Fishing is great fun. I don’t even have to catch anything. Ideally, I would catch a fish every day but I don’t expect to. I try not to get too down about it on the days when I really have no luck. I just go out there the next day and try again. You never know what you’re going to end up with at the other end of your line. There are fish that are great for eating and other fish that are perfect for stuffing and mounting on a wall somewhere. Even though I am the only one living here, I don’t have a lot of fish on my walls like an enthusiastic hunter might have trophy deer heads. There’s a marlin on the wall over the couch, and a wahoo mounted on a plaque in my bedroom. That’s it. Not a lot when you consider I am out on the water most days.
Are you wondering what happens to my catch much of the time? Well, it turns out that I’ve eaten much more of my lifetime haul of fish than I have taxidermized.
For me, there is a really simple pleasure to being out on the water with a rod in my hand. Everything seems easier, more peaceful, and better out there. That’s why I do not typically mind if I come home empty handed every once in a while. I wish I could say the same for a bad weather day.Those just put me in a cranky mood. But we don’t get as much rain in Anguilla as you would think a Caribbean island would, and it does not get all that hot. In other words, the weather can be near-perfect most of the time, perfect for being outdoors. There are other places I could have moved that had better beachfront access for ‘non-belongers’ or a lower cost on real estate, but I did a little island-hopping when I was looking for a place and Anguilla hit every item on my checklist. Not that it was a long checklist, but it still fit the bill handsomely.
And now, every morning, I get to fish. The water is quiet and clear. It’s just me and I don’t see how life could get much better than that. I’ve got some of my old lures that I used back home but there aren’t too many available for sale around here. The locals tend to use live bait or the heads of other fish. It depends a little on what you want to catch, I guess. I know I can order all kinds of rods, reels, and tackle online and have it shipped to me. I like to think that sometimes I catch fish simply because even if they’ve been around awhile, they don’t know what lures are and therefore don’t even think to avoid them. Ha haha. That’s a good joke, right? Although it does sound at least a little bit believable, doesn’t it?