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.

Shore fishing in American Samoa

Had a guy from work visiting which was really great. Got to do some fishing, although we ended up unable to get a boat. Ended up trying a new place that you park on the top of this hill and walk down a trail for about 15-20 minutes. The trail is steep and I realized how much out of shape I am in. The first thing we caught weighed over 200lbs. Unfortunately, it was not a fish, but me (got a hook stuck deep). Luckily the guy had pliers and with the anticipation of the pain soon to be, he yank the hook out of my finger. After that, he hooked a huge Ulua, which got away quickly. I then caught the fish you see in this photo, which I was quite happy with (we are cutting it up right after I finish this post). After that, he hooked and landed an ulua weighing about 30-35 lbs. This was on spinning tackle and was quite a fight. The place has a lot of big ulua for sure, and I will be going back again (besides, it is good exercise - I keep telling myself as I climbed back up). Need to get a better gaff though to help land some of the big fish that are lurking around.

The other photo above is of my dog tramp (on the right) and the puppy from next door that thinks is our dog and always visits. Unfortunately, the photo is a little out of focus, but I thought it was cute so I wanted to post. Can you tell which one jumped up a few seconds later to try and score a meal (hint - it is the dog with the tongue hanging out).