Captain's Log: July 20, 2007
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| Today was the first day of the two day “Second Annual Dorado Fishing Tournament” in San Juan Del Sur. It was a small miracle that we even left the bay this morning. Yesterday the boat decided she was going to start having electrical problems, and basically started freaking out. We limped down to San Juan yesterday and I tried troubleshooting the system to figure out what the heck was going on. Every time you put the boat in neutral it would try to start up when it was already started. Turns out the ignition switch shorted out when it got wet while we were pre-fishing. I was able to locate a switch, but it could only be delivered by 11am the next day, no good. I called a taxi buddy in Managua and begged him to pick up the part and drive it out for us (this is especially not easy when it is the big Sandinista Independence holiday, and everyone is quite “spirited”). Well, at midnight last night, my buddy showed up with the switch, and miraculously it was the right one. We got absolutely no sleep, because the hotel we were staying at had a disco in it, and there was a disco next door as well (did I mention the power went out so we had no AC and had to open the doors so the Mozzies could eat us all night; they had generators for the discos though!). Basically we got up at 3:45am and all of San Juan was still partying. We got to the boat at 5am and had the switch installed by 5:30am and were able to leave at the 6am start of the tourney. We ran 25 miles to our “secret” spot and were greeted with bait pods as far as the eye could see. Our goal for today was to crush enough Jacks to put us in the lead for overall weight, to catch enough Macks to find a stud to win that category, and to hopefully catch a wahoo to take that category as well. We ended up destroying the Jack population by catching 499lbs of Jacks. We also caught a bunch of Macks in the 8 and 9 lb range, a bunch of bonitas, a few nice Dorado, and a stud houndfish! When we returned to the dock we kicked back some cold tonas and then drove through town giving away Jacks to everyone! At the end of the day we are sitting in first for weight (520lbs, with second only having 76lbs), second for Mack with a 9.5lb, first for Jacks with a 17lb, and second for the “other category” with a 10lb houndfish! Nobody weighed in a Wahoo or a Roosterfish. There were two sailfish released by the top boat, and the biggest Dorado was 37lb. We went to the Captains party and had some great food and cold Flor De Cana, and then headed to a new hotel to rest our arms and backs that were all “Jacked” up! Hopefully we can crush it tomorrow as well! |
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