Fishing, on Kwajalein, From Pohnpei

We are sitting here on Pohnpei, on a rainy, windy day, arms sore from a few long days of some great surf on P-Pass. Today the surf is blown out, and we are laying about, and I suddenly remember that I have a blog…

Okay, not exactly, but we were talking about how long it had been since I had posted, and that I still haven’t even posted anything from our last trip here on Pohnpei back in June.

So, here goes a quick post about our trip to Pohnpei…

Except, well, my desktop still has all these pictures on it that I was going to use for a post about fishing on Kwaj.

Okay. Let’s do that one first.

We have been learning to fish here. Slowly. We are getting better each time. We use handlines for the most part (until a great guy loaned us a really nice fishing pole), and we troll those in the lagoon behind the ol’ Patches McGee. Occasionally we go and rent a B-Boat from the Kwajalein small boat marina and go out in the open ocean and try to catch bigger fish. The lures are hilariously large. But, then I guess we are trying to catch big fish?

Our first time out, Tam caught a reef fish. It was a little too big to be comfortable with the risk of ciguatera (a toxin found in reef fish, especially the bigger and more aggressive ones), so we tossed him back.

Tam got that one on a handline, as you can see by the piles of line everywhere in the boat.

Sometimes we catch tiny little Skipjack tuna…

… and sometimes we catch nice sized Rainbow Runners.

Once in a while we even catch really big Rainbow Runners. A friend told me later I should have gotten this one measured, as he thought it was the biggest one he had ever seen.

And, often enough, the sharks get them before you get them to the boat.

They call this “getting sharked”.

We are still waiting to catch some Yellowfin tuna. Or Wahoo. Those are the last ones we still need to catch. Either way, we are always having fun trying.

Sometimes we lose them, sometimes we get them, but in every case, we have feasted after getting them home.

I always love to make a bunch of poke (I usually do a few different styles) and sashimi out of our catch. Nothing better than 1 hour off the boat and straight into our bellies. Add a little furikake, soy, avocado, and fresh mango, and… heaven!

So, there is my post about our trip to Pohnpei.

Wait.

There was nothing in there about Pohnpei, was there?

Okay, stay tuned. There will be another along soon, and it may even be about our last trip to Pohnpei – or this one?