It’s been a little while since I posted, but I’ve been up to a little something something: I got married! As soon as I got back to Alaska, it was a rush of last minute wedding preparations, and then Julia and I finally tied the knot on September 8th. Let me tell, you the wedding was an absolute blast. The dancing, drinks, rehearsal, Chomps (Browns Mascot) showing up, it was a hoot. And I couldn’t be happier marrying the woman of my life: Julia.
The day after the wedding, we rode down to the Muni lot for the Browns home opener and tailgated for the game as we love to do so much. Unfortunately we lost a tough one, but Julia and I sat in the same section that we met in 3 years ago, that was fun. Monday after the game we were off on our honeymoon to Fiji! We had a quick stop for a night in L.A., and then we were off to paradise.
Fiji… Wow, what can I say. It is everything you could dream of when you think of a tropical paradise destination. The clear water, reefs, sand, mountains, coconuts, food, it was incredible. We had the time of our lives. The locals there may be some of the nicest and most hospitable people I have ever met. They even invited us to join them for some Cava (its a local drink made of shredded root and strained with water. You all sit indian style on the floor, tell stories, and drink this stuff that is suppose to make you sleep well and give you some kind of buzz, it kind of makes your lips go numb, and its supposedly good for you! Whatever, I didn’t really notice the effects, but it was fun to see a totally different culture from what we are used too.
Of course went fishing! I knew you were waiting for that… Fiji is hundreds of different islands/mountain peeks with huge trenches in between islands and reefs. Then here is one main outer reef that kind of protects everything from the open ocean. You can constantly see massive surf breaking over this outer reef. We booked a charter the first day there in a smaller boat, unfortunately is was too windy and we never found and of the Giant Trevally or Mackeral that we went out targeting. A couple days later we talked one of the employees from the island into taking us out trolling around the islands reefs, who knows what we would catch!?! We caught a nice corral trout (what we call grouper), beautiful fish, and had the fish cooked whole for lunch. It was delicous!!! Still wanting to take another crack at some of the big game species that Fiji is famous for, we booked another charter on a bigger boat that could take us past the outer reef. It started off slow and no tuna or wahoo emerged from the depths like we had hoped. So we began trolling in along the edge of the outer reef, when one of our lines started screaming. The gentleman we split the boat with from Australia was up. After a decent battle, a 15lb Giant Trevally emerged, I couldn’t believe it… With the way that line when screaming off the reel, and how hard that fish was fighting, I figured we were hooked into something in the 30-40lb range. I couldn’t imaging how a 80-120lber would fight!
Next I was up, it was getting towards the end of our day, and 2 lines went screaming a the same time. I hooked the belt on, grabbed the rod, and the battle was on. Another GT, this time in the 30lb range. This fish are so strong, it was unbelievable. We caught both GTs, had a couple Fiji Gold beers to celebrate, and rode back to our island with big smiles!
Julia and I also did a little kayak fishing around the island. It took us until later in the week to figure it out, but we finally get em good towards the end as we tweaked out our presentation. We would catch live mullet off the beach using a handline, and flat line that off the kayak. Julia would hold the rod, and I would just slowly ‘troll’ us along the edges of the reefs. We hooked up one GT that broke us off, and caught a couple needle fish. A needle fish almost ripped the rod right out of Julia’s hand! It was a great way for us to relax, fish, and spend some time on our own on the water.
What a trip! What a new chapter of my life, and what a wife! 🙂
