Fishing on the Amante
This is my friend John's Amante, a catamaran sport fishing boat brought from Miami to serve at his every whim and pleasure. John introduced me to deep-sea fishing on this boat and it more than lived up to the expectations I had been developing for the last ten years (thanks John!!).
Below is where we gas up and buy bait - at El Capitan. The small boat with the light blue interior is called a "tiburonero" and it happens to be the first boat I fished on in Guatemala - there were rough seas that day so we fished the shore line for Spanish Mackerel and Barracuda which were plentiful and good eating. After fishing on the Amante, going out on the tiburonero feels like roughing it.
Our hunting party wasn't exactly a well trained or dedicated team. Two of our members were focused on the beer and one got tired of hunting fish and started shooting birds in a moment of confusion. Another reached over and tightened the drag on a reel when our first sailfish (sail) grabbed the bait and began stripping line out furiously. The line snapped and our first one got away. The good news is that the sea is full of these creatures. The world record for the most Sails in one day is held by a boat that leaves from the same port - 71 Sailfish in one day!
Here's John fighting another one that got away prematurely. One of the really strange things about deep-sea fishing is that the fish are actually attracted to the boat - they like the bubbles since they simulate a school of baitfish. So when Sailfish are biting - they're visible just behind the boat taking stabs at the bait (maybe 40 feet behind?). They aren't at all concerned by outboard motors or the noise of 5 grown men shouting and acting like six year olds.
My camera battery died at the precise moment when we landed our first sailfish, but it's a good thing, because otherwise you'd have to look at pictures of John eating the bloody heart of the fish which was about as big as a golf ball. This is supposedly a tradition in the South Pacific which brings good luck to the boat. So here are some pictures from a second trip with John. Above you see my beautiful wife Carolina catching her first fish - a Dorado!
These Pacific Sails are big and jump when hooked!! They all seem to be the same size, somewhere between 80 and 100 pounds. According to John his weighed 150 or more and since it's his boat, I'm pretty sure he's right. Sails also frequently jump just for fun, though generally not as close to the boat. They sometimes appear to walk or dance on the water as they careen for 10 yards over the surface (though they don't travel like this when hooked). Here's yours truly (below) with a gorgeous Sail that went back in the water to fight another day (and was very carefully revived by our captain Ismael before release). In case you couldn't tell, that's a big smile on my face - this was the first Sail that I had hooked myself (usually the captain sets the hook and hands you the rod). Setting the hook is easy, you just let the line out for six seconds, lock the reel and heave!
That's all! |
Deep-sea fishing bears almost no
resemblance to fresh-water. I've never been hunting before, but I felt like we were
out hunting anyway; instead of guns we had 2 ninety horsepower outboards, a radio
to find out how other boats were faring, a depth finder, GPS, heavy duty rods and reels,
and a captain who supposedly knew where the fish were. 
