Cruising Fish-Tales: Our beginner tackle box.

You can almost taste the excitement in the air when you are casually cruising along at five or six knots and ZZZZIIIIIINNNNGG! The sound you’ve been anxiously waiting to hear. Fish on!

If you’re not trolling while sailing, you are missing out on a great opportunity for delicious, and might I add FREE, fish! Talk about a win-win. Some of the best meals we’ve had while cruising the Bahamas + Caribbean have been the fish we caught ourselves. Although, I’ll say, we didn’t start out on a high note…our very first catch as cruisers was a plastic garbage bag. We’ve caught snapper, grouper, jack, barracuda, mahimahi, bluefish, and mackerel. Now, if only we could catch a freaking tuna. A girl can dream, can’t she?

But to catch and enjoy fresh fish, you need some fishing equipment! Right? Right.

Before we set sail on the adventure of a lifetime, we wanted to make sure we had the “goods” on board to catch fish along the way. It could have been rather easy to get carried away and spend thousands on fishing gear, but we quickly realized that we really didn’t need to overdo it. The gear we use almost exclusively aboard s/v LAHO is made up of about ten key items. And we’ve gotten so many emails over the past few months about our fishing gear, that we wanted to share a few links and products here on the blog for anyone wanting to know exactly what we use. :))

Our Gear:

• We have a strong >>rod<< and >>reel<< combo we use religiously for trolling and bottom fishing. We wanted ones with preferably  no moving parts that would corrode or break.
• Then you need some line. We use >>50lb. test line<< and >>80lb. test mono leader line<<.
• Make sure you include a pack of swivels in your stash so your line doesn’t become twisted or entangled.
• This >>ballyhoo combo lure with a skirt<< has caught us many different kids of fish in the Bahamas including mutton snapper and mahimahi.
• We also rely on two >>20ft.<< and >>30ft.<< deep running hard plastic lures that dive about that depth when trolling. We have caught grouper, jack, snapper, mahimahi, and barracuda with these lures. Unfortunately, we lost our 20ft. deep runner after hooking a huge dorado in the Bahamas, so we now use the 30ft. one almost exclusively.
• And finally, spoons. We have two lucky >>neon green spoons<< that have caught barracuda, bluefish, and mackerel.
• A few everyday pieces of fishing equipment like a >>fillet knife<<, >>knife sharpener<<, >>gloves<<, >>gaff<<, and >>pliers<<, should round out your gear.

Here are a few other odds and ends we ended up purchasing in case you’re interested… >>inshore fishing rod<< and >>reel<< for when we’re in an anchorage and not trolling while sailing, >>tackle box<< to hold all our crap, >>utility knife<<, >>rod holder<< for obvious reasons, and >>fish bat<<.

There you go…that’s our secret stash!!! ;)) Wanna see which lure caught which type of fish? We posted about our lucky lures >>over here.<<

At the end of a long passage, there’s nothing better than kicking back in the cockpit with a sundowner in hand while your fresh catch cooks up on the grill! :))

*A HUGE thank you to my cousin Robb, owner of Young Boats, for showing us exactly what we would need! :)))))))

>>Thanks for visiting LAHOWIND sailing blog! We’d love for you to get to know us and follow our story as we attempt to navigate a whole new world of sailing, as we cruise the Caribbean. …Learn more about us and our sailing + cruising adventures.