Seaduced's Web Diary - Fishing quotas introduced!

Fishing quotas introduced!

Seaduced

John & Jane Craven

Fri 26 Nov 2010 18:48

Since the last post things have changed dramatically at least with regard to catching fish! We have now had 4 mahi-mahi (also known as dolphin fish) each one bigger than the last culminating in today's catch by John in excess of 12kgs!! Prior to this we had mahi-mahi for dinner on Wednesday, another one for lunch on Thursday, one in the fridge for dinner tonight, (Friday), and now one in the freezer so large we have had to cut it into 3 pieces each of which will feed all five of us! Poor Tony, who until today had caught the largest fish, was a bit put out when he realised that John's second fish was about three times the size of his! Each fish now has it's tail fin proudly displayed on the back guardrail.
After the first 3 caught, I requested a different lure to try and catch a different type of fish for a bit of variety, so instead of a deep water lure we used a shallow water lure and all we ended up with was a bigger fish - fishing quotas have now been imposed by the provisioning committee, so that we can at least eat what we have and the request for variety has been strongly re-inforced! All further mahi-mahi will be thrown back, but only once the lure has been retrieved of course!
The mahi-mahi is a really pretty fish in the water, it is bright yellow in colour and has blue spots, but as soon as it is caught and killed it looses all it's colour and becomes very dull.
Killing the fish is one area in which we could do with a little more expertise - the idea of humanely killing a fish with a squirt of brandy in the gills once it is gaffed is great in theory but hasn't worked it's magic yet - the large one today required a few hefty smacks with a mallet to subdue it, but still managed to catch John off guard with a serious twitch during gutting, despite him having cut off his head AND tail! This almost certainly unorthodox method of killing usually leaves the deck looking like a scene from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and takes about an hour to clean up afterwards, and all the crew involved require a shower.

2 of the crew relaxing - all they need is a knotted hanky on their heads!

John's monster mahi-mahi - note mallett in foreground, knife in hand and slightly red decks!

The weather at the moment is a bit of a trial - we have lovely sunny days but very light winds - we have been motoring for long periods over the last two days, however, when we have been able to sail we have managed an average of 8k of speed in about 8-10k of wind which is pretty good. We are now headed towards the Cape Verde islands, which we should reach early morning on Saturday, and from then we turn west towards St Lucia, and hopefully we will be able to pick up the trade winds which will blow us all the way across the Atlantic. Everyone is struggling with the weather and each day on the 'net' which is a radio chat channel specifically for the ARC boats, the weather and lack of wind is the chief topic of discussion secondary only to the issue of fishing.