Last couple of days have been pretty successful fishing days. On the banks just south of Duncan Town we finally found an underwater rock structure conducive to some of the fish we’d been hunting. Only trouble was there weren’t any Hog fish or Snapper. But there were dozens of lobster in almost every hole that structure had. That doesn’t mean we were able to take all of them but nine traveled back to Dragonfly in the dinghy with us. And we did manage to see a smaller Nassau Grouper who’d been watching the foray with the crayfish. Seems like it should have been quick work to pluck a few out of those holes but we must have spent over an hour diving down craning our necks and spears round rocks to where we could pick one off.
On the way out past the Columbus Banks south in the deep channel off the southern Bahamas toward the Turks and Caicos we ran across a school of aggressive Mahi who hit two of the four lures we had behind Dragonfly. As it was they hit the two on the port swim platform so we had to deal with two jumping and flopping 36” fish at the same time. The smaller of the two wouldn’t allow any reeling in until I got seated and he dove and fought for at least five minutes and then only reluctantly, slowly came toward the boat. Al had already landed his and was starting to filet it by the time I pulled the second up on the platform.
Cleaning fish isn’t always a fun task but with Mahi it’s compensated with not just the just reward of a delicious meal (or in this case meals) but Mahi’s themselves are so iridescently beautiful; watching the vibrant yellows and greens slowly turn to greens and deep blues is amazing in itself. At 8 knots it’s challenging to filet on the swim platform where Al does his chores, I moved the operation up a few steps when I took over.
The third one was hooked shortly after the first two were fileted and in the Galley for trimming. All in all we scored a full 9×13” pan of double stacked Mahi steaks, which I failed to photo before Jill had them vacuum bagged for the freezer. We still had London Broil and scalloped potatoes left over from the night before to finish off before getting back to a fish menu. If you’re paying attention we probably have about three meals each of lobster and Mahi frozen away for less fruitful anchorages.
