You shall have a fishy when the boat comes in...

Well, I went deep-sea fishing on Saturday. I drove down to North Carolina's Oregon Inlet on Friday night and met up with my 2 fathers-in-law, my brother-in-law, his wife and some of their friends. We woke at 4am Saturday (goodness me, these boat people like an early start) and were on the dock for 4.45am. McDonalds was shut despite assurances from the hotel desk person that it wouldn't be, so breakfast was coffee and muffins at the dockside store. Not that it mattered, because the journey out to the fishing grounds was rough, with a 7-ft swell, and my breakfast ended up in the boat's head. In my defence, though, my father-in-law was also sick, and he spent 40 years in the Navy. Once i'd voided my breakfast, however, I was fine.

Dawn on the ocean was beautiful, and after a cold start the weather couldn't have been better. Forty miles off shore we found a school of tuna and were soon hauling them in, hard work if like me you've never done it before. The First Mate was working hard to keep all the lines straight and gaff the tuna as we pulled them in, and by lunchtime we'd caught our limit of eighteen fish, each weighing around 35lb.

The Mate told us a couple of intersting things about the Nag's Head area. Firstly, it got the name in the 1700's when local people would tie a pole and a spinnaker to a horse and lead it through the dunes during a storm to lure ships into the shallow coastal waters, where they would wreck and the locals would plunder the cargo when it washed ashore. Secondly, the people would know if a ship had foundered in the night when bananas would wash up onto the beach in the morning tide. Hence, it's bad luck to bring bananas onto a boat.

Back at the dock, we had the guys at the packing house to gut our fish (a very messy business; we were glad to pay them handsomely to do it) and headed home. I spent an hour or so chopping the fillets into 44 inch-thick steaks for the freezer. Our friends and neighbours had some, and of course Poppy and Tater tried some and liked it, and we still have enough tuna to make us grow fins eating it !! Next time I go, I hope El Jeffe can come too.

Thought for the day - if I can't take it with me, I'm not going. Night, all.