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I feel like I should just hang a sign on the blog that reads, "Gone Fishing." We’ve been deep sea fishing. It hasn’t been perfect weather for it, too windy, but even less than perfect is still fun. A lot of things were a repeat from last year; Trinity caught the first fish, Grandpa caught the biggest one, they also caught the most between them. Trinity has always understood the zen of fishing much better than I. Jon caught less fish than last year, and I caught one more. I actually landed a fish none of us had ever caught before, a sea trout. Then my daughter promptly caught an even bigger one. I think we all caught at least one Mangrove Snapper. Grandpa caught a 40 pound cobia, a fish none of us were familiar with, but it was the catch of the day size-wise. It was also a catch that I would have lost. It took real skill to land it, skill that I am only learning. Wisdom trumps youth and enthusiasm in a lot of areas and fishing is one of them. Though, Trinity’s skills, hmm. Maybe I should just admit that fishing is one of those things I’m not naturally good at, but willing to learn. I’ve got a few skill sets that were hard won and not natural skill. I guess deep sea fishing will have to be one of them.

Trinity has always adored boats, water, and going fast. As a baby you had to really watch her on boats because she would crawl to the bow of the boat so the spray would hit her, and giggle the whole time. I remember a summer’s afternoon with her in my lap in her baby life jacket in the bow of a friend’s boat. The spray hit us, the boat slapped the water, and my baby laughed louder the faster and wetter we got. She hasn’t changed her mind on any of it. She’s just big enough to lean into the spray without me holding her now, and the sounds of joy are older, girl, not baby, but faster was better and the more spray that was in her face, the better. The three adults took turns sitting in the wettest seat, so we weren’t constantly soaked as the boat moved from one fishing spot to another. When the weather conditions aren’t great, you do a lot of hunting for those pesky fish. We also caught a lot of fish we couldn’t keep, or didn’t want to. The Lady fish were really biting and they put up a good fight, but are not good eating. Why are they called Lady fish? Unsure, but they are pretty with colors streaming in iridescent stripes down their sides. Salt water catfish hit all our lines, but again not good eating, so we’d let them go when we realized what we had hooked. Funny, we couldn’t seem to not bring in the Ladies and the catfish, but the snappers, cobia, and sea trout, made us really work to find them. Since at least snappers and cobia are schooling fish, our captain said it was unusual not to catch more at a time. We ended up catching enough fish to feed all five of us for three days, so we got plenty of fish, we just had to work for it. Grandma stayed ashore when she saw the wind whipping the water. She’s the only one of us that suffers from sea sickness. But she stayed ashore and read and rested and enjoyed some alone time. You don’t get much of that on a family vacation.

I caught the only shark of the day. It put up the hardest fight of anything I hooked. It bent my pole at this abrupt angle, and I really had to fight to bring it in, and it was a baby. It was a hammerhead pup with it’s odd horizontal skull just moving into that characteristic shape that gives the sharks their name. Our captain held it so Trin and I could pet it, very carefully. It didn’t feel at all the way I’d thought it would. It’s skin felt like silk, but softer, more alive than that. Somewhere between silk and velvet if they could be wet and muscled, and even that doesn’t really convey what the pup felt like. I’ll keep working at it until I can describe that amazing tactile sensation. I’ll let you know when I nail it.  Then the Captain had us pet the share the other direction and it was like sandpaper. Sharks really are best when you don’t rub them the wrong way. We unhooked the shark and let him go on his way. As far as I’m aware you cannot keep any shark, it’s all catch and release. The Captain said, they weren’t good to eat anyway, and anything we couldn’t eat or use for bait for something bigger was all catch and release. The wind had churned the water until it was murky so we often didn’t know what we’d hooked until it was time to grab the net. It certainly added a surprise to that last few inches of fight.