The day we left Thompson Bay, headed back to the many-anchorages of Elizabeth Harbor, was perfect for a wind-off-our-stern quarter sail. When the depths reached over 20ft half-way back we unleashed the two Cuban yoyo fishing lines and went about the business of sailing and enjoying the ride. Every now and then someone would check the lines and I being the more obsessive one on board would check when the others hadn’t in the last 5 minutes. Just because we’d rigged our “fish-on” notification system didn’t mean it would work or we’d hear it.

So I walk out and check the port line which is still in “no-fish” mode and see just a bit of flash all the way out. A tug on the line tells me we may have something here so I call a warning as I bring the line in a bit closer. A shout of “fish-on” brings Benj running and we man our battle stations; more confident in our jobs and the sequence of events. For the next hour that sequence of events would repeat itself several times, along with a few early terminations.

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Soon after the first one, we got a solidly load notice that another was on. This one was about 3ft and dove under several times before Benj could reel him in; he was  thrilled- that would be Benj not the fish. Before we could get that one in the bucket, the starboard line zinged, the yoyo was pulled into the water… barely tied on to the cleat. It didn’t remain tied when the tension came off the line and I was inches away from grabbing it as the whole thing waved bye-bye and sank (we hope) into Dave Jones’s locker.

The fish were biting that day and before you could say “Captain Jack Sparrow” we’d landed a third barracuda just a few inches shorter than the big one. We’re running out of room by now so when another hit ends up getting away and still another we let off the hook, I’m definitely ok with that.

Giddy from our huge success and feeling that we’d done our best to make our son’s visit Facebook worthy, we didn’t even mind that we’d only caught ‘cuda; only one of which we were certain was safe to eat. Which we did that night and it was delicious grilled.