The most productive piece of structure in western Fiji is a steel buoy with a palm frond tied to it. It sits a dozen miles outside the Mamanuca Islands in water the color of ink, anchored to the bottom by more rope than seems reasonable. The locals call it the FAD, for fish aggregating device, which is a grand name for a float with a beard of weed. Small fish hide under it. Bigger fish come to discuss that with them. Mahi mahi come last and stay longest.
I went out from Denarau with a skipper named Sitiveni in a long open boat with a canvas top and one very loud outboard. He had a cooler of pilchards, two spinning rods, and a system. You do not troll the FAD, he explained. Trolling is for people who like burning fuel. You idle up on the upwind side, toss a handful of cut bait, and watch.
What you watch for is color. The first mahi came up out of the blue like somebody had switched on a lamp down there, electric green with yellow along the belly, and then there were six of them, then a dozen, cutting through the chum with their tall foreheads out of the water. Sitiveni handed me a rod with a whole pilchard on it and said to throw it anywhere. I threw it anywhere. A bull of maybe twenty pounds ate it before the bail was closed.
A hooked mahi does everything at once. This one jumped four times in the first ten seconds, ran at the boat, ran away from the boat, and then remembered the buoy. That is the whole difficulty of a FAD. The fish live under a rope, and they know where it is. Sitiveni backed the boat away with one hand and pointed with the other, calling out directions I mostly followed. The fish made two passes at the mooring line and missed both, and then it was beside the boat, lit up gold and green, changing color while I looked at it.
We kept three and left the school feeding, which Sitiveni said is the rule, since the same fish will be there tomorrow and so will he. On the run home he cut one into strips and dressed it with lime, coconut cream and chili out of a jam jar. Kokoda, he said, breakfast. I asked who looks after the buoy. He shrugged and said the fisheries people put it out and the ocean decides how long it stays. The last one broke loose in a cyclone and turned up months later in Vanuatu, still, he assumes, with fish under it.
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