My Back Yard: 12/30/15

Isla Mujeres and the Angry Seas

The seas were angry that day my friends-George Costanza

By all indications it was going to be a banner day. And, for all intents and purposes, it was... but sometimes you get more than you bargain for.

We were up at 6:00 A.M. and Brent had woken up even earlier and had a custom breakfast ready for us on the table including Mexican fry bread, eggs, and coffee. “Whoh! Thanks Brent.” He wasn’t even going fishing with us today. He had sacrificed his spot on the boat for the benefit of his guests. He had even found a good fishing boat for us and his wife Nancy had paid the required deposit.

As you may have guessed, the Mason’s are renowned for their generosity and hospitality. Lucky for us we were under their good graces at Casa de Mason.

Tamra chillin on the beach in front of Casa de Mason

We were staying at the Mason family house in Puerto Morelos Mexico and had been leisurely enjoying our Christmas vacation bouncing nonchalantly between the beach, Puerto Morelos itself, and their lovely beach house. On this day though we were ready for more. What might have been construed as a mild-case of ambition had us up early. We had plans.

The cab took us right to the ferry terminal, we bought our round-trip tickets and soon we were speeding across the choppy waters at close to forty knots on a very impressive ferry boat. We arrived shortly after 8 A.M.

“Roger?”

“Si, I’m Roger.” Roger was a short stocky Mexican man with leathery brown skin and weathered lines on his face. He immediately struck me as someone who had spent his whole life on the water. Good. We were to meet him at the dock and we were pleased to see that the Lilly M was indeed a legit fishing boat. It was about thirty five feet long with a covered cab and nice lines above and below water. There was everything on board needed for big game sport fishing and not much else. Two twenty foot outriggers were lashed tightly to the starboard and port rails and four heavy duty rods were neatly tucked into their holders in the center of the aft deck. Just then another man approached and took the conversation from Roger. Roger's English was barely discernible and he was more than happy to bow-out and go about his boat captain duties.

“Hi guys, I’m Jeff.” He was an American and judging from the ensuing exchange we quickly deduced that if he wasn’t the owner of the boat himself, he had to be some kind of manager. It was clear that there were other boats in his charge too, in fact he left with a different boat shortly after talking with us. “I’m going to level with you. It’s smoking rough out there today. It’s been blowing for days now and it’s not supposed to let up until Tuesday.” He went on to outline our options: “If you don’t want to go out in the rough stuff, I totally understand and you could cancel altogether or you could reschedule for another day. Also, if you want to, you could fish in-shore where it's more protected for smaller game fish namely barracuda. Whatever you guys want to do is fine with me.”

Smoking rough. I know a little about judging rough water and it can be somewhat subjective but smoking rough? I know that one person’s rough water is another’s walk-in-the-park but what was this smoking rough?

“What do you mean rough?” asked Mike. “Are we talking chop, swell, breakers?”

“.....Yeah all of that. It’s probably 4 to 6 foot seas...or more.”

“Four to six? That’s what he calls smoking rough?” I thought. We talked about it among the six of us and weighed our options. Among our crew was myself and Corey, Mike Parker and his son Ben, Brian Gornick and Naomi Decharmes. The only female on board Naomi had distinguished herself early-on by wearing an old trucker’s ball cap that read “Shut up and Fish” in bold letters so we knew what her vote would be.

I threw out another option. “We could bag the fishing, rent some carts and fart around the island.”

Isla Mujeres is a small island located about 8 miles off of the Yucatan coast. It is 4 miles long and just under a half of a mile wide. The streets are chock full of gift shops, restaurants, snorkel shops and the like. Interesting Mexican architecture and rich colors bring the island to life along with the crowded streets of people. Golf carts and mopeds are the chief modes of transportation here and although we agreed that it would be fun to scoot around the island, in the end, for better-or-worse we decided to tempt fate.

“Okay, we want to go out Jeff.” Roger and his deckhand Juan exchanged dubious expressions before ushering us aboard. No one knew what the expressions meant, but we all caught it, and no one asked.

“Okay let’s go.” Roger motioned us onto the Lilly M. The boat was fully outfitted in anticipation of our group and and soon enough we were making our way passed all the docks and the beautiful white sandy beaches around the corner and into the deeper, unprotected waters of the Caribbean.

My big concern for for the boys. I didn’t want the two boys (fourteen and eleven) to have a bad experience. After explaining the options to them including details about the possibility of enduring a certain level of misery they still wanted to go. We told Roger that we wanted to fish out deep but if it got too rough we wanted to come in closer to try our hand at catching barracuda. We all were willing to endure at least some misery in the rougher waters for in our hearts we are all fishermen and today we would position ourselves for one of the great gamefish of the world. Today we would hunt the great sailfish.

As was to be expected the seas worsened steadily as we got further out. It became difficult to remain seated so I positioned my feet as wide as possible as the boat pitched and rolled over the giant waves. I kept looking for the 4 to 6 foot seas Jeff mentioned and they were not to be found. As a fairly seasoned commercial fisherman of over 34 years and in the spirit of throwing out a conservative number I put us at steady 10 to 12 foot waves with a few 14 and 15's thrown in for good measure. Yes sir.
I was seated back-to-back with Corey. “You okay Bub?” This would be Corey’s first trial in the big stuff and I wanted to assure that he was okay. I knew that we could pull the plug whenever we wanted to. A hasty retreat into calmer waters and little barracuda fishing wouldn’t be a bad day at all.

“I’m fine dad. Stop asking me that.” Okay.

Juan with his back to us skirted around the stern section of the boat gracefully as if it were second nature. He was rigging up. His shirt read No Pain No Gain and as the giant waves rolled us up and over we watched him lower the down the outriggers to the side, baited a series of hooks with 10 inch silvery, stinky bait fish and got us fishing proper. As much as we might have wanted to be more of the process we were all too busy holding on and keeping our balance to be of any help to Juan who seemed to be in his element and probably wouldn't accept help anyhow.

When the Lilly M crested the waves the fading line of buildings on Isla Mujeres were visible in the far distance but when she slid back down into the deep troughs we were surrounded by big blue walls of rolling water.

“Dad I’m going to Puke.” I grabbed his arm and helped him to the gunwale where he did indeed puke his guts out. I held on to him hard so he wouldn't be pitched overboard. There would be more barfers today but Corey earned the distinction of being first. And then as soon as it started it was over and Corey looked up at me with a few chunks on his chin.”I feel better now.”

Just then Juan became animated because one of the poles was bending and twitching. “Who is fishing? Rapido, rapido!”

“Come on Corey. Are you up for it?” I asked. Corey had pulled paper/scissor/rocks with Ben for first fish. Corey had won and he was smart to jump on his opportunity.
“Yeah I want to do it.” I helped him to the back of the boat and Juan snapped on the fighting belt. Corey came alive and worked the rod like a pro. I took video of it and after watching it you would never guess that only moments before it was filmed he was doubled over losing his breakfast. Corey fought hard and handily won his battle with the first fish of the day: It was a five foot sail fish!

In the end we did bail out and retreat to calmer waters but not before Brian landed a 7 footer and Ben brought in a beautiful Mahi Mahi And also, not before most of our crew wretched their guts overboard too. To their credit both of the boys barfed but neither complained, sulked, or whined and both rose to the occasion to land nice fish! We all suffered a bit as discussed but we persevered. Just like Juan’s shirt: No pain no gain.

Barracuda fishing was nothing less than hot as well. We all caught nice ones and the boys each caught a second. In truth we could have stayed a bit longer to catch more but as a crew we all agreed: we were done.