Today Tobias finally got his fish. A big one! It was a fight! I had to give Tobias the fighting belt.

To reduce the tension on the fishing line, I furled the genoa by roughly one half. Then MaRe’s speed was down to 3 – 3.5 KN.

In the meantime the mahi-mahi went from STB to PRT behind the boat. Tobias made it tired.

I prepared the gaff and the pliers to remove the hook. Additionally I put on my life vest to secure me when I have to go down to the stern to get the fish with the gaff out of the water and up into the cockpit.

After quite a long and powerful fight, Tobias got it to the stern. It looked exhausted after they were fighting for about 20 – 30 min.

I was lucky and got the gaff quickly behind its gills and could pull it up into the middle of the cockpit. There it started jumping again. While I kept it down, Tobias brought a very strong alcohol and put some very strong alcohol in the gills. Within seconds it stopped jumping.

Then came the first cleaning of the cockpit. I needed at least 20 buckets of water.

To evicerate and filte the fish Tobias used today for the first time the new high density polypropylene board I bought it in NZ and prepared it for exactly this work. It turned out to be good. It will be less work for me to clean this board compared to the old wooden one, I used before.

Now, I am curious how Tobias will prepare the fish!