A Very Fishy Story!
Alan's Log:
Joan's Log:
June 2008
We set off from Crotone on the foot of Italy for the Greek Islands. Crotone is an industrial city surrounded by offshore drilling platforms. We had only stopped there to refuel because our tanks were nearly dry and we didn't have enough fuel to make Greece. The fuel dock at Crotone was still open when we arrived in the harbour in the late afternoon and we were able to fill up our tanks right away. As we filled Moonstruck's three tanks the pump attendant told us that he was getting a week's unexpected holiday starting the next morning because of a fuel strike. I learned that all service stations and fuel docks would be closed for 7 days from the following morning.I reflected on the strange nature of luck as we approached Paxos on the Ionian coast of Greece the next morning. The pump attendant was getting an extra week's holiday, but if we had arrived an hour later at Crotone we would have been stuck there for a week with no fuel to take us onward to Greece, the destination for our summer holiday. We would have been stuck in a grimy harbour in an industrial city for a week when a day's sail away was a world of white, cliff-ringed islands where small bays with crystal clear blue water awaited us.
We rounded the headland of Paxos, a small island just south of Corfu, and pulled into the first bay we came to, where we planned to anchor out for a few days and get Island-acclimatized before checking in with Greek Customs/Immigration in nearby Gaios.
Anchoring is pretty much routine for us these days. Joan dropped the anchor and I was backing down on it while she waited at the bows checking the set, when she remarked
"Did you leave the fishing line out?"
"Oh shit!" I replied.
We have had our best luck fishing at dawn and dusk on the shelves that surround coastal waters (as opposed to the deep ocean). I had let the fishing line out hours earlier at dawn hoping to interest a tuna as we approached the Greek coast. I had completely forgotten about it by the time we came into the shallow bay and anchored.
This was a potential problem! In all probability the line had become wrapped around our propellor when I stopped Moonstruck and reversed her to set the anchor. It looked like I would have a lengthy underwater task ahead of me cutting it free from the propellor shaft. Oh well, the water was warm and crystal clear and the bottom sandy, so it was a beautiful place for a little maintenance I thought, as I started reeling the slack line in.
Surprisingly the line was clear of the boat and not wrapped around the propellor. As I started to reel it in I could see that it led straight out of the bay. All the line was off the reel, not just the 200' or so that I had let out earlier, the whole spool was gone. Most likely we had hooked a plastic bag that had stripped all the line from the reel. It must have happened while neither of us were on deck or we would have heard the reel's ratchet as the line stripped out. I kept reeling in and once the slack was out of the line I could feel a dead weight on the line - certainly we've caught another plastic bag I thought. I continued to reel it in. Getting all the line back in would take some time and I looked around at other cruisers on the boats anchored around me. It was a typical cruiser crowd; half were swimming, half sleeping, half were naked. No doubt half were also enjoying this joke at my expense.
A small dinghy appeared and brought my attention back to the job at hand. Three young boys in the dinghy were about to motor across the line. I whistled and waved them off but they just looked blankly up at me as their outboard caught on the line and brought their tiny dinghy to a halt in the water in front of me. I motioned them to shut off the engine and lift their outboard engine up and I looked for my knife to cut the line at the rod end and set them free. Before I could cut the line, one of the boys saw that the line was caught on the outboard's skeg and shook it off - it wasn't wrapped on the propellor after all. The line sank back in the water and they puttered off while I continued to reel in. Finally I had almost all the line back on the spool when Joan, looking over the side, said;
"Alan, there's a big fish down there!"
I said "It's probably just a ray following the lure to the boat". But Joan replied
"No, I can see it, its a tuna - a big one!"
I looked where she was pointing and sure enough, almost directly beneath me was the large dark outline of a tuna and in his mouth my hook! I nearly dropped the rod in surprise. A fish this big should have put up a big fight and wouldn't have just let me reel him all the way into the bay and up to the boat! But there he was large as life, placidly swimming right by the boat. Joan went to fetch the gaff hook, a net and our secret weapon; A spray bottle full of vodka. Bringing a big fish on board can be messy and the vodka calms things down a little.
I was surprised to be able to gaff the fish with almost no struggle. I saw that he was exhausted and I realized that he must have been hooked some time ago and dragged behind the boat, tiring him. He was probably hooked a couple of hours earlier when entered the shallower waters of the Greek coastline. I hefted him on deck and Joan gave him a squirt of vodka in the gills to quiet him down. It paralyzed and killed him and a few minutes later all we had to do was clean up the mess.
I took a better look at the fish. It was a bluefin tuna and tail to head it reached from the deck to my waist which made it just over a yard long. I guessed that it weighed at least 25lb and is the biggest tuna we have landed.
Cleaned and filleted we had meat for a month!
I could not believe my luck and the curious chain of events! Surely the fish could have got off the hook when we stopped the boat to anchor and backed up. I use barbless hooks and with no line pressure on the hook it should have just slipped out of the tuna's mouth. But against the odds it held and the line didn't get wrapped in our propellor - or the dinghy's!
Finally it was pretty clear to me that this fish, an hour earlier, would have put up a very tough fight and most likely would have gotten away before we had a chance to land him.
That evening we made a quick easy dinner of fresh grilled tuna and emailed our friends on Windswept who would be joining us the next night.
"How about fresh tuna for dinner tomorrow at our place!"
NEXT....Cruising the Greek Ionian Islands.