Displaying my share of the catch

YELLOWFIN

One memorable fishing trip, which I almost forgot to mention, happened in the distant past, on the Gulf of California, off Guaymas Mexico.

My ol’ Air Force buddy Don Treder, myself, and our families were Christmas vacationing near Guaymas when we heard of the fantastic yellowfin tuna fishing just off shore.

We decided to give it a try, so one morning Don, myself and Don’s father in law set out before dawn in a borrowed beat up 12 foot aluminum boat, to try our luck. Now all we had was steelhead gear. Light spinning rods with about twelve pound line, going up against those ten pound and up, and I mean way up, monsters. We also had neglected to get any bait, but remedied that by purchasing some fresh mackerel from a passing Mexican.

So we trolled away, and shortly after sunup we hit a school. Fish everywhere, they were big ones, and they were biting on anything. We didn’t have a clue about what we were doing, and our gear was way too puny, so we were losing three fish for every one we boated. But we were having so much fun that who cared.

At one point, Don was hanging onto me to keep a big one from pulling me overboard, and I was laughing so hard that I was not paying attention and I snapped my rod in two.

But it didn’t matter, the other two guys were pulling in enough for all of us. After about an hour of this hectic rush though, we had to quit, because we had so many fish aboard that, and I kid you not, we were in imminent danger of swamping the boat.

Motoring up to the dock with gunnels awash, we caused quite a stir. And after weighing in, and at that tender age not knowing how good raw tuna could be, we only kept one to cook for ourselves, and distributed the rest to the natives. Making us heroes of the day, I might add.

Anyway, since then, I have fished for tuna all over the world, with every any kind of gear imaginable. But never again was it as much pure fun as that morning in the leaky boat, off Guaymas, Mexico.