Living in The Bahamas - Fishing 1500' Deep

Living in the Bahamas
Fishing 1500 Feet Deep

After a late Saturday night’s excitement with a lost boat, Sunday morning started off slow. Our ladies decided to hang out by the pool and shop after lunch. Doc, Sheldon, and I woke late. We ate a leisurely breakfast next to the pool where Sheldon taught me to drink coffee Jamaican style, using sweetened, condensed milk for a thick, rich flavor. We slowly gassed up Doc’s boat and left port for a fishing expedition.
“I like this Cat,” I observed. “It has a lot more room than my boat.”
"With more room, I can bring more gear. Want to drive for a while?"
“I haven’t driven dual outboards before.”
“No problem, England, you can do it. Take the wheel. The smooth ride of these twin hulls will grow on you, you know.”
True to his prediction, I cruised an easy 22 knots in three-foot seas, something not possible on Boat Tales’ monohull. Unlike my loud two-stroke engine, his twin Suzuki 140 four-strokes barely whispered, even at full speed. When we stopped, the twin hulls gave a stable drift instead of rolling like a monohull. Yes, his twin hulls grow on me fast.
With Andros billed as the Bonefish Capital of the World, we couldn’t pass up an opportunity to find some of those highly elusive ghosts. At the suggestion of a friendly guide the night before, I drove ten miles northward outside the reefs in spectacular clear water to Staniard Creek. Incredibly azure water put me in a dream world I had not known before. Fearing I might run aground on a reef or tear up his props, I gave Doc the wheel for shallow passage. He steered us through the marked Staniard channel. Past the reef, he continued a hundred yards up a winding, freshwater creek before gently pulling onto a sand bar.
Sheldon, not interested in fly fishing, stayed aboard to nurse a drink while Doc and I slipped overboard. After Doc gave me a quick lesson on throwing an imitation crab on a fly rod, we crept through shallow water and rounded a corner. We froze. There they lay schooled, waiting for us. Grey flashes at twenty feet; too close to drop a fly on, but Doc tried anyway. After thirty feet of his line went out with just two quick flips of his rod, he overshot the bonefish, tangling his lure in a mangrove bush behind them. He broke his line trying to free the crab, then stepped aside and motioned for me to cast.
I stepped back to increase my distance, then whipped my rod up and down, slowly letting short lengths of line out. I gently dropped an imitation crab on top of the school. With a quick swirl, a large bonefish inhaled it. I pulled hard to set the hook, deeply arching my rod.
“Alright,” I declared as Sheldon cheered behind me.
Doc watched with a big smile. “Bring him in, England.”
The angry fish raced across the creek so fast that I could hear my line slicing through the water. The other bonefish spooked and fled for mangroves. My fish tried to follow them, but I was determined to keep it in open water. I pulled sideways on the rod to change the fish’s direction. It turned back to deeper, clear water where I had a full view of a two-foot-long, silver beauty. When it surfaced, I saw a black eye roll in anger. With a flick of his tail, it set off on another run for safety toward the mangroves.
“Oh no you don’t,” I said. “You’re not getting in there.”
I pulled hard on my rod, burning my thumb on the spool as line stripped away. The furious fish changed direction, reversing toward me, putting a curve in line floating on the water. I raised my rod tip high, reeling frantically to regain slack. It changed direction again, headed for another bank of mangroves, then reversed yet again. With a splash, the bonefish dove into dark-rooted plants, fouling my line. I tried to pull it from the tangled cavern. Snap, my line broke and the clever fish escaped. My head dropped in disappointment as sweat dripped off my nose.
Doc laughed. “Good fight, England.”
“Why don’t we go dive and look for snapper.”
“Good idea,” jeered Sheldon. “We’re tired of watching you lose fish.”
We motored out of the creek to begin exploring Andros’ barrier reef comprised of an orange and gold staghorn coral forest rising to the surface from twenty feet down. Countless brain corals, multicolored leather corals, sea fans, and neon reef fish scattered throughout the reef created our own spectacular aquarium. We snorkeled for hours through spectacular living reefs. However, we found no lobsters and few snapper or grouper. Despite closed seasons and size regulations, reefs along Andros were long fished out.
When we tired of snorkeling, Doc suggested, “Let’s try something different. I brought a new rig for deep dropping.”
“What’s that?” Sheldon asked.
“I’ll teach you something new, big brother.”
We moved across azure water to a sharp color change to indigo blue a mile offshore where a sharp wall dropped 1,500-feet. Doc brought out a new electric reel with 3,000 feet of 100-pound Dacron line. He mounted it on a rod, essentially a hollow, metal broomstick tipped with a pulley. He attached a five-pound weight to the line, along with a flashing strobe light and a chicken-rig of five large, circle hooks with whole squid. After Doc dropped the bait, I held the boat stationary against a strong current by bumping our engines in and out of gear while watching the GPS screen. The rig sank into deep, dark water for five minutes before hitting the bottom. Doc raised the line a few feet to keep from tangling on bottom rocks. We settled back to watch the fat rod with anticipation.
Doc announced, “Wait now, it won’t take long.”
Sure enough, a strike soon bounced the rod up and down.
“There’s a fish.” He beamed.
Sheldon cheered, "Yeah, man." Doc hit a button on his electric reel, pulling in several feet of line to set the hook. Then he stopped the reel.
“What are you waiting for?” Sheldon asked.
“Another fish. There’s more than one hook.”
“Oh.”
The rod continued to bob. When it dropped hard, Doc pushed the button to reel in a few more feet of line, then stopped again.
“If we ever bring this up, it’ll be loaded with fish,” I commented to Sheldon.
“I’m ready. While we wait, let’s have a drink.”
“Mix ‘em up, bartender,” I replied. “We need a round.”
He mixed vodka with cranberry juice to lubricate our crew.
“Doc, can you find the Buffett channel on your satellite radio?” I asked.
"Yman." When he dialed in Radio Margaritaville, we rocked far away from the world to a tropical beat of Jimmy’s island music.
“It doesn’t get any better than this,” I said with a big smile.
The rod tip danced again. Doc pushed the retrieve button, and we watched line come in while the rod jerked.
“This sure is hard work.” I teased him.
“You just wait to see what we get.”
Ten minutes later, the flashing strobe light rose from the deep, followed by four strange fish with air bladders protruding from their mouths.
“What kind of fish are those?” I asked Doc.
“There are two silk snappers, a blind shark, and a black scombrops. These deep-water fish are always a surprise.”
Sheldon twisted his face, “Are we gonna eat them?”
“I don’t trust that funny looking scombrops; he might give us ciguatera sickness,” I chimed in.
Many reef fish and barracuda carried ciguatera bacteria that inflicted days of intense agony on those foolish enough to partake of it. Barracuda meat tasted like sweet bread, tempting many Bahamians to take chances on illness for a prized meal. Signs in restaurants read “Eat de Barry at Your Own Risk.” One of the guys in my office bragged about being sick seven times from eating de Barry.
“I’m not sure about that one, but we’ll keep the others.”
Doc released the suspicious fish after venting its air bladder. I re-baited hooks and dropped the rig down again.
“How’s work going?” Doc asked while watching the reel unwind.
"It's going good. Howard leaves me alone, and I do what needs to be done. There's no one to delegate work to. Whatever gets done each day is only what I personally have time and energy for. I only get about three hours of work a day out of my crew, but as long as I accept that and don't push them for more, we get along fine. They don't sabotage me like they do other ex-pats. They are happy as long as I keep them supplied with equipment."
“Sounds like you found your groove.”
"It's alright. I'm a big fish in a little pond. Back in Florida, I was a little fish in a big pond. I can make a difference here and do my job right, so I'm happy. In the meantime, we can fish a lot.”
Doc looked at me with a wry smile, “It’s not so bad, you know, being a big fish in a small pond."
“I agree. Though I need to get off the rock every couple of months for a taste of stateside life and food.”
"Yeah, man. I return to Jamaica often to get away.”
“We’re building a house in Abaco. We’ll move there after my contract ends.”
“I hear you. You have to live somewhere.”
A couple more deep drops filled Doc’s fish box with seldom seen denizens from the deep.
Sheldon complained, “I’m tired of watching that rod and pushing a button. What do you say we troll for a while and do some real fishing?”
“We been doing more drinking than fishing,” I teased Doc.
We brought in the deep rig and ran five miles to AUTEC’s buoy. Along the way, Doc cranked up his satellite stereo to play booming reggae music with a beat pounding through special subwoofers mounted in the deck. A half-mile from the buoy, he stopped to pull out a box from below.
“England, check out my new binoculars.” He proudly passed them to me.
“I’ve never seen anything like these. What are they?”
"Image stabilized binoculars with electronic gyroscopes and liquid-filled prisms that compensate for moving hands and boats. I use them to spot birds and tuna up to a mile away. They really give us an advantage on rolling seas."
I raised the large lenses to my eyes. Normal binoculars were useless on a bouncing boat. However, these field glasses focused on the buoy, clear and still, despite the rough water.
“They’re unbelievable. You have great toys, Doc. I can tell we’re going to get along fine.”
“Watch for tuna now.”
I scanned the area until I saw telltale tuna birds swirling nearby.
“I see birds, just like yesterday. Are fish always here?”
“Most of the time. The buoy is an oasis in an ocean desert. Little fish hide under it while big patrol down deep. Tuna and dolphin always move around, but they come back every hour or two for a look-see.”
“Do you think this music will scare them away?”
“Don’t you know that fish like Bob Marley?” He laughed.
“We’re fishing Bahamian style now,” I said with a big grin, enjoying one of the magic reasons I moved to the tropics.
We trolled ballyhoo lures through swarms of birds diving on thrashing fish near the buoy. When a rod bent down hard, Doc grabbed it. After a brief struggle, he landed a small yellowfin tuna. By then, the birds had moved almost out of sight. We pulled in our lures to race at twenty-five knots through three-foot waves. We pulled ahead of the birds, then dropped our baits again.
After boating two more yellowfins, Doc said, “Let’s try something different.”
“Like what?” Sheldon asked.
“Bring that kite out of the cabin.”
"I've heard of kite fishing but never tried it before,” I remarked.
“I’ll teach you something new. Take the controls and hold us steady while I rig my kite.”
“Doc, you’ve got all the gear any fisherman needs.”
He attached a four-foot, black kite to a fishing rod. When I turned into the wind to pull the kite tight, Doc let out twenty feet of line. Next, he attached an outrigger clip to the kite’s line and threaded a baited line from another rod through the clip’s swivel. He released both lines, letting a stiff breeze take the kite and baited line back a hundred feet. The bait swung above the ocean, so he loosened the second rod’s drag to drop the ballyhoo to the water. Then he raised the bait, letting it bounce from wave top to wave top to give an illusion of ballyhoo jumping across the surface. I slowly trolled toward the buoy.
A few minutes later, Sheldon pointed with excitement. “There’s a fish near the buoy.”
I turned to see a three-foot bull dolphin racing in long leaps toward our splashing bait. It was lit up neon green and gold, charging to his next meal. We watched with anticipation as the energized fish jumped high to crash on our bait. Line snapped loose from the kite’s clip and sizzled off the reel with a wonderful fish sound.
“Fish on!” Doc yelled.
Sheldon picked up the rod to set the hook with a hard jerk, flipping the fish in midair. The angry dolphin gave an aerial show, leaping with big splashes while thrashing its head against the line’s pull. Sheldon gradually muscled the bull in as I steered to keep the clever fish from circling around the prop to cut the line.
The fish was twenty feet from the transom when I yelled, “Shark!”
Behind the dolphin, a six-foot blacktip shark rose from the deep, dark water.
“Reel faster!” Doc yelled.
With renewed energy, Sheldon frantically reeled. His dolphin made furious jerks from side to side as doom approached. The shark zeroed in relentlessly on its trapped dinner. Sheldon gave one last furious heave on his rod, but the shark, not to be denied, grabbed the fish. Down went Sheldon’s rod, almost pulling him overboard. Pressure on his rod instantly released when the shark severed the fish, sending Sheldon backward, crashing into the opposite gunnel amid curses and cries of pain. The shark flipped its tail and disappeared in a large boil with its prize. Sheldon staggered to his feet and reeled in the dolphin’s head. We looked at each other in shock, replaying the chaotic scene in our minds.
“There’s nothing we could have done,” I said.
“I’m going to need bigger reels,” Doc replied.
Sheldon shook his head. “That wouldn’t have helped.”
“There’s no use catching any more fish here with that thief hanging out below,” I said. “Let’s go back to the bar.”
We pulled in the kite, then steered westward to Fresh Creek with Bob Marley booming on our stereo. I went below deck to open the front hatch. I stepped up on a bunk to raise my head above the front deck. We raced toward a golden sun falling on mysterious, green Andros. I leaned forward with my stomach pressed against the hatch and reached for an endless blue sky. As salt air blew across my face, I inhaled a wonderful smell of tropical water. I turned to Doc, motioning for him to go faster. Maybe, just maybe, we could catch that elusive sun before it splashed into the sea. This is why I had escaped to the islands, to find the magic. I might not ever leave.