Going loco in ACAPULCO
ON A BEACH AT A VILLAGE south of Acapulco in Mexico, a young Jürgen Oeder watched a handline fisherman unloading a sailfish. To him it seemed huge and the words ‘I want to catch one of those’ flashed through his mind. That was in 1981 and, as the student admired that fish, he made a quick calculation. If he endured one week eating only bananas, then he could afford the fishing trip out of his travel budget for his backpacking tour with friends.
“The next day I went out fishing for sailfish with the old man. The fisherman’s equipment was minimalistic, just a piece of wood wrapped with a heavy monofilament line and terminating in a steel wire trace and a hook, a pair of sloppy cotton gloves, some small baitfish and a priest to kill the prey. That was it,” he recalled.
“We were barely two miles out to sea when the fisherman spotted dorsal and tail fins
