Unexcused Absences

May, 2018 — Central Bahamas. Early May found the crew of Miss Adventure on the way to Conception Island, a remote national park located between Long Island and Cat Island. Visiting Conception is difficult on our trawler; we need two days of calm weather to get there, at least a day of calm to visit, and two days of calm to return to the protected waters of the Exumas. It is possible to stage at either the northern end of Long Island or the southern end of Cat, but neither of those anchorages is very protected.

We made it over from the Exumas just fine, although I stopped counting after we had hooked five Barracuda and zero Mahi. The waters off the northern tip of Long Island are supposed to be great for fishing, but apparently, no one informed the fish of our arrival.

The fishing became more challenging when we hooked the final barracuda 20 miles offshore in water that was a mile deep. That’s pretty far offshore for a fish that is nominally a reef dweller! The fish managed to tangle the line on the boat as we brought him in. This meant that I couldn’t use the fishing pole to reel him. Instead, I hauled the rest of the line in by hand. He was pretty big, at least 4 feet in length. I released him back into the ocean and then we set about extricating the boat from the fishing line. Donning mask and snorkel, favorite wife jumped into the (mile deep) water, swimming under the boat to untangle the line. Fortunately, it was easily unraveled. Unfortunately, the large barracuda had decided to rest under the boat after being released. Fortunately, he didn’t take revenge, merely watched the process with curiosity.

Miss A anchored at Conception Island

Our two nights in Conception were pretty nice, and somehow we dodged (while at anchor) several large thunderstorms, one of which came so close that we could see rain on the water off the port side of the boat but not the starboard. The island itself is a beautiful, wild place, which we shared with only a couple other boats. The snorkeling on the north side was surprisingly below average, but the dinghy cruise through the mangrove swamp was quite nice – lots of turtles and baby sharks to see.

The northern reef at Conception

Mangrove swamp

A very close storm at Conception

After two nights, the weather was looking decidedly unsettled, so we packed up and pointed for the south tip of Cat Island. This day the Mahi were out in full force. Unfortunately, they were so big that we lost all four we hooked. One big male actually bent the hook and escaped just as I was reaching down with the gaff, and the other three either broke the leader or the line – very frustrating to arrive in Hawks Nest Marina with nothing to show for our lost lures. It was doubly bad because all around us were the crews of big sportfish boats talking about how many fish they had caught that day.

What you don’t want to see in open water

I guess the story of our pathetic fishing expedition made the rounds because one group of sportfish guys came by and gave us some nice lures to make up for our lost ones, and another group gave us two-gallon bags of fillets, one each of Mahi and Tuna. We repaid the favor after dark by showing up with a bottle of rum and the makings for ‘Ti Punch (a French Caribbean rum drink), so a frustrating day turned into a fun gathering until the wee hours with a really nice group of fisher-folk.

The next day, on our way back to the Exumas, the frustration continued — we hooked a Tuna off the Tartar Banks, only to have a shark say thanks very much for disabling him, I’ll be taking that now. About halfway across on our 50-mile trip we finally managed to land a Mahi, breaking the curse (or so we thought); it turned out to be our last Mahi for the following 5 weeks.

Our “crossing from Cat Island” Mahi

Heather performing “fillet surgery”

Our anchorage back in the Exumas at Farmers Cay

May is normally prime fishing season in the Exumas. In prior years the fish practically jump in the boat for you. This year was quite different — practically no one, neither locals nor cruisers, was catching fish. We were consoled, however, with the usual cruiser-lifestyle fun stuff; there were parties with cruiser friends, pig roasts and bbq’s on Staniel, a royal-wedding-watching breakfast, games of dominoes on rainy afternoons, and our first experience deep-drop fishing.

Freshly-baked muffins for the wedding breakfast

Josh preparing the roasted pig

Roger and I sport our parrot-head hats

The anchorage at Big Major Spot

Deep drop is sort of the opposite of trolling, where you drag lures or bait along the water surface at about 6 knots. For deep drop, you try to hold the boat still in the water while using a high-speed motorized reel to drop a cluster of baited hooks straight down to the bottom in ~800 feet of water. The fish start biting pretty much right away, and after 90 seconds or so you reel up some snapper. On a short expedition with the manager of [redacted] Cay we caught 7 snapper of several species; Blackfin, Queen, Vermillion, and Silk. This was followed by an obligatory fish fry on the island that evening.

Dropping the line

Deep-drop success

Our deep-drop haul

Fried snapper deliciousness

So other than the lack of gamefish, and quite a bit more rain than normal, May in the out-islands was pretty darned good. The only real flaw with May was that it meant we were close to June, which meant we would have to point Miss A back towards Florida in only a couple more weeks.

A rare look at dawn (for us)

The morning beach gang at Big Major Spot

One more look at Conception Island