If you want to catch a fish wear flip flops.

That is the secret to fishing. Naturally when I got onto the boat all the other fishermen laughed at me [sniff] but as I was going to be doing a load of activities over the next 3 days I didn't want to deal with socks. With 4 different water sports activities on I was going to be in and out of the water. And then showers and then you need clean socks. So thats a lot of socks. Easiest thing to do is wear flip flops. No sock trouble.

Where was I.... of course the photos of food. Here they are again. (Apologies for the rotated shots. I don't know why they are getting flipped sideways, but they are, its not the way I'm taking photos.)

The boat, sideways. Damn you.

And the view, not that view, but a view

Too many landscape shots. but here are the little nippers. Could have done mackerel sushi if we thought ahead and brought some soy sauce.

I caught mackerel, dogfish and ray. My compadre caught ray, pollock, and mackerel. We caught Coalies (?) as well but the majority of them were thrown back. So I don't know if wearing flip flops helped, especially in the rain. 

Here is my fishing companion. However I don't think its right to throw photos of people up all over the internet without asking for clearance or permission. Anonymity is better anyway. 

When the seagulls follow the trawler it is because they expect fish to be thrown into the sea. And they'd be right. The captain of the ship has a seagull that follows him named George. They all look the same to me. Is that racist?

I don't have any photos of the other types of fish but I promise we caught them.The professionals -in their boots- did the business in gutting and cleaning the fish.

Even though they were excellent and catching and cleaning fish the lads were not interested in eating them. Fishermen don't eat fish. Who knew? 

We thought we were going to cook them but we walked into the restaurant and they did it all for us. I would have gone simple a fried the fillets and finished them with lemon. We got pollock in a beurre blanc sauce and mackerel and gurnard in a stir fry. Gurnard is tasty and cheap although has 1,000 bones.

Here is the final dish. Alway blurrys as my hands shake with giddyness. It tasted better than it looks. I thought I had a photo of the mackerel and gurnard stir fry but I don't. I was too busy eating.

We ate as much as we could and I refused to leave any fish on the platter. After all these fish died by our hands - apart from the Gurnard- so it only seemed right to do the justice. Nom, nom, nom justice.

The rest of the weekend was spent surfing, paddle boarding, sailing, eating, drinking and sleeping. But I don't have any photos of that. The fish are the star of this post. The stars of the sea one could say. Cough, cough.

It was pretty much just photos of the food but here is some photos of the surf. Hippsta photos.

In between we did get some sight seeing in and here is a couple of the Glen. A religious experience going here. I never get tired of it. Although walking here in flip flops was a little tricky. This would have been an occasion to have socks. But that would have required 2 pairs, one for during, one for after. You see, it makes sense. No socks.

Some great meals, quality moule marinere, t-bone steaks and grilled lobster eaten. Also had a burger with fried banana and bacon which was a revelation. Got plenty of inspiration for future blog posts and seeing as I've posted more in June then in the combined history of this blog I don't know whether I'm being super productive or really lazy. Maybe I need to get back to the day job.

Here is the reef and beef

The 3 days felt like 2 weeks and if I could describe it in 1 word it would be satisfied. Sometimes when you go away the surf can be crap or you get dodgy stodgy overpriced food but every meal was out of the park good,. Great ingredients every time. And mix that with lots of water based activities, hot showers, a big bed and I am one satisfied rabbit.

And now I am home. Home listening to this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHEOF_rcND8