So we stayed around the house through midday, preparing the fishing rods and reels, thawing some of the five pounds of shrimp to use for bait, and generally psyching ourselves up to be fisher folk. Around 4pm, we loaded up the jeep and made the short drive down to the Avon dinghy, 1-2-3 heaved! it back into the surf, and took off for Hurricane Hole.

On my second cast toward the mangrove, I caught a shark. Luckily, he decided to throw us back, but he and his two little friends (they were about 2-foot long Lemon Sharks) continued to circle the boat for the next hour our so, following our bait as we reeled it in and occasionally striking at it. They came right up to the edge of the boat and swam around it with their little shark fins sticking out of the water. It was like Jaws in miniature. Kathy played with them, fed them bread crumbs and shrimp, and thought they were cute, as long as she wasn't swimming with them.

It became clear the sharks weren't going to let us catch anything in Hurricane hole, so we tootled back to Mattie Point to try our luck there. Another afternoon storm had made the bay pretty choppy by then, so we took the boat back to the beach and high tailed it to the Pink House to try fishing from the rocks. After climbing all the way down to the water and walking all the way around the point, I got hung up on some coral on the second cast and lost the rig pretty much exactly where we had found it a couple days early while snorkeling off the point.

So instead of fresh shark steaks, or snapper filets, or conch chowder, or even cunning beefsteaks, we had baked ziti with garlic toast and a chilled Pinot Grigio. It was tasty, but with that whole Caribbean Sea out there mocking us, I wanted fresh seafood, and I wanted to catch it ourselves. That would have to wait for another day...