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Rick Catches a Fish
Every Sunday afternoon, we play music at the Last Resort in
Copper Bank, which is owned by Donna Noland and Enrique Flores.
Enrique is the only non-fisherman in the Flores family; some of his
brothers go off to fish in a sailboat for a week at a time, and a couple go to
Turneffe Atoll where they have a fishing camp.
Because I have become “part of the family”, I am invited to go along
when they go out to Turneffe. The
trip will take eight days. Earlier,
my excuse was that I was working. Now
I have no excuse. In fact, I may be
going back to teaching school, and I desperately need a vacation.
I pack up and go.
Thursday morning, I pick Manuel (Manny) Flores up at the
Ferry, and we go down to the bus depot and ride down to Belize City, where his
brother David has been getting the boat ready for the trip.
By the time we get there, he is ready to go, except for us to pick up
nine 100-lb bags of chipped ice. I
buy a little rum (3 bottles) and they stow some beer away, and we putt out of
the harbor.
Putt, putt, putt. (Sounds
like a game of golf.) Actually, the
motor, a Yamaha Enduro 75, is only hitting on one cylinder.
They call it “the machine.” Previous
to leaving, they worked on it for a little while at the dock, replacing all
three plugs and R&R the fuel pump (which drained the fuel line) and ran the
motor up and down the dirty Belize River a little to check it out. It ran well then. Now,
barely off shore, we check the fuel filter, open it, drain out the water.
That helps a little. We have
about an hour’s trip to Turneffe, and half of it is Beyond the Reef,
where the waves can get 10 feet high. The
machine runs pretty well until we are halfway between the reef and the island,
and it begins to putt, putt again. Actually
it sounds just like the Makong River boat in Apocalypse Now, and I have
the same ominous feeling that Martin Sheen had as he putted up the river to meet
Col. Kurtz. Fortunately, the water
is as calm as the Erie Canal.
Eventually, we give up using the little red Yamaha fuel tank
we have, and start sucking gas out of a big green carboy, and the machine winds
up, our 26-foot Mexican Skiff starts to plane, and we race out to Turneffe in a
few minutes. We drop off four bags
of ice for fellow-fisherman Nelson, and check into the Flores Camp.
The camp is on the lagoon inside the ring of islands in the
atoll. The shack is 12 by 16, with
two sets of bunks built into the far wall. To the right of the door is the
kitchen, a long counter with a lower spot at the end where there are two Primus
kerosene stoves. No windows, but there is a door in the other corner which gives
good ventilation when it’s open. When
they are cooking, the ventilation can blow out the primus so the door is closed
and it gets hot. However, there is
a prevailing offshore breeze of about 20 knots which usually comes through the
front door. My bunk is on the
bottom (as befits my age) right in front of the door.
This gives me a cool spot when the breeze is blowing.
Unfortunately, August is the season of the Mauger – hot and buggy, with
long hours without any breeze whatsoever.
Jose, the watchman, stays here full time.
He is about 55, speaks Spanish, but is studying English.
Unfortunately, he generally doesn’t have anyone to practice on!
This afternoon, he has been looking for us and cooking beans for our
arrival. After they drain the
rainwater out of the Red Yamaha gas tank (the source of all our motor troubles)
Manny and David go out and catch a few lobsters, and we have fried lobster,
beans, and potatoes for dinner. Sundown
is at 7 PM and there’s not much to do. After thirty minutes of Mexican music
on the windup radio, I slather on insect repellent and try to sleep. Charlotte
has thoughtfully included a big sheet; I wrap up and Z out.
Like most old guys, I get up a couple of times during the night to answer
nature’s call, and this requires a trip outside where the mozzies lie in wait.
Tomorrow we will build a smudge in front of the door, but the first night
is a long one.
Beans and fish, and store-bought bread make a great
breakfast, and then the brothers go out to check their lobster traps. The
traps are hand made, with Santa Maria wood ends and palmetto slats.
They are about 2’ x 1’ by 42” long, shaped a little like the sketch
below.
They have 92 traps out, and Jose is building more even as we
fish. The traps are laid out in rows in the lagoon in front of our camp.
We find a trap, haul it up and check it out. It may be upside down, turned over by dolphins (! playing??)
Rightside up, it may be full of lobsters, but we only keep about one
lobster in six, throwing the rest out (too small) except for one or two which we
leave inside for bait. We clean off the traps and put them back carefully so that
they settle down right-side-up. I
am saying “we” but actually, Manny and David do the work, and I watch
appreciatively.
We collect a bushel or so of lobsters in the morning, and
head in for a lunch of lobster, beans and rice. Rick takes a nap, and the brothers go check enuf traps to
collect another bushel of lobsters. The lobster is officially called a
“crayfish” in government legalese, but it is a shur-nuff Spiny Rock Lobster.
It is the same lobster they sell as “Australian Rock Lobster tails”
in the states, and it tastes WONDERFUL. The
ones we harvest have about a 5-oz tail, and they are worth about 3 dollah apiece
to the brothers and about $10 in the states.
Dinner is guacamole (made by me) rice, tortillas, shredded
lobster, made into “lobster fajitas.” The
night features dozens of mosquito bites and an ear ache.
(I wonder what diving will do to that.)
Saturday morning, we go and look for bonefish.
We find them, and Rick spends about an hour just recognizing what they
look like. A school of them sortof
makes the surface shimmer as they school and feed.
When it’s shallow enuf, their tails come out of the water.
We get in the 18” deep water and wade, and I find out just how useless
leather sandals are for wading. Now
that I can (sorta) see the bonefish, I cast to them, but I have buck fever, and
I can only cast about 40 ft. when I need 60.
But, I know what bonefish look like, and I will practice and be back for
them later in the year.
It’s time to fish for barracuda, which they call
“barrow.” David
runs over to a shallow and jumps in the water with an arbolete (rubber-powered
spear) and starts bringing up little 6-7” fish to use for bait. After he gets ten or twelve, we go out to hunt for some
big barrow. They bait me up, and I
put a line out and we start trolling. WHAM!.
I’m using 6-lb line and he broke it.
They expected this, but I inspect the break and it’s obvious that I had
the line wrapped around the tip so the brake and the rod didn’t have a chance
to take the shock.
We rig up again, but they take me in to some waters where the
barrows are smaller. Almost
immediately I catch about a foot-long pounder.
He fights like a tiger, with a couple of nice jumps, and I bring him in.
At least I won’t get skunked.
Within 10 minutes, I’ve caught a couple of three pounders,
with the same spectacular jumping fight.
I’m starting to feel like a fisherman again.
We move to an area where they know the barrows are a little
bigger. A vicious strike tells me I
either have either hooked an automobile tire or a big ‘cuda. The monster jumps
about three feet out of the water, and I know I’ve hooked a lunker.
After a 20-minute fight, with several five-foot leaps across the water, I
bring this barrow up close enuf to the boat that Manny can gaff it.
We look at this wonderful fish. He
is 38” long, and weighs about 8 ½ pounds.
On 6 pound test line! I feel
very lucky. He had swallowed the
hook, and the “spider wire” I was using for a leader is about to break.
Amazing! NOW I feel like El
Pescadero.
Back at camp, over a lunch of barracuda, rice and beans, we
discuss a strategy for the barrow. I
need bigger longer hooks in order to hang the bait so that the barb is in the
middle of the bait, and there must be a steel leader. I need a little stronger line.
I brought 100 yards of 10-pound, so I put that on.
We experiment with building a longer hook with some .09 mm wire leader
that they have. (I should have
brought old guitar strings, but I forgot.)
After a nap, I make some hook/wire-leader rigs, and then practice for an
hour with my fly rod, until I can easily make 60 feet with every cast.
I skip dinner – I came out here because I wanted to lose a little
weight.
The next day (Sunday) after a beautiful sunrise and a morning
hymn by Rick (“This is the day that the Lord has made!) the brothers dive for
lobster. Over my protestations,
they build a ladder so that el viejo can get back in the boat.
We load the ladder in the boat and set out.
David stands in the back, with fins on, running the machine.
Manny stands in the front and looks and gestures to They have purchased
twenty-two old truck bonnets (hoods) in Orange Walk, and brought them out here,
and sunk them in the laguna in orderly rows.
This provides cover for the lobsters; they call it “shade”.
The water is 8 to 10 feet deep and clear as a bell. I go overboard, and watch from the surface with my 40-
year-old snorkel, yellow Aqua-lung mask and blue Cressi fins. These guys have a mask and fins just about like mine, only
brand new and made in China. They
are poetry in motion, very economical divers, no puffing and blowing. Skinny
David, 41, weighs about 135, and dives easily to the bottom. Manny, 32, has a little layer of “baby fat” and he has to
do a pike dive to get down. They take two 2-ft long forked stobs, and prop up
one end of the hood. One of them
looks underneath, and grabs a lobster or two.
The lobsters start swimming for safety.
Manny hooks them with a stick with a big hook lashed on the end.
David uses a four-foot stick with a loop on it made out of weed-wacker
line. He lassos a lobsters without
hurting it, so that he can throw it back if it’s too small.
“They look bigger under water” he explains.
After a valiant, but futile effort to breast over the side of
the skiff, Rick goes up the ladder with a lot of help from the brothers.
As usual, I’m surprised at how salty the water is, and I’m content
now to run around in the boat, helping them remove lobsters from hook or lassoo,
and throwing them in a bushel basket. I
wear a heavy work glove – they don’t call them “spiny” for nothing.
Some of them cluck in the basket, no doubt scolding each other for
getting caught.
“Ah, the short, happy life of a Belizean Lobster”, I
think. “No taxes, no job, clear
fields and clean water.” We get a
couple of bushels of lobsters in the morning and go in for lunch – barracuda,
lobster, tortillas, and beans. They
kill the lobsters, clean up the tails (separated from the body and veined but
not shelled) store them in a
solution of “sodium” and pack them in ice.
Rick takes a nap while they go back out to get another couple of bushels.
After the nap, I get up and notice that my earache is gone.
“Salt water does that, sometimes” they say. We go out for more barrow fishing, this time to the reef,
looking for big ones. The
fishing is fine, and I’m hooking fish and playing them, only to lose them when
they charge the boat, or when they leap out of the water, shaking their head
violently to shuck the hook. I
catch one 30-incher, but I’m convinced that hooks less than 2” long are just
not long enuf for these big fish, even if I do catch them on a 10-lb line.
Monday, they service the rest of their traps, and move a lot
of traps out into the laguna. We
go out and catch some bait (this
time with my spinning rod and a number 8 hook baited with lobster.)
I catch about 20 little Grunts from six to eight inches long.
We will eat the ones I don’t use for bait.
We go out fishing for barrow, but the hooks I have left are really too
short and I keep losing them. In
retrospect, the lobster harvest seems more like farming than fish, although you
never know what you will get when you inspect a trap or shade.
They always leave the little ones, trusting in nature to deliver them up
in good time.
Tuesday, we get up early and leave, because I have a meeting
at school on Wednesday, and the brothers have done everything they had to do.
We have two big coolers packed with ice, lobsters and barracuda.
I will return, armed with more hooks, waders, and a vastly improved fly
rod technique, but not during the Mauger.
Sr. Ric
Click here
for some pictures of David & Manny.
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