Tuna fishing - Maldivian style!

First up...apologies for no pics here yet. I had an issue with a memory stick and lost a few photos aahhhhh!!! All is not lost though, someone else has copies. Will upload them when I get them. In the meantime, you will have to simply imagine what went on...

Anyone who knows me even a little bit will know I love fishing. So when we were asked to go out on one of the local fishing boats after tuna (skippies) and to fish using an old-school pole and line method, I didn't even have to think twice.

The afternoon started off catching bait fish in the harbour before we'd even cast off. Everyone gets involved...including some guys just hanging around the harbour. After a few net drags, we had a tank full of bait fish and took off.

It didn't take long to get outside the atoll to the fishing grounds but did take a bit longer for the skippies to pop up to the surface. Then it was all on...

A couple of guys threw handfuls of baitfish over the side to keep the tuna up. The other guys lined up along the back of the boat with their lines in the water and simply swung the fish back into the boat when they hooked up.

Sounds simple enough...believe me, it's a real skill! You have to have such strong arms, legs and abs to keep your balance, hold the 5 metre pole out (and keep hold of it when a tuna hooks up), swing the skippy in, shake it off the line and start again. Then you have to keep a close eye out for the guy next to you that you don't get slapped in the face by a flying skippy...

Morten was allowed his own pole...the rest of us girls had to 'help' the guys! I started to get the hang of pulling in the skippies - gently does it so you don't rip the hook out of their mouth. Then we hooked up a yellowfin tuna. Not a huge one but big enough to need some extra help from the guy next to us to drag it in (I'm not as strong as I thought!)

Even sitting up on deck watching was fun. And I'm sure the guys found all the screams of excitement and encouragement funny every time one of our team hooked up a fish.

We ended up catching a small bin of fish, maybe a couple of hundred kilos - not one of the most successful fishing trips for the guys. I had such a blast though and it was so good of the captain to take us all out to experience a rare way of commercial fishing.