6/28/2011 - Fishing trip, part deux

Got up at a reasonable hour on Friday morning (6/24), hoisted anchor, and started motoring around the south side of Isla Carmen. Our plan for the day was to troll along the shoreline for dorado and slowly make our way up to Bahia Salinas on the northeast side to check out the abandoned salt mining operation. The buildings are all pretty much still there and a caretaker oversees them. But, if you ask permission, you can visit the site of what is essentially a ghost town.

It was another gorgeous day although the sun made the cockpit cushions pretty freakin' hot.

It took longer to get to where we were going than we thought it would, and, since we didn't really want to anchor at Bahia Salinas, we decided to leave the salt mines for tomorrow and just head to our anchorage at Punta Perico South. As of now, we hadn't really had any action on our trolling lines. I take that back. We did catch an overly ambitious trigger fish which we released. How this guy thought he could swallow that big Rapala Magnum lure is beyond me. Maybe he just figured he'd bite off whatever he thought he could handle and leave the rest. BTW: Lulu landed this guy.

We weren't too far outside of Punta Perico, matter of fact, we were just about there when the reel on the portside trolling rod began to sing. FISH ON! I was driving so I slowed the boat while Jay grabbed the rod, set the hook and started pumping. After a bit of work, he managed to boat a small female dorado, maybe 4-5 lbs. Scrappy little thing.

This picture really doesn't do her justice. She was bright green when first landed but her colors started to fade almost immediately. There is also nothing in this photo to give an idea of her size but she was probably close to 24" long. Jay re-baited the lure (he's quite particular about how the bait is cut and attached to the lure, which is probably why he catches so many fish) and put it back to work. I increased our speed and headed to Punta Perico.

No more fish hit so we dropped anchor in about 23' of water. The chain was going out so fast that I missed some of the length markers and some of the others, while visible, were not well-defined, so we ended up with probably 200' of chain out. Not likely to drag tonight. Just as well as there was a bit of a refraction swell rolling through the anchorage. Not uncomfortable, but it was still there.

We had had a little difficulty hauling the anchor in this morning as the battery for the windlass died before we were done. Jay manhandled the remaining chain and anchor. So, since we had so much chain out tonight, Jay decided to run the Honda generator to charge up the house batteries and the windlass battery. While we were sitting there, he took a couple of voltage readings and basically found that the windlass battery was completely trashed. 0 volts does not indicate a dead battery. 0 volts indicates a broken battery. So, he made sure to charge up the house battery bank so we could use it for raising the chain tomorrow.

Lulu cooked up some dorado filets au natural (salt and pepper only) and Jay and I ate them along with some more of the coleslaw and macaroni salad. Lulu didn't eat and this was the first indication we'd had that she was not feeling well. Turns out she was about halfway semi-nauseous all day and had a killer headache to boot. How she manages to carry on under those conditions is beyond me. I'd have been bed-ridden for sure. Our original amended plan was that Lulu ad I would go ashore and check out the salt mines on Saturday before heading back to Puerto Escondido. Jay decided not to go ashore as he wanted to take Judy there when she returns and felt it'd be more special if they were both seeing it for the first time. Anyway, Lulu was feeling so crappy that we decided to skip the salt mines and just head home tomorrow. Of course, since we'd be traveling back at trolling speed anyway, there would be no reason not to drag a baited lure or two along the way.