It’s difficult to start talking about a place like this without the beginning ,“a clear blue sky”, although that is almost unnoticeable in comparison to the surrounding environment. The gentle swells in the morning are mixed with colors like scales of some giant gently breathing fish. A spear fisher who spent the whole day diving and only caught parrot fish insisted, “Any day is a good day, as long as it’s here.”
Personally, perfecting my Spanish with our pangaro was an excellent pastime and I was introduced to a whole selection of words describing ocean life that I still have no claim to in English (this includes four different names for different tropical fish, puffer fish, and the process by which turtles lay eggs).
When you’re out on the boat, emerald flashes surfing on the inside of swells catch your eye, scouring bait and flies alike with an occasionally ominous black striped fellow, darting between his flawless, inevitably smaller brethren. The giant is scarred and ready to pounce. These are the ones you play games with. While smaller dorado snatch flies before the mob of their kin can, the older, wiser dorado wait on the perimeter. This goes without saying that the small dorado are 3-4 kilo. Once the fly is hooked, they must have a wide-eyed mental implosion of shock, only demonstrated by them jettisoning out along the surface of the ocean into the horizon. They fly just below the surface of the water, flinging their selves into the air as if to let you mark how far they have run and to challenge you with their size.
It surely is a strange place when days are marked by “Can we go catch something else besides Dorado?” or “I have caught enough gallo (rooster) for the day.”
While I have been spoiled in finding the opalescent sheen of Dorado mundane from the daily launches off of Palapas Ventana’s beach, I have had my first opportunity to snag a rooster here, and I have to say that it snagged me.
Their jagged dorsal fin’s expression of anger began to be followed by a rendition of the Jaws’ theme song on our boat.
They grab your line and, no matter the size, they fight, spitting and kicking (their tail), until they are forced to lurch aboard your ship.
Unfortunately, there are a limited number of pictures as whenever we had a fish, someone else would be reeling one in, and the capitan would have one arm wrapped around a fish ready to be released while launching a civilization of sardines with the other hand. This kept the frenzy, not at bay, but at starboard.
There were days with wind, days with some fish, days with few fish, days with too many fish, days with big fish, days with small fish, but every day had the victory of a fish well-caught.
Note: We are heading out again this June see: One Week in Mexico fishout
