We just got back from West End, Grand Bahama. We stayed at Blue Marlin Cove where Marvin and Shannon took care of us after a hard day of fishing on Saturday.
We arrived a bit late on Friday afternoon, cleared Customs at Old Bahama Bay and ran over to BMC before sundown. We asked the dock master at the gas dock (OBB) to hook us up with some stone crab and to meet us at BMC, but that never happened. But we did get hooked up with several loaves a fresh baked Bahama bread, cinnamon raisan, and another type that should not be disclosed.
So we had to skip the anticipated appeteezer and proceded to stoke up the
grill with charcoals. Cogzwell brought over a gallon size bag of marinated elk sirloin and tenderloins. The Boys, (that's us), tended to the
bbq details and roasted some thyme coated potatoes while Shannon brought out her typical batch of
bbq baked chicken, pigeon peas & rice, plus another added dish of sugar peas we had brought over for one dinner.
The elk came off the super hot
grill, nicely seared and medium rare. We had a mighty fine dinner, with some spectacular wine too, in the dining room. An hour or so of having fun in the game room and we were ready to, "Go fish" in the morning.
High tide was about 9 a.m. so we thought that it may be better Wahoo fishing about an hour or two past the high, but there was still some anxiety about not fishing the early morning hours. We spent those hours doing some snapper fishing; although, we felt no water movement. We managed to catch a few nice Yelloweye, Queens, Green Snapper and a small mystic grouper, but it was more work and more spots than we typically have to do for, a similar amount of fish we have caught in the past. We managed to hook into a ~200# tiger shark on the bottom which caused us delays because we wound up losing an entire deep drop rig. Note to self, this is the time when a stick line cutter would have been the right tool to have handy. After that, we changed up to wahoo fishing from about 10-2 but in all that time we only put one Weehoo into the boat. We did get cutoff and lost a rig with another fish on, so not quite sure what happened there. Needless to say we found the weak spot in JBHC 130 braid.
We fished an hour south of memory Rock to almost the corner. Unfortunately to say, we did not find the fish. Timing, location or lack of Wahoo: that was our results for this trip. The Wahoo bite for us was not on for this trip at the end of February.
We finished the day with some more snapper fishing. Late in the afternoon we caught a few nice size fish: a big queen, a few nicer size yellow-eye and another nice Mystic.
We had another delightful meal Saturday night. Shannon fixed up some nice Panko crusted fried grouper, queen and yellow-eye snapper for dinner.
The weather was expected to start kicking in solid by noon on Sunday. Tom was diligent to get multiple weather fixes and wasn't sleeping easy after dinner time. So we got to packing up the boat at 5 a.m. on Sunday, got a shot of fuel at OBB and we headed back early Sunday morning. There was some initial anxiety about crossing back but we managed to stay on top of the water the entire trip and made it back home in the usual time, albeit a salty wet ride home. (Easier than expected.)
Ya Mon, another Bahamas island adventure.
P.S. - I may as well take a moment to restate the importance to clear customs first when you fish in the Bahamas. We were somewhere south of Memory Rock when a BDF speed boat came up on us fast. They circled around us and kept a distance for about 3 minutes, then in a puff of black smoke were northbound for another inspection. We cleared first: so we presume they simply lets us go about our business of fishing without inspection or radio contact. Or were they trying to get some fishing numbers?
