If you remember last posting we were going on a snorkeling/fishing trip out to the reef. Well we had a great time. The weather was perfect and the sea calm. Franklin and his lovely bride Jackie (from Tucson AZ), Georgia (from here in Belize) and her friend Pamela (from CA), Tricia, and I chartered Earl and Peter to take us out. One of the stops Tricia normally makes is to visit King on Bread & Butter Caye. You can snorkel right off the beach there as well as fish. It’s a nice place to drop in. Well…Earl and Peter couldn’t find it. Peter, who used to live and fish daily in the Cayes, was most disconcerted but he blamed his not knowing where it was on his always coming at it from the sea side and not the mainland. Hmmm… We stopped for directions at Shark Tooth Caye (because it’s shaped like a sharks tooth obviously) and ended up spending 2 hours there snorkeling and I did some fishing. I had a few hits but couldn’t snag anything. I did get in the water though! I waded in up to just above my waist. That’s as wet as I got all day though. We had lunch and something to drink and then headed out fishing. We settled on a spot where the reef ended and a drop off to about 125 feet. Almost all the fishing here is done with hand lines but I always bring a rod. My take is that, if the guide has rods they may not be in the best shape. I did that even when I lived in the states. Anyway… Earl and I fished the drop off with everyone else fishing the reef. The 1st fish was caught by Franklin and it was a 6 inch porgy that Peter immediately put on his hook for bait. I was next with 4 fish within 20 minutes, the largest being a yellow tail jack (the one in the picture), 2 snappers, and 1 croaker. Earl pulled in a grouper a bit bigger than my jack. After that Jackie caught 2 small croakers and a porgy. That ended the fishing in that spot. We headed off to another spot and I trolled as we motored off. About 5 minutes into trolling I had a HUGE strike and Earl stopped the boat. I fought hard for about 2 minutes and the largest tarpon I ever saw, about 5 feet, came flying completely out of the water, doing the tail dance they are so famous for, and threw the hook. While everyone was ohhing, aahing, and cheering, I was upset. I jokingly said it was a good thing it got off because it probably would have pulled me over board. So, on we went. The other 3 holes we fished didn’t produce anything, including a stop at the Settee river mouth. At one of our stops several of the women jumped in to cool themselves off, Franklin, in full snorkel gear and treading water, caught a small fish on a hand line. He surmised that if he had caught a big fish he would have been in trouble. Too funny! Actually though, had it been big enough for dinner we probably would have rescued him. We were back to Kismet by 6pm sunburned and tired but we all had enjoyed the day immensely. Peter, our intrepid fisherman, was skunked and was not a happy boy.
When we got back we were all looking forward to a nice shower but when we got there Tricia found that her 400 gallon water tank was empty. It feeds the shower on the left side of the building and all of the toilets. She found that someone had turned on one of the garden hoses that had emptied the tank. Elvis and Pedro, who were building a palapa to house her new boat, claimed that they didn’t use any water. Tricia turned on the hose from the city water to fill up the tank and we all settled for sponge baths, beers, rum, and waited for dinner. Dinner is part of the fishing trip. We eat whatever is caught plus rice and some sort of veggies. Tonight it was red beans. She also made a chocolate rum cake for Jackie’s 30th birthday, which was that day. Dinner and the conversation was great. We finished around 9:30. Then we all headed outside for more drinks, smoking and general chitchat. I headed to get my “old man sleep” around 11 while the guests and Tricia headed off to one of the bars to drink somewhere else. By drinking in different places the drink clock starts all over again at your 1st drink. That way you can deny drinking as much as you did.
Franklin was heady from our fishing trip on Saturday so asked me if I wanted to walk down to the lagoon with him and fish. I asked if he’d rather we take my canoe and he jumped at the chance. I even lent him one of my fishing rods/reels so he didn’t have to use a hand line. So off we went. The water was a bit rough and we took on a couple of gallons as we cleared the beach. Once we got to the lagoon it was smooth canoing. I tried vainly to snag some bait with my throw net. I gotta practice that!!! So, since I couldn’t catch any bait we decided to use lures. I had the ones that Zeppi sent me when he got back to New Jersey. Proven snook killers! We paddled around the lagoon but watched a fast moving thunderstorm come at us. We pulled next to a semi-finished dock at the Hopkins Bay Resort and used one of their outbuildings to keep from being drenched in the torrential down pour. There was even an bit of hail which was quite unusual. It stopped after about 30 minutes and we headed back deeper in to the lagoon. Both of us had a few hits. I actually had 2 fish at the side of the canoe but they threw the hook. We were having a good time and neither minded not catching anything. After a couple of hours of hits and misses we headed back toward the mouth of the lagoon. Just at the junction of the 1st caye, where the main channel and the 2 from each side converged, bait fish were going crazy and we saw a couple of very big splashes. So in went out lures and I got a very hard strike. Twenty minutes of desperate fighting, and 3 huge full out of the water jumps later, Franklin pulled my snook over the side. I had a scale so we immediately weighed it. Eight pounds exactly! (Zeppi eat your heart out!!! But thanks again for the white jig lures!) Boy was I relieved! I thought for sure it was going to break my 20 pound test line. It did destroy my wire leader though, so I had to replace that. No more fish after that so back to Kismet. I donated the snook for Sunday night dinner. Franklin is upset that he and Jackie are leaving for home tomorrow or we’d be back at the lagoon to try again. The 1st picture is the 4lb snook I caught a few weeks ago and the last 2 are the 8lb one I caught Sunday. And Sunday's fish tasted great!
More news as events happen! Practice peace!
