BY HUNTER HILL
As you may recall, at the end of my last column, I was on the eve of heading out to sea in pursuit of wild tuna. And while the goal was to catch fish to fill a freezer, there was always the possibility that that might not happen.
Thus it is with a rumble in my stomach that I can now reveal to you that we were unsuccessful in locating tuna on our trip.
After a three-hour drive to the ocean and a six-hour, 100-mile boat ride out to sea, we spent another 10 hours or so chumming and chasing our elusive prey.
In the course of trailing trawlers and jigging down hundreds of feet into the cold, dark waves, our time was not so uneventful as an empty catch might sound. In fact, in terms of fulfilling an adventure, our bounty was rich with encounters of marine life.
As we crashed out at first light, over swells that took our boat up and down in rises of over 15 feet at a time, I first spied a small pod of dolphins that seemed to follow our path into the endless grey-blue expanse. As we set up in our first location of the morning, they actually came in from the side and split up, chasing bait several hundred yards behind our boat.
At the time, we had lines in the water, and were attempting to fish where the bait had been found. As I continued to watch, the split groups of dolphins suddenly sped toward one another, driving the bait into a concentrated ball, through which they swam almost violently, grabbing up their breakfast.
If you’re thinking this was a group of a dozen or so you would be mistaken. There were handily over 100 dolphins altogether, not counting the other small groups that leaped beside the cruising boat on our several short commutes between fishing locations.
At the spot after this, we were just losing sight of these pack hunters, when something caught my eye from the corner of the boat. Nearly 50 yards out, a lone fin lay almost crooked in the water, slowly flopping/waving as it meandered directly for us. Some of the other guys on the boat guessed that it might be a shark after our bait, but I wasn’t so sure. I guessed that it might have been an ocean sunfish, due to its lethargic movements. Speculation continued until the large fish was directly off the stern of our vessel, glowing as far deep as 14 feet or more beneath the surface, while still waving his top fin out of the water at us as he passed by like a drowsy, beautiful tank.
It was in fact an ocean sunfish, or as the captain called it, a mola mola. (Just guessing as to the accurate spelling of that.)
Unfortunately aside from these, the only fish we saw were a few dead bait and a small mahi-mahi that we snagged, thinking it was a weed on our squid rigs.
While it wasn’t a haul by any means, I was certainly happy to be able to take a strange-looking fish home to show my son. He reacted to it with all the curiosity and excitement a dad could hope for when sharing the totems of his adventures.
After surviving another six-hour steam back to shore, and unloading back into our trucks late that night, the adventure concluded with the chance spotting of a fox on the inlet shore, scouring the tidal edge for a seafood surprise.
While we didn’t catch any tuna this time, I got to see some big ships that fished for squid and different fish, and unloaded their catch at city-sized processing barges far off the shore. There were also trawlers and the like, dredging up clams and other edible mollusks closer to the shore.
The way out here, there’s opportunity in everything. There was a chance to catch fish, but there was also a certain opportunity to learn and observe parts of God’s creation that I had little-to-no exposure to before. I could dwell on our empty coolers, but instead, I now have—among other things—a very entertaining video of my son attempting to kiss the mahi-mahi, before jumping in surprise as I spooked him with it.
What we get out of these experiences are memories and an ongoing sense of wonder, for both ourselves and our children to look back on.
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