Here, Fishy Fishy Fishy!

December 22, 2015

I am my father's daughter, meaning while I was living in a little fishing town, I made sure to go out fishing.

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(Side note, I had about 4 other guys tell me 'we'll go fishing! I can take you! I have a boat!' They never did. Usually it was within 15 minutes of meeting them for the first time, and I took none of them seriously, having learned early on that these promises go nowhere. There may be a post devoted to all the things promised that never happened.)

Anyway, Marcelo was better at coming through on things. I also kept bringing it up, I admit.

So we headed out one morning with his cousin.

Up in the bow is my favorite spot, as always

It started with getting to the ocean from the river behind town where all the boats dock.

I got to see close up pelicans for the first time, which I thought was really neat. They have webbed feet and still sit in trees, which I had never really considered before.  You don't often see ducks up in trees.  I don't think...

They also swim but that's not suprising...

Once out to the bay, it was maybe a half hour running out to our fishing spot. Without discernable landmarks or GPS, I'm really not sure how we knew that was the spot, but there we stopped.

The fishing setup was a hook on the end of some wire, and line tied to the wire. line was wrapped around an empty pop bottle or a hunk of styrofoam, I assume to not loose the whole rig if it happened to take a swim.

We stuck little herring (or some other small fish) fillets on the hook. And dumped it overboard. Weights on another line were tied a few feet up to sink the whole thing. There were gulls of some sort all around, and from a previous trip (which I missed) they were all named Christopher.

I was astonished that we never caught any Christophers, after chucking our bait over.  I was sure one of them would nab it with the hook before the whole thing could sink.

Then as always, waiting. I did my best to translate my favorite fishing saying, that it's called 'fishing' not 'catching' for a reason.

His cousin got the first fish. And the second. I think they're called picuña? I never really nailed that one down.

I'm proud to say that even with an unfamiliar method of fishing, I correctly identified my first bite as such and successfully landed the fish.

Having caught at least one fish, my day was a success.  Doesn't matter if I get more, as long as there is one in the boat due to me.

It was rather obvious by the tooth-filled mouth why the wire was needed. Also I made sure to have a good grip on Mr. Fishy before attempting to remove the hook. Wouldn't let no boys help me though.

I got one more that day, Marcelo had one, his cousin 5 total. We stayed maybe 2 hours until the bite totally died.

On the way back in we cruised by the big rock just off the beach, and I got my first close up look at a blue footed booby, while I had glasses to actually see it.

Blue feet and everything!

A wonderful day, the whole lot of it.

PS. I later found out they sold the 8 fish for $3, which gives you an idea why a fishing village is not a rich village.