I went fishing. In Mexico.
Carole and I took a little vacation in Puerto Vallarta to try to get away from the cold and snow. It worked. Plus we have friends that live there so we got touring and sunshine and beach time taken care of plus a morning of fishing.
We traveled by small boat [a 28 footer] with a local about 11 miles out into the Bay of Bandaras and trolled for three hours. This was my catch.
The bottom fish is a King Mackerel. We kept that for a meal. Delicious white meat, but on the bony side. The next four larger fish are Bonito, distant cousins of the tuna, but every bit as good eating. We kept the 8 ponder at the bottom too and got two meals off it. Bonito is a solid meat and very dark red meat. Cooked it tastes nothing like fish but very close to pork in taste. Excellent eating. The sardine at the top of the picture was almost a half-pound. One like it was used to troll with and got hit by a shark which shortened that line considerably. That other critter is a relative of the lobster clan and the guide kept that and the other three Bonito.
Interesting fishing to say the least. The guide used zero electronics, fishing entirely by sight and landmarks and birds and we were steady with fish. We also had dolphins playing around up and we had nine whales right handy too. As mentioned, the boat was a 28 footer with about a nine foot beam. A pair of 90 horse Mercs pushed us along at a good clip. The boat was stable in the 11' rolling seas we had that morning. In all it was an incredible fishing journey.
The 8 days went entirely too fast but we had a super good time. Driving for just under four hours would get us to the South Dakota border, but Sun Country's direct flight got us to Puerto Vallarta instead....a really good trade-off. Still...its good to be back home.
