The best thing to do with my WWRs!

We celebrated my two world records last weekend in the best way I know how.  By having some friends around to eat (some of) the fish I brought home from Ascension Island.  I cooked the fish in various ways, but my fish balls were so delicious,  I have decided to share my recipe on the blog.

Before I begin, perhaps I should explain that (i) I made this recipe up by combining a few ideas, and (ii) I am not big on specifying quantities….so make it your own, or make it at your own risk!  Also, I have no idea how many I made… but don’t worry because they will be eaten.

Spicy WWR fish balls with dipping sauce

Approximately 1kg of fish, defrosted and cut into chunks.  (This could be any firm-fleshed fish – it doesn’t need to be a world record specimen either!)   Remove the skin and squeeze out all excess water, then dry thoroughly with kitchen roll.  Pop fish into food processor and whizz for a few seconds until finely chopped.

Chop and add to the fish mixture:

• A few cloves of fresh garlic.
• A couple of thumbs of fresh ginger.
• Two or three fresh chillies (I used one green and one red).
• A handful of pepperdews (make sure you dry these thoroughly too).
• Four or five spring onions.

Then spoon in about two or three heaped dessert spoons of coconut cream – don’t use the milk, or even worse, the light coconut milk (too runny!).

Last, add these spices to the mixture:

• A bit of mild chilli powder (I used half a teaspoon of each spice).
• Ground coriander.
• Ground cumin.
• Salt and pepper to taste.

Using the pulse setting on your food processor, whizz up the mixture in short bursts until everything is combined.  Don’t over process, otherwise it will lose its texture.

Spread a bit of greaseproof paper onto a tray and shape the mixture into small balls (for starters) or larger balls if you’re making a main course.  Put the tray into the fridge for at least an hour to chill through.

Now comes the messy bit – but I promise you it is worth it!  Dump a bit of plain flour into a shallow bowl.  In a second bowl, beat up a couple of eggs.  In a third bowl, put some fresh breadcrumbs (I whizzed up a few slices of stale wholemeal bread in my trusty processor).

Heat enough oil in your favourite pan to shallow fry the fish balls (I used sunflower oil).  Roll each ball in the flour first, then the egg and finally the bread crumbs.  Put each ball carefully into the pan and fry on each side for a few minutes.  You will need to open up the first few balls to get the timing right – you don’t want to overcook the fish as it will be too dry.  Cook until the outside is golden brown and crispy and the inside is just cooked.

Serve immediately with a dip made of Hellmann’s mayonnaise and Thai sweet chilli sauce (about half/half) and about a teaspoon of English mustard mixed together.  Scrumptious.  Great for eating cold the next day too – ideal for lunch boxes!  Enjoy.

WORLD RECORD DAY!

Dear friends, family and random blog-followers!

This is how big my smile is today!

I am proud to announce that you now know someone famous.  Well, just a bit.  Erm, OK, just to those who know me…  Yippppeee!  I can’t believe I’ve heard back from the IUSA already!  How quick was their turnaround?  When I woke up this morning, I had no idea it was WORLD RECORD DAY.  I had a LOVELY email from Sheri Daye in my inbox.  Check it out…

“Penny,  I am very happy to inform you that your applications for the world record Black Jack at 10.3 kg and the Horse-eye Jack at 10.2 kg were approved by the IUSA Board.

“The Amberjack you submitted was misidentified (easy to do with this species).  It was
actually an Almaco Jack.  I’ve attached the pictures here to help you identify them.  The dorsal fin of the Almaco Jack is much taller and sickle-shaped, like the fish you got.  There is a current women’s world record for that species that is bigger than yours, so it was not a world record. 

My fish

Almaco Jack

 

Greater Amberjack

“In any case, we congratulate you on getting TWO world records!  We will be mailing you two certificates soon, and we will post your picture on the IUSA website shortly.

“Congratulations from the entire IUSA Board on this great accomplishment, and we hope to see more fish from you!  Safe diving. ”  Sheri Daye, President, IUSA

Tuesday 6 September

Eating:   Cheese and mayo sarnie

Wearing:  Jeans and a jumper (it’s freezing today!)

Mood:   Excited…and still proud!

Woohoo!  I’ve just submitted three sets of forms and photographs to the International Underwater Spearfishing Association.  Yes, I’ve applied for the Women’s World Records for:

• 10.2kg horse-eye jack
• 10.2kg black jack
• 14.5kg greater amberjack

How cool is that?  Now it’s just sit back and wait to see if we’ve crossed and dotted properly…  Wish me luck!

 

Tuesday 23 August 2011

Eating:           Bacon sandwich

Wearing:        PJ’s

Mood:             Euphoric and aching in every single muscle

I can’t believe we’re flying home to the UK tonight.

Ascension Island is a spearo’s dream.  The sea life around the island is wild and untouched, preserved by its remoteness and the harshness of the landscape.
We are very privileged to have had the opportunity to visit it for a short while and experience the abundance of marine wealth.

The holiday has been superb.  I’ve spent quality time with my brothers, and I’ve swum with dolphins.  I spotted a turtle speeding off underneath me at the pier and spent happy hours observing fish.  I even caught a Wahoo.  Best of all, I’ve possibly speared THREE
women’s world spearfishing records.

So much excitement for a stay-at-home Mum is overwhelming.  I am looking very forward to getting home to my babies and my family and normal life!

Cameron, my HERO.  Thank you very much for your encouragement and support.  You have done so much for me.  I am eternally grateful.  No one can ever take these incredible memories away from me. Rory, you have been so great, helping me at every turn.  I am so proud to have brothers like you.  I must be the luckiest sis in the world.

Thanks also to Crystal Vis for giving me a bluewater gun so I could shoot these record fish.  The Rob Allen gear has performed very well under extreme conditions.  My rig is still tip top, despite having worked hard over the last couple of weeks.

I will update this blog over the next few months just to track the record application process.  Thanks for following my progress so far everyone and the lovely messages – keep your fingers crossed it all works out well.

Monday 22 August 2011

Eating:           Battered Wahoo and Rory’s amazing garlic cheesy pasta

Wearing:        Dry clothes – yay

Mood:             Contented, happy and bone weary

Today I had quite a few firsts. It was my first time on a game fishing boat and the first time I have been game fishing.  I also caught a Wahoo on a line.  What a fight!

Colin took us out on the big boat today and I’m still rocking.  It was amazing.  Rory caught a small tuna, Titus speared his biggest ever Wahoo (about 30kg) and we caught five more Wahoo on the line.  There were so many in the water that we would get a strike on the line, and then a second fish would bite the swivel above the lure and we would lose the fish – it was great fun and very exciting.

The dolphins came to wish us farewell on the way home, playing at the bow of the boat and looking at us knowingly through a watery film.

Sunday 21 August 2011

Eating:           Cereal and toast

Wearing:       Bikini and kikoi

Mood:             Oh no!  Only two days left to dive before we fly home…

The boys decided to go chumming today because the wind is VERY strong – pumping at about 25 knots.  I bowed out because I don’t like the process and usually end up sitting on the boat.  So I asked or skipper to pick me up later.  I really hope the brothers land some big game though – they are so ready for it.

The boat picked me up at lunchtime.  Cameron had caught a blue runner and decided to call it a day.  Titus, who has injured his hand, also decided to bail.  I went south on the boat with Colin, Rory and Tony and we used the flasher to play around on the point.  Rory landed a beauty of an amberjack and I missed one.  I think I was having an off day as I found it hard to load, I hurt my finger on the gun recoil and my aim was all over the place.  The guys didn’t let me forget the fish I lost on the way home!

Saturday 20 August 2011

Eating:       Egg and bacon

Wearing:  Clothes (again) – yeeha!

Mood:         Happy and laughing

Cameron and Rory agreed to come with me to the Green Mountain nature reserve and walk up to the Dew Pond.  We decided to do half a day’s diving, starting after lunch.  The drive up to the car park on the mountain was pretty daunting, peppered with extremely steep hairpin bends.  But the walk up was amazing.  There are banana trees and paw-paw trees heavy with fruit, wild raspberries, and even a thick forest of bamboo.  There are feral cows and sheep on the mountain – they’ve been wild since 1978.

Dew Pond is a small water catchment area specially excavated years ago as an optional water supply for the island.  It is disused now, but the highest point on the island.  We really had our cobwebs blown away at the top but had stunning views of the island.
Well worth a visit.

After lunch, we headed north up the coast and stopped to look at a swim through.  The caves were stunning and full of a school of black jack.  We swam though the caves into a pothole in the rocks open to the sky.  What a fabulous experience.

Then we headed a bit further north and jumped off at a rocky outcrop where the reef edge dropped away to the sand.  The visibility was great and I could see a big school of black jack below me.  There were a few real “buses” at the edge of the school that were keeping well away.  Cameron and I took the flasher and started swimming towards the shore and the edge of the reef and the black jacks started following us.  Even though I had already
shot my record fish, I was very tempted by the big fish in the school.  I started watching them carefully.  Suddenly, the big fish committed to coming in to the flasher and I dived.  I lined up the fish closest to me and landed a central shot.  The fish, as usual, was bigger than I had expected and you will be pleased to hear that I smashed my first black jack
record.  The fish weighed in at 10.3kgs – pretty close to the men’s world record which currently stands at 11.2kg, held by Keith Love.  It is also nearly double the weight of my first fish and a catch that I am really proud of landing.

But, the excitement wasn’t over yet.  We regrouped and Colin dropped us off on the edge of the reef again.  Almost immediately after Cameron dropped the flasher, an amberjack started swimming up.  I dived straight away to about 11 metres, lining up the fish and hit it centrally, just behind the gill plate.  He was huge – definitely my biggest fish to date.  He fought for a long time before he tired and I was able to pull him to the surface.  Jenileigh Taylor holds the current women’s world record for the greater amberjack at 10.8kg.  My amberjack weighed in at 14.5kg which totally smashes the existing record.  How cool is that?  Two potential world records shot in one afternoon – and hopefully a hat trick of records for this trip.  Can a girl get luckier?

Friday 19 August 2011

Eating:           Cereal and toast

Wearing:        Clothes – at last.

Mood:             Tired, tired, tired…

I declared today a day of rest.  I was covered in a rash, my fingers and hands were scratched and broken and I was exhausted.  I was even starting to hallucinate about wearing clothes!  So I took it easy, used a few hours to updated my blog, withdrew some money from the bank and took a drive up to Two Boats – a small village on the way to Green Mountain.

A few things have struck me about Ascension Island which I would like to share with you:

• the locals are very friendly.  Everywhere you go or drive, people wave at you or say hello;
• the pace of life is slow – and you need to be aware of opening hours and lunch times etc.  I’m so used to a 24-hour service society, it’s quite a setback to realise you can’t get petrol when you need it or the shop has closed for the weekend!
• the island is very “South African”.  Supplies come by ship from the Cape, so you can buy Mrs Balls chutney, fizz pops; choc it biscuits; niknaks and liquifruit.  All produced in Epping!
• There are two currencies on the island, St Helena pounds and pence and the American dollar and cents.  They are not interchangeable!

As soon as you move away from the coast, the landscape becomes dotted with greenery, flowers like bougainvillea, prickly pears and assorted berries; all against this beautiful red-brown volcanic soil.  Rabbits are considered a pest and donkeys roam around in the most unlikely places.

The day went really fast – I didn’t even have time to read any of my novel before I spotted the boat coming in to the Pier.  Titus and Tony had landed a couple of very decent amberjacks and there had been a lot of contact with Wahoo, but the big game fish were still eluding them.  We decided to have burgers and chips for dinner at the Volcano Club, in the American base down the road.

Thursday 18 August 2011

Well.  You never can tell what’s going to happen on Ascension Island!  These waters are wild and untamed and it is a fisherman’s paradise.  Today was horse-eye jack or Atlantic jack day.  I shot and landed a fish that will qualify for a second women’s world record, subject to the application process!  And, what a fight it was…

We set off for a full day’s spearfishing at 08:30 in the morning.  The swell had increased and coupled with a strong wind, I had to stand up on the boat and bend my knees to absorb the shock of the waves.  We headed back to Bird Island so we could drop anchor in the lee of the island and hunt tuna off the edge of the rock.  I jumped in, loaded up and I swam slowly around absorbing the myriad of sea life around me.  I was completely relaxed swimming out to the edge of the rock until I felt the tug of the current.  It was racing and getting back out of it and into the lee of the island was like going to the gym for an hour (not that I ever do!).  I was tired when I got back to the boat and I spent some time trying to take photographs of fish.  This is actually quite tricky because of the time delay when you press the shutter.  Invariably, the fish are long gone by the time the photo has been taken and I ended up with quite a few photographs of fish’s tails.

Anyway, after a couple of hours yielding nothing – except for Colin’s daily collection of crayfish – we headed off to a ledge nearby and there was lots of excitement as the boys spotted rainbow runners, yellowfin tuna and a huge wahoo.  No shots landed, so we went
to one of the most incredible dive spots I have ever seen.  It is a network of amazing pothole-type caves with so many fish swimming about that your brain can’t process their
identification fast enough – you just get overload every time you dive!  Titus shot a snapper, Cameron landed his PB fish – an amberjack weighing in at nearly 14kg.
Then I slipped into the water and loaded my gun.  I knew that Titus and Cameron had dived in the main cave and that the fish were probably spooked, so I swam over to the
other entrance to the cave system and breathed up.  The water was EXTREMELY choppy and I kept getting water in my snorkel, but I was really keen to get down there and have a
look.  It was about 18 metres deep.  Colin had said he had seen a second amberjack
and I was good to go.  I spotted my first horse-eye jack from the surface.  They are beautiful silvery fish, but they looked like babies and I was after a bigger fish.  So I turned away and started my decent.  As I reached the top of the reef (about 13 to 15 metres) I had a quick look around and realised that the horse-eye jack had come to look at me from behind.  They were much bigger than I thought, so I turned, lined up the nearest one and pulled the trigger on what I thought would be a good, solid shot.  But I had aimed
too high.  When you shoot a fish high on the back, they can tear the spear out, particularly if they get near the reef.  I knew I had to keep tension on the line while I swam up to the surface.  Not having experienced horse-eye jack before, I also didn’t realise what a fight I
had on my hands.  The fish fought tooth and nail to keep me down.  I was absolutely gasping for air when I managed a breath at the surface before being pulled down again.  This happened a couple more times before the fish began to tire. I was in an absolute mess.  There was line and rope everywhere and I had no hands free to even put the snorkel
back in my mouth.  I moved towards the boat slowly, pulling the fish up and on my second attempt I managed to grasp its tail.  Then I slid my other hand under it’s gills and held it in a vice grip. Now what?  Both hands engaged, how was I going to subdue the fish?  It still
had quite a lot of life in it.  I asked for a second gun, and then cancelled the order as I wouldn’t be able to load it.  My hands were full.  I asked for a stringer – but there wasn’t one on the boat.  Then I had an idea.  I pulled the spear through the wound and
threaded it through the gills of the fish. It was mine.  I despatched it with my knife and handed it up onto the boat. Worn out.  Caput.  Finished. What a fight.  It was my most
exciting catch ever and my PB fish.  Over 10kgs.

After that, the boys did another few drifts at the ledge before we headed home and Tony and Rory landed horse-eye jacks – Rory succeeding in a PB fish for the day too.  You gotta love spearfishing on a good day.  Everyone was smiling on the way home…

Wednesday 17 August 2011

Today was black jack day.  I shot and landed a fish that will qualify for a women’s world record, subject to the onerous application process.  Yeeha!

The weather was sunny, with a brisk wind and choppy sea.  We headed out to the south point of the island where there was a bit of protection from the wind.  Our skipper Colin anchored and told us that some game fish had previously been shot off the point.  I jumped in with my gun, loaded and surveyed the reef.  I realise I have mentioned this before, but distance, depth and size is very hard to judge in the water because it is so clear.  I am still unused to it!  Cameron was buddying me and we saw masses of trigger fish, a school of what I think were juvenile pompano (will check this!) and some grouper playing on the bottom ledges.

After about an hour, I spotted a couple of black jack about 10 metres away, swimming at about 8 metres.  They seemed a reasonable size, so I decided to be bold and chase them.  I dived down to their level and then swam directly towards them.  To my surprise, they didn’t swim away, but stayed where they were, eyeing me.  I stopped swimming when I was in range and lined up the biggest one, closest to me.

It was a perfect shot and completely stoned the fish.  The spear entered on the lateral line and exited slightly above on the other side.  I pulled it up and decided it would weigh in at about 5kg.  We put the fish into Cameron’s goodie bag so it didn’t attract sharks while we swam back to the boat.

Diving wasn’t over for the rest of the team; they decided to do some chumming off a marker buoy Colin has deployed offshore.  It is in about 130 metres of water.  A long rope runs off the back of the boat into the current and Colin spent about an hour cutting up fish into small pieces and dropping them to attract the large pelagics.  Although we spotted some dolphin and flying fish, nothing else was sighted during this extremely boring process.  I don’t really count this as spearfishing – apparently it sometimes yields results, but I prefer hunting on reef or pinnacles.

When we got back to the house, we had to start taking photographs of the black jack from all angles, measure it, weigh it (5.5kg) and fill in forms.  I still have to write the description of the hunt for the IUSA committee to review.

I’m happy that I have landed the fish – and so is team black jack – now we can get on with enjoying the incredible reefs and fishing around this amazing island!