Dry land never looked so pretty. After smashing through squalls for two hours in a one-engine Cessna Grand Caravan, I nearly knocked over the customs officers in search of a rum drink. I was elated to be in Great Exuma.
I downed a Goombay Smash and took quite a few deep breaths on the 15-minute cab ride to Emerald Bay, Exuma's newest resort in the southern Bahamas. My jitters from the flight quickly subsided when I saw the crystal waters off the Four Seasons Hotel that would be home for the next few days.
I was in town to fish the third leg of the 2006 Bahamas Billfish Championship. The Marina at Emerald Bay had recently finished phase one, and the BBC decided to break it in with style. You could hear the sound of pounding hammers around the marina as the building continued. There was still plenty of work to do, but the new concrete floating docks provided safekeeping for some of the sport's best crews. I could tell this marina will rank among the best in the Caribbean when completed.
The 38 boats that showed up to fish the BBC took up nearly all the existing dock space at the marina, but there will be more than enough room at project's end. Boaters will have 150 slips to choose from for vessels up to 225 feet. A dry-storage building will also house boats up to 40 feet. And, with a depth of 14 feet in the harbor, you can expect to see lots of megayachts making port in Emerald Bay.
Billfish and the Bahamas
Fishing in the Bahamas can be fickle. Good days, when you see four or more blue marlin, can be followed by a week without a bite. But you've got to take the good with the bad. The BBC tournament committee scheduled the event in Exuma right after the full moon in mid-May, hoping for the best bite, but sometimes the fish just don't cooperate.
I met Capt. Terry Moore well before dawn on the deck of the Blue Rising, a 63-foot Bertram demo boat with every bell and whistle imaginable and launched less than two weeks before the tournament. He planned to make a 30-mile run to Cape Santa Maria, the north point of Long Island. "There's some marlin in close between the southern end of Exuma and the north point of Long Island. We did pretty good there yesterday. We raised three whites and a blue," he said. Unfortunately, none of those fish stuck, which seemed to be the case for most boats in the tournament. Many boats raised blues and whites, but couldn't get the sluggish fish to bite. "They were just window-shopping," Moore says.
We pulled a spread of five lines including naked ballyhoo and softhead and custom lures. For teasers we ran a daisy chain of bowling pins off the left cleat and a Mold Craft fender teaser off the right. From the bridge of the Bertram, the spread looked perfect, but we didn't see a single billfish that day. We did, however, manage to catch a barrage of dolphin and a barracuda to break up the day.
Capt. Doug Rowe, an experienced Florida captain who now runs the Exuma-based Fish Rowe Charters aboard his 37-foot Hatteras, assured me that the marlin do cooperate in these waters. "We've had some amazing days right here in Exuma Sound," he says. "I've had some of my best days just out front when all these other boats hightailed it to Cat or Rum."
Rowe says the dolphin and wahoo fishing out of Exuma stands up to that of any other port in the Bahamas. "From January through the end of May, the dolphin and wahoo fishing is fantastic." Rowe has caught wahoo upwards of 90 pounds.
I spent the next day fishing aboard the Catfish, a 42-foot Tiara Express captained by Billy "Ho-Dad" Hogle. We motored back over to Long Island, laid down the outriggers and set out the spread. A couple of hours after lines in, all hands on deck perked up as a nice blue one busted through the spread. Hogle called out, "Right long! Right long!" as an angler made his way over to the rod hoping the reel would blow up and start screaming. The fish followed the lure for a split second, took one swipe at it and faded off. We spent the next two hours in the same area trying to raise him again, but the fish was gone.
Location, Location, Location
After four days of fishing, the 38 competing boats released 12 blue marlin, 13 whites and one sailfish. The crew of the El Cazador, a 65-foot Viking, caught two blues and one white on the last day, catapulting them into first place.
Although the fishing was slow, the tournament unveiled Emerald Bay to a whole new host of boaters. The marina offers high-quality fuel and accommodations, which will open up the southern Bahamas to more transient boaters. Exuma is perfectly located to access the fishing found off other Bahamas hot spots, including Rum Cay, about 70 miles away; Cat Island, 45 miles; and San Salvador, some 60 miles. With such good fishing in all directions, it's a safe assumption that Emerald Bay will fill up with sportfishing boats.
