no internet access, I headed to the book shelf to look for information and/or recipes.  I found two possibilities: a creole tomato sauce recipe in one of my all time favorite books, An Embarressment of Mangoes, and a baked coconut fish recipe in The Cruiser’s Handbook of Fishing. Both might be options to counter balance any oily/fishy taste?

Sautéed mackerel with creole tomato sauce won the coin flip that night, and I am happy to say the fish was AMAZING!  Now I am a little confused about what ‘oily’ actually means, because this fish was very firm, white, flaky and delicious.  We also ate fish tacos, made with the mackerel, this week, and those too were AMAZING!  Fingers crossed we might catch another king mackerel, but we still have two large fillets in the freezer!

Keith caught me mesmerized by the amazing clarity of the water.  This picture was taken while heading back to our anchor spot, in 18 ft of water.  There are so many things to see...I could stand there and stare at the bottom forever!

The next day we decided to hike to the blue hole on Hoffman’s Cay.  Blue holes are vertical sink holes that are filled with water, and are apparently quite common in the Bahamas.  We took the Whaler to the beach and entered a very tropical looking path.  The ‘hike’ turned out to be a very short walk up a hill that led us to this rock overlooking this beautiful site. Following a path to the right, we ended up under the rock ledge overhang.

Who needs television, when this kind of entertainment is available daily!

Keith decided to jump in to get the full experience.

I, on the other hand, preferred to wait until I was back in my swimming pool with my water hammock...let’s refrain from fishing!

Another wonderful week has passed, but we think it is time for us to mosey out of the hurricane belt.  We are now watching for a weather window that will allow us a safe and comfortable passage back to the US.  It looks like the next break in strong winds might occur early next week.  The next post could possibly be our re-entry into the US. We have also turned our InReach tracker back on if you would like to see our exact location.

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