Herd a' Birds

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Early morning light on the water, combined with a choppy sea is sharp and ominous.  Traveling into the rising sun, the sea this morning looked ink black.  The forecast held steady for a brisk NE wind which was chilly to say the least.  Has anybody told the person in charge of weather that it's March in Mexico?
We rode the chop the 8 miles or so to our usual start waypoint and on cue Captain Larry and George, the mate, spotted the birds.  We made the mile or so correction to follow them but never seemed to arrive at the point where they were working.  This was going to prove a common trend today.

No sooner had we found the birds and arrived,  they would pull skyward and start circling in high vertical columns that O'Hare traffic control would be proud of.  They became like mirages in the desert, what appeared to be a mass of frigate birds in the distance evaporated before our eyes as we approached. As someone on the boat described it "this is like herding birds".  We did get an opportunity for a quick jump in, finally finding a small bait ball.  I was able to keep up for a few minutes then BANG every sardine, sailfish and bird was gone, Harry Houdini style!

Giving up on chasing the birds from the water we laid a spread of  ballyhoo rigs and started trolling towards the frigates deciding that if they were there when we got there, bonus, if not no worries.  It didn't take long to turn up ACDC on the stereo... suddenly the sun came out, the birds circled above and we had 3 sails having a block party in the spread to the sounds of  Back in Black and Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap?  Either way rock 'n roll seem to work, I highly recommend it!

We released 3 sailfish around midday.  This gave me an opportunity to break out the long lens and take my camera out of the housing to try for a few jump shots.  These are the shots the the fishing magazine editors are always after.  I on the other hand am normally dangling off the transom, with my camera housing pleading with the captain to let me get in the water.  It's a steep learning curve and although I got a few keepers, I have a long way to go.

We finished up this afternoon with the conditions getting better and better.  In fact I'm sitting on the boat right now with the sun setting,  a very gentle breeze pushing the El Milagro hammocks around under the palm trees at the end of the dock, cold Pacifico in hand...life is good.