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How to Ruin a Stranger’s Honeymoon
Not My Best Moment
Catching a big fish — enough to share — makes you immediately welcome when you drop anchor at a village. Sailing from island to island in the Pacific Ocean, fishing with a simple handline can provide such a gift from Neptune. The usual catch was tuna or dorado (mahi-mahi), but every once in a while we hooked wahoo, an elusive, rare and delicious ocean-going fish.
A tough fish to catch, wahoo is easily mistaken for tuna while on the hook, but out of the water you can not mistake its elongated body, dark blue-green color on the top and silver on the sides, with a massive set of teeth. Streaking through the water upwards of 60-mph, they move so fast that our sailboat, It’s Enough, had to be trolling at her maximum speed of 8–9 knots to attract and catch one. Their teeth are razor-sharp, and a wire leader required, as is your stamina, which will be taxed. Wahoo slice through plastic fishing line like butter and fight like a wounded crocodile while you pull them up hand-over-hand. Hauling a wahoo aboard is difficult, but a worthwhile accomplishment. Whatever effort you spend bringing it aboard will all be forgotten at your first taste.
Though I can count the number of times we landed a wahoo, none stands out as sharply as when we hooked one in Fiji near a flyspeck dot on the map, we dubbed Horseshoe Island.
