Tuesday, June 7, 2016

May 13, 2016 Conch and spear fishing

Dave was up and drinking coffee in the cock pit by 6:30.  He said he felt like a little kid hoping the neighbor would come ask him to play.  Sure enough, Cracky came to get him and they went fishing until about 8:30.  They went off shore to a follow a shelf, but had no luck. Dave still enjoyed being on the water and getting to know Cracky.  His name was Bill, and his wife was Tania.  She had lung cancer and a heart attack in the last 10 years.  So she enjoys relaxing on the boat, but doesn’t do as much as she used to.  So he enjoys finding people to “play with”.  They were both in their late 60’s, and Cracky works for Avis.
 
only 2 boats at anchor
We had breakfast and then decided to snorkel and spear fish again.  As we were getting ready, Cracky came by and offered to show us where we could find conch.  There was a shallow area in front of his boat that had a lot of conch.  We snorkeled the area in about 4 feet of water and picked up a half dozen average size conch.  It’s funny how underwater you think they are so big.  So back at the boat, we looked them over and only kept some of the largest ones.  We took the conch back to our boat, put them in a mesh bag and hung them off of our stern.  That way they were kept in the water until we could clean them.
most conch we've seen in one place.  picked the largest and threw back the rest

We went back to the reef on the outside of the rocks.  We both spearfished today.  I only stuck a couple grunts.  But it was fun to try.  I also stayed very close to the dinghy.  If I caught a fish, I wanted it out of the water and in the dinghy as soon as possible.  I didn’t want a bigger fish to fight me for it. 

Dave spent most of his time looking for larger fish, since we had several little ones from yesterday.  He ended up with a sailor’s choice (looked like a grey grunt).  After cleaning all those small fish yesterday, he decided to go for bigger fish.  Today he noticed an improvement in holding his breath and equalizing his ears.  He’s working his way up to the “big time” spear fishing championships. 

We headed back to our boat to clean the fish.  But we noticed that Cracky had set up a little plastic table in the water by the beach with an umbrella.  We stopped to check it out and he told us to get our fish, conch and gear and join him.  So we spent the rest of the afternoon, sitting in about 2 feet of water cleaning fish and conch at beach.  I even brought a couple beers for Cracky as a thank you.
Cracky's fish cleaning station

He gave us lessons on cleaning conch.  Dave had done a pretty good job before, but he gave us a few pointers that made it easier.  He had a special hammer for breaking through the shell, which was nice to borrow.  We also cleaned our few fish from today. 
cleaning conch
instruction from Cracky
cleaning fish

We were tired when we got back to the boat.  Being in the sun and swimming most of the day makes you tired.  But we loved it!



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