Big Bend Sportsman Guide Fishing Stories
"Stories from the
Caribbean"
From a Series of Short Stories
By: Capt. "Tato" Reyes
Five Sails in
no time…
I was working with patient’s as it
would be normal on a Monday morning in my dental practice. Busy
morning, a nice lunch and I was ready for a busy afternoon. Then the
phone rang in my private line. Very few people knew this number so I
rush to answer it with some kind of a premonition in my mind. It was
mid November and the sailfish season was at it’s best. You need to
recognize that our sailfish season last no longer than 21 days in a
good year. Yes, you can catch a sail every now and then but these three
weeks are the only time of the year you have them by the numbers in our
waters.
The call was from Don Jimmy, we
already know about him. He said, :Tato, you won’t believe what I am
seeing, there are a million birds right in front of “la pasa” (this
is a little channel between reefs and breakers we would use as access
to open water from our bay) and there are thousands of fish jumping
all over the place.
I was not sure but this time of
the year it meant there could be sails in the area. So I had to tell
my staff to take over since I had an emergency I had to take care of.
I got home within half hour and
Don Jimmy had loaded the boat as instructed and hitched it to my old
Blazer. Within 10 more minutes we were floating and heading out to the
birds.
They ended up being bonitos
tearing up bait fish. There must have been two acres of them and I
could not care less.
We went to the north side of the
bait pod and I put two ballyhoos in the water. I trolled for less than
5 minutes when a pack of sails rose behind the baits and I was baitless
in no time. I rigged again and made another pass on the same area and
they rose again with a different result. I had a double
hookup in 20# test lines and Don Jimmy refused to do anything but
drive the boat. I left one rod in the rod holder with aproximatly 5
pounds of drag and fought the other at no less than 9 pounds of drag.
He gave up soon, Don Jimy gaffed him and I started fighting the other
that was ¾ of the spool away by now.
Two on board and we made another pass, they would
have eaten our sandwiches if we weren’t keeping them in a cooler. Two
more hook ups, same maneuver, two more onboard. We went for a third
pass and again hooked two more.
Please understand that they were not being shy,
coming from behind the bait and hitting them delicately. These were
fish in a feeding frenzy and they were attacking my ballyhoos like
furious Bleu Marlins, jumping out and down to hit the baits.
I lost my second one of the last pair and then they
dispersed and I could not get more bites.
Five sailfish trolling almost frozen ballyhoos in no
time, quite a way to spend a Monday afternoon.
From
a series of fishing stories submitted by Capt Tato Reyes
copyright Capt Tato Reyes
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