Made the crossing over on Saturday from Boynton Inlet, FL to West End, Grand Bahamas. Me, one other dude and 4 ladies. Got all the way across, checked in with customs and then wanted to explore the reef a bit. Only had a couple of hours before dark, so I pulled up into about 30’ of crystal clear water and jumped in with a mask (Water temp = 75). Saw lots of yellowtails, a couple of triggers, a black grouper cruising by, and other small tropicals. As I was getting back into the boat, I realized that my starborad engine was dumping oil around the cowling connection.
Didn’t want to take the cover off at sea, so cruised to our accommodations (2 bedroom Condo at www.bluemarlincove.com) and popped the cover off only to find out that my mechanic had forgotten one small detail on my oil change… That was to put the oil cap back on. Oil was all over the engine and the dip stick said that we were a couple of quarts short. Luckily, the cap was still down in the bottom cowling and I was able to reach it and put it back on. Also found a quart of oil over there.
Got up at the crack of dawn on Sunday and set out to do some trolling. It was a little slow, but can’t complain too much. First fish on was a nice wahoo, but unfortunately, his wahoo buddy decided to come up and eat the swivel and cut us off. Ended up catching 2 wahoos, 1 dolphin, a blackfin tuna and jumped off a sailfish. The sail was tailwalking and going nuts, swimming towards the bow of the boat and we couldn’t come tight on him fast enough to get a hook set. Oh well, everyone got to see it. All 4 girls got to catch a fish and were pretty excited. Had a few more bites on the day as well.
Sun was high in the sky so just before we left, took the ladies back up on the banks into 15’ of water to see what we could find. After cruising around for a few minutes at 1-2 mph, a pair of lemon sharks came swimming under the boat. Pretty neat place over there!
Nice Jason- any knowledge on the new Bahamas fishing regulations i have been reading about…only 1 fish less than 20lbs per boat??
You can keep 18 pelagics (any combination) and as far as bottom fish, it's 60lbs per boat or 20 fish (whichever is the lesser of the two).
And that’s the amount allowed on the boat at any given time. It’s not a daily limit. So if you stayed there for a week, and you limited out on the first day, then you would have to eat what you caught before you could fish any more there. You couldn’t clean and stock up your ice box with yesterday’s catch.
Also, you can only have 6 lines in the water at once.
Also, it seems that the thing to do over there is to deep drop in like 800-900’. The fishery over there with deep dropping is barely touched. Saw a few guys come in with a good number of yellow eye snapper and queen snapper.
