Hunt Smart, Fish Hard: First Time Smoking Fish

I just moved into an apartment building and was going through some boxes looking for the new portable smoker I just had purchased from Cabel’s. Two weeks ago, I went with a bunch of friends deep sea fishing. We heard they were catching a bunch of Spanish mackerel and whiting fish. Roger told me that smoked mackerel and whiting were very good. We get to the shore and get aboard the Queen Mary fishing boat. We tied up our burlap bags to the rails where we would put the fish in we caught. Our poles were rigged with five banana baits on one line. You drop the line to the bottom, then jerk it up and let it go back down. If you are lucky, you can catch five mackerel at one time. Two and three at a time was more common.

I was having a good time catching these mackerel, sometimes two and three at a time. Then we hear a bunch of yelling going on. The bluefish had moved in on the mackerel and scattered the mackerel and whiting fish. People argued they paid for mackerel and didn’t want to fish for blues. We ended up moving to an another spot that held mackerel. Once the boat stopped, that was the end of fishing for me. I threw up everything I had in my stomach. I just wanted to get off the boat. That wasn’t going to happen for another three hours.

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