Dolphins in Palau

Wow, it;s been over a month since my last post. Was off island for awhile and they busy with work. Also didn't have any photos that I wanted to post. But, on Saturday went fishing and on the way back a pod of dolphins showed up and put on a show. There must have been at least 50 of them. I almost didn't bring my camera that day but am glad I did. This is one of my favorites. You can see Koror way in the distance and we were about 15 miles offshore. We were also lucky enough to find a floating buoy and ended up catching a bunch of tuna/mahimahi/wahoo that day.

Sailfish in Palau

I finally got my boat back and on Saturday decided to take the kids to Ulong to go swimming. Loaded up the boat with all the kids and a whole bunch of stuff for a day at Ulong beach. Also threw on my trolling pole and a smaller spinning rod that I use sometimes to catch small tuna in the lagoon. After going out of Malakal channel and heading towards Ulong, I put out the trolling rod with a lure hoping to maybe catch a barracuda or somethin

g. After 45 minutes we were right off of Ulong so we stopped the boat and I reeled in the big pole so we could make the run the rest of the way to the beach. My Son who has great eyes spotted some birds and after talking to the kids we decided to see if we could catch a small tuna. I gave the controls of the boat to my son who loves to drive and we headed towards the birds, which were a couple of hundred yards off of Ulong. As we approached, I threw out a small squid lure on the spinning pole. The reel has 25lb test which makes it light enough to have fun with the smaller tuna. I held the pole in one hand and jigged the line back and forth as my son went by the birds, hoping to catch something. All of a sudden the pole almost got taken out of my hands and the kids started to scream. Looking up I saw a sailfish jumping out of the water as line screamed from the reel. My only thought was that this was going to be a short fight before the line broke. Instinctively I told my son to turn the boat towards the escaping fish as I brought the pole around to the front of the boat. The chase was on as we drove towards the sailfish and I frantically reeled line as by this time the spool was 90% empty. We managed to get some line back on the reel before the fish took off jumping again. Line peeled from the reel so quickly I could feel the reel getting hot. Again we chased the fish and I told the kids there was no way we could catch this fish. Not only did I have 25lb test line, my leader was only 30lbs and too top it off, I only brought a small hand gaff. Well after more than 1 1/2 hours I found I could get the fish close to the boat before it would take off. I told my oldest daughter to stick the camera in the water and try and get a photo of it. Ended up getting a few photos. After another 15 minutes we had the fish by the boat again. I told my daughter to lay the small hand gaff next to me and get ready to grab the pole and hang on. The swivel came up and I handed her the pole and grabbed the leader. I figured it was time to lose the fish as surely I would be unable to leader this fish with only 30lb test leader. I gently pulled and the fish came up for a split second. I grabbed the gaff in one hand and made a desperate attempt to gaff it. I knew I had to am close to the head to have any chance. The gaff hit it's mark and I grabbed the nose with my other hand and hung on. Turning the head towards the boat, the fish made an attempt to get away and actually helped me get it in the boat. Now I had a sailfish in my lap with half of it in the boat and half out. I carry a pipe on the boat and told my daughter to grab the pipe and hit the thing on the head. She hit it a couple of times and with the last of my strength I heaved the fish into the boat and stuck the head under the front bench seat. Grabbing the pipe I hit it some more but it was over, the fish was ours. Against all odds we landed this fish with 6 kids on the boat (my kids and my son's friend) and my young son driving the boat. He was great and would go left/right when I said and would chase the sailfish at the right speed. He would put it in neutral just when it was time and it was a team effort with against the odds. After that we had to turn back because there was no way we could keep the fish all day without it going bad. The kids were great and also insisted we head back to make sure the fish didn't spoil. I ended up pulling into Sam's where I negotiated for them to clean it for me. They gave me half and I kept half. I also got the tail as a trophy. After dropping off the fish we actually headed into Nikko Bay and found a new spot to swim, but that is a story for another day.

Big MahiMahi

Went trolling and for almost two hours nothing. No strikes, just the sound of my boat engine sucking up the gas (which is $3.55/gallon here). Just when I was ready to reel in the lines, hooked this big mahi. Not my biggest, but certainly made me happy. Was using a new lure I had just bought. This was caught all the way down by Peliliu. Got rough after that so we headed back to Koror, which was about a 2 hour ride in the rough water. Still, was worth it in the end.

Fish

One of my best friends from a long time ago got in contact with me after finding this blog. Really great to be in contact with the folks from Hawaii. I have been away from home for so long I have lost contact with all of the old gang. Between work, family and traveling life has been hectic and sometimes you lose sight of what is important. Good friends are hard to come by. Hopefully I can make contact with some other friends from before. I have decided to join facebook later on as some of them are there. Guess I'm behind the times. Problem is the internet is so slow here it is like stepping back in time. 56K would be blazing fast here. In fact, I bought my daughter a computer for Christmas only to discover no modem for the dial up connection. Guess most people don't use dial up anymore, but no choice here unless you want to pay a couple hundred dollars a month for a little bit faster speed. Photo above is just a mixed bag of fish I caught recently. Made up a bunch of Poke. The rainbow runners aren't my favorite fish so gave those away.