Unexcused Absences

Mid May to mid June – Once back in the central Exumas after our wonderful cruise to Cat Island and the southern Exumas, time seemed to fly for the final third of our Bahamas trip. The winds also shifted to their “summer” direction (more south-easterly than easterly) and with that, the fishing stopped cold.

Fortunately, there are other things to do besides deep-sea fishing, like snorkeling in the now wonderfully warm water, pot luck dinners on the beach with fellow boaters, and visiting our friends who manage private islands. Oh, and we did some work for our clients. The only time we left the Staniel Cay / Pipe Creek area was to go north for a visit to Shroud Cay.

The lack of fishing (or more precisely, the lack of fish) was particularly interesting. After our bonanza of fish-catching earlier in the season, we assumed we were entitled to catch fish at will. But we had forgotten a cardinal rule of fishing, that also apparently applies to investing; past performance is no guarantee of future returns. The locals, of course, know this, but we willfully chose to ignore local knowledge. We, and our friends on Forever Young, continued to head to sea after the morning beach workout, and we continued to come up empty.

Eventually, a little internet researched showed why. When the wind blows from the East or North-East, the plankton from the Atlantic Ocean get pushed up against the Exuma chain of islands. The little fish eat the plankton, the bait fish eat the little fish, and the game fish come in for the bait fish (at which point we show up with our arsenal of fishing gear). But when the wind shifts to the South-East, the plankton don’t accumulate against the island chain but get blown to the North and West. The big fish follow the food chain, and voila, no fish in the central Exumas.

But otherwise, life was very, very good. With water temperatures in the low to mid 80’s, swimming was delicious, and the beach parties were frequent and fun. We did catch a final Mahi well offshore of Shroud Cay during our trip to that island (the squiggly line in near the top of our GPS track below where we followed some seabirds). There weren’t any specific events or stories that stand out, at least none that we can write about without compromising various private islands, so I’ll wrap up our 2017 cruise with a bunch of photos from our final month in the Bahamas.