27 August 1997 – Part II

(Part of my Gone Fishing story)

Wednesday, 27 August 1997

Day 40 at Sea (continued)

1840 hours SAMOAN TIME (Pacific Time minus four hours)


Sorry for the interruption, but I had to see the sunset. The sunset and more fish in our net! Things are picking up indeed. Finally!

Damn, that sunset is a brilliant orange-red, like the sky is on fire. A very beautiful ending to what turned out to be a good day after all.

Right after recovering from the last set, were onto more schools. The schools of tuna just popped up all around, five or six of them. Too many to get (too spread out) in one shot, but Captain Joe certainly was trying as we circled them. Finally he yelled, “Let her go!” and we were back at it.

We tried for three of the schools, but only got one. The Adriatic Sea’s helicopter, a Hughes 500, helped us out, going down right to the surface to scare the fish away from the net opening. That was mighty nice of Captain Joe’s son-in-law, Joe (yeah, yeah).

making noise

Another StarKist ship’s helicopter helping out the Auro’s skiff and speedboat making noise to keep the tuna from escaping out the opening in the net before it gets closed

I don’t know how much we got yet, but the important part is we set twice in a row and got fish. Definitely an improvement!

Other than that, not a whole helluva lotta stuff has been going one. Not much to do in a 225 foot space in the middle of the ocean. Guess I could chip rust, but I am not that hard up, yet. My tan is coming along nicely. I guess that is a plus…

Next Entry – 30 August 1997
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