…and caught a fish!

While in Cabo, my business partners and I went game fishing. A short water-taxi ride brought us to a 28-foot fishing boat which ferried us up and down the Cabo coast, about a mile out.

Nothing was biting – few people caught anything. I had a few tentative hits to my bait, but despite the twin good fishing omens of bait schools and circling birds, none of us were getting serious action.

We moved to a rocky shallow, and I had a hard hit. The fish struggled and ran, snapping my line under a rock.

The captain would keep us in each area for less than 30 minutes, and we ended up not catching any fish at three of these very promising locations. All of the captains of this particular touring company kept radio contact with each other to try to put customers on fish, but even technology wasn’t making the fish bite.

Trawl lines were put out and we started back. About five miles from the water-taxi loading area, the captain stopped us again. We cast out and nearly immediately, the fish were biting. For the next hour or so, the boat circled lazily around a buoy.

We all got several bait taken without being able to get the hook sunk. I fought with one for about five minutes before it let go. Jerry brought the first one in, a rooster fish.

After a few more taken bait, I hooked one*. He fought quite a bit – probably 20 minutes worth – where he’d take more slack than I could reel in. He’d run, and then I’d have to tire him back out. My arms are sore as hell. Finally, I got him within reach and the first mate brought him in with the pike and bludgeoned his head with a bat. My catch was another rooster, about twice as big as Jerry’s.

Andrew had a few more hits, but unfortunately, he didn’t bring one in.

Just shy of two-o’clock in the afternoon, our captain took us back to the taxi area and we were brought to shore.

There was a grizzled old man cutting the fish, and we were asked if we wanted to have the fish filleted. None of us knew if rooster fish were edible or tasty, so we gave the fish to the fishcutter. Today, we spoke with one of the local technicians we were working with and he told us that rooster fish is a sushi specialty. It sounds like someone is running a scam on the tourists. No matter – we had a good time.

^* We weren’t actually given the opportunity to land these fish ourselves – every sign of a fish hitting the bait was greeted by the first-mate removing the pole from our eager hands so as to facilitate the proper hooking of these beasts.