Deep Sea Fishing

Alex Fishing

Tuesday was a big day, we went deep sea fishing.  I'd been looking forward to deep sea fishing for years, at least since our deep sea fishing plans fell through while I was in Bermuda for spring break during my senior year in high school.

We had an afternoon charter, so we decided to spend the morning at the St. Thomas Yacht Club.  Alex has eaten at the Yacht Club for three years without an issue, but our new waitress took issue with us not being members.  Luckily, they also recognized memberships in other yacht clubs...the bartender let us stay.  I decided that the High Rock Boat & Ski Club counts as a yacht club.  The beach was great.  We were the only people out there and the weather was ideal, with just enough wind to make it pleasant.

Our charter took off from Sapphire Bay.  We all had high spirits heading into the trip, but most of our moods were quickly dashed by the queasy seas.  We headed out to the South Drop, where the ocean depths raise from 160 feet to 70 feet and then tumble down to more than 1,400 feet.  The fish love that area where the seafloor drops off.  Eating and drinking beer before heading out on the seas was a very bad decision.  Despite the fact that we've all been fine on other boats many times over, everyone except Alex was feeling very nauseous.  Kati, unfortunately, was the worst and never really crawled out of her nauseous state.

Monica, Johnny, and Her Barracuda

We started by following the frigates to where the big fish supposedly hung out.  We tried to get some sail fish and Mahi, but the fish just weren't biting.  We got one really early bite that Wes took and reeled in a half-eaten Wahoo.  Catching a Wahoo was pretty cool because of my UVa background.  For those who don't know, while the Cavalier is the official UVa mascot, the students (and the administration) has embraced the Wahoo as an unofficial mascot (only God knows why).  The story is that they picked the Wahoo because it's known to be able to drink three times its weight in water and the students took that as a good mascot for their drinking endeavors.

The Crew and Our Catch

After that half-eaten Wahoo, we didn't get another bite for like two hours.  We switched to live-bait fishing and went after some of the smaller fishes.  We had some success with the live-bait fishing.  When my turn to reel in the line came up we had a Mahi Mahi hooked.  We'd seen it jumping through the waves in the distance.  Unfortunately, I got the Mahi right up to the boat and it shook the hook.  I watched helplessly as our only hooked Mahi disappeared into the depths.  Later we found ourselves in a school of Rainbow Runners and I reeled in my first fish.  Yet as soon as the fish was getting ready to be pulled from the water I had to pass the line off to Alex so that I could run across the boat and join Kati vomiting in a show of solidarity (of course that's the only reason I was puking).  Then the madness started.  The fish were biting left and right.  At one point we even had four fish on the lines at the same time.  We were primarily pulling in Rainbow Runners, but we also got another Wahoo.  Alex had a huge bite, but after a prolonged fight we realized that it must be a small shark and let it loose.  Monica got into a battle pulling in a three-foot Barracuda, which was quite a feat.

It was 5:00 and the day was wrapping up.  At the time our catch consisted of 1.5 Wahoo and about 8 Rainbow Runners.  The elusive Mahi had evaded us, as had the tuna that I was hoping so desperately to catch.  But then, right at the end of our trip, we got one more bite and, low and behold on the end of that line we found a fair-sized Blackfin Tuna!  After catching the tuna, we pulled everything in and set off back for St. Thomas, in view of an amazing sunset.  Everyone but Kati, who couldn't even stomach standing up, got a chance to reel in a few fish.  Despite the sea sickness, it was a great time.

Kati and Me, Feeling Better at Dinner

Once back at the dock, our crew filleted the fish for us to take home with us.  We stopped by the grocery store on our way over to Alex's friend John's house to fix up our fish.  John lives on Dragon Lane and his house is unbelievable.  He really is living the dream.  I cut up a little bit of tuna sashimi as an appetizer and Alex, Wes, and I made some ceviche out of the Rainbow Runner to go along with marinated fillets of Rainbow Runner and Wahoo.  Dinner turned out amazingly!  It was the first time that any of us had made a ceviche, but we couldn't have been more pleased.  Luckily, all of us were feeling much better by the time we got to John's, so we were all able to enjoy our dinner.  After dinner we came back to the condos and relaxed with a nice night cap of Cruzan Banana Rum before turning in.