Dominik - The Fishing Trip

The Fishing Trip

It was Friday morning at 6 when my alarm went off. Today, we all decided to get up earlier than usual to go on a fishing trip with Michael, one of the guides of the Mango Creek Lodge. After a quick cereal breakfast we were ready to go. The boat was full because almost everyone decided to go on thetrip. We launched and after what felt like having gone around the entire island of Roatàn, we finallyslowed down in the shallow water near the island and started going after little bait fish with a net that Michael and Alex operated. After they had a net full oflittle fish they would just dump it in the boat,where there now were about 50 little wriggly fish, desperately fighting for their lives.

Some of us, mostly Jackie and I started picking these little fish up and tossed them in the water bucket attached to the outside of the boat,where we would keep them so they wouldn't die until we needed them as bait. After repeating this whole process about four or five times,we were ready to go out in the deeper sea. McDowell and Alex were up first. They went to the back of the boat with the fishing rods, hooked the little bait fish on the hook, and now all they had to do was wait. And it didn't take long until Alex caught the first needle-fish of the day, a two and a half foot doozie. Soon, everyone had caught a fish. I caught a barracuda and a tuna, and altogether we caught multiple needle-fish, barracudas and a few tunas.

When McD was up again, he had a bite not even a minute after he had thrown out his rod. When he started reeling in he could feel that something was up. “We have a big one”, Michael said, but when McD had pulled in almost all of the line, we saw that there was only half a fish hanging on the hook. It was the head of a tuna. Something, possibly a shark or some other large predator fish had started eating it while McD was reeling it in. Michael acted immediately by taking what was left of the tuna, attaching it on a thicker wire, and throwing it right back in for a chance to catch the big one. After feeling a little pull, Michael started reeling the line back in. This time, there was barely anything leftof the tuna. Our predator had eaten everything except for the part around the hook, as if he wanted to tell us: “I'm not stupid,but thanks for the breakfast, guys”. We tried again multiple times to catch the fish that ate McD's tuna, but he was now long gone. Michaeleven offered himself as bait by jumping in the water for a second, but climbed right back up the ladder. Unsuccessful. Yet, we still had a blast on the fishing trip. It was a great way to spend the first half of our last day on Roatàn.