Look Who’s Coming for Dinner

So Tuesday morning May 2nd we slipped our lines and headed 75 miles north to the back side Great Harbor Cay in the Berrys. You may recall we stayed at Great Harbor Marina on the east side on the trip down to the Exumas.  The conditions were “doable” starting out with 2’ seas on our port bow. Fortunately conditions improved as the day went on. About four hours into the trip we heard line being ripped from the fishing pole making that wonderful zzzzzzzzzzzzzz noise.

So we pulled back on the throttles and went into neutral. On first pull of the pole I saw a nice sized fish break the water. Could it be a Mahi or was it another Baracuda? Could not tell. It gave quite a fight pealing of more line as I tried to ease it to the back of the boat. Then I caught a glimpse of blue and yellow. It was a nice bull Mahi. He danced on the surface like a spastic ballerina. My heart was pounding. I finally got him to the boat and had my small lobster net ready. When I got a good look at him there was no way he would fit even partially into the net. So I crossed my fingers, grabbed the leader and scurried up the stairs. Just as I got him on deck he got off the hook. A scene out of WWF man vs fish broke out. I pinned him down and grabbed his jaw. Captured! Now mind you he was none too happy with my thumb in his mouth and showed his displeasure by clenching down. It’s amazing how hard those guys can bite. My adrenaline was so high I did not feel a thing. Mr Mahi had arrived for dinner. We got back underway and continued to our anchorage just north of Haines Bluff. On the way I prepared Mr Mahi for dinner. About 4 pm we set the hook and got settled.

We had an incredible dinner of grilled fresh Mahi, Bahamian peas and rice and broccoli with a beautiful backdrop of a white sand beach. 

The winds were forecast to pick up to 20 kts out of the west over night which they did. We thought we were in a good spot as the land was to our west putting us in the lee. About 2 am it felt as someone was trying to shake us out of bed as the wind clocked a little more to the north exposing us to a bit of a swell. Life on the high seas! We stayed Wednesday as the winds were pretty stiff and with a 75 mile run to Grand Bahama Island we did not like the thought of getting beat up for 9 hours. So we biked around and did some beach combing. On Thursday morning I checked the weather and it looked good. Well an hour into it it was obvious it would not be calm. It was one of those doable days but we had to deal with quartering seas on the bow ranging at 2-3’. The fish did not even like it as we did not get a single strike the whole way. We arrived to Ocean Reef Resort about 4pm and headed straight for the pool. We were bushed from all the movement as an early night.