Bahamas Report

[Anxiety Attack]

Well, I'm finally back from 10 days in Nassau and I have more wind burn to deal with than sunburn!

Arrived Thursday the 17th and registered for the tournament Thursday night. Had a few with the crew and rigged up. Fished a 1/2 charter out of Nassau on Friday AM and managed to only boat 1 for 3 on sails that all hit at the same time. A few gaffers mixed in was the damage on Friday.

Friday afternoon we headed over to Highbourne Cay (40 mile run) where we stayed and fished the Marlin Marine Tournament. What a beautiful place for those of you that have never been there. Hundreds of Nurse Sharks, bonefish and all types of snapper in five feet of water off the end of the dock. The water is crystal clear with amazing beaches. Spent Friday preparing for the Tourney on Saturday and Sunday.

Saturday was absolutely beatiful. Flat with just a slight chop on the water. We headed all the way to "The Bridge" off Little San Salvador. The water and conditions were perfect. We absolutely could not keep the dolphin off of our baits. The tournament is an "OTD" tournament with only 6 fish allowed per boat + billfish release points. All the Dolphin were right in the 15-25lb. class. We came across some real nice drifts ( a white plastic beach chair and an old balled up net) We had a heck of a time getting our baits back and releasing the dolphin back in the boat. We had two or three at a time flopping around in the back, while our other baits were getting pounded. All and all, we had a great day, but only managed Dolphin and one small tuna.

Saturday night the 19th the wind started blowing and did not stop till today. It was pretty snotty on Sunday and managed to get a nice Wahoo, Four Dolphin that we kept and a 20lb. Yellowfin. The "Green Death" that Deep C refers to hit us hard again and could not keep those snots off our bait. It didn't matter how big you went, they would hit it. We headed back to Nassau Sunday night and weighed in our six fish. We figured we didn't really do anything in the tournament, since we had heard of a couple of livebaiters off of Spanish Wells had some decent action on the large Tuna plus a couple of billfish releases. There were 21 boats in the tournament and it turned out that my mother-in-law won the ladies division and my father-in-law won top rod day one. The boat took third overall, which totally surprised us. We did manage second last year and thought we weren't even close this year. Oh well, ya never know!

Fished a AM charter on Monday out of Nassau with the wind howling 25-30+ straight out of the NE. Lost a nice billfish that never seemed to be hooked right. We did manage a couple of Dolphin and blackfin.

The rest of the week was four charter cancelations on our part due to the weather. If anything, the wind only picked up as the week went along. Spent the week waxing and polishing every square inch of the 52' Viking and came home Saturday night.

Lousy weather plus a couple days on the water beats work any day.

I do have some nice video of the sail and bailing 20lb. dolphin. I will post it later in the week.

www.bigfishchartersinc.com

Fish On,

Mike

[brandon558]

Nice report there Capt..i love the waters around Nassau. Fished the area about 3 years ago. Beautiful place!

Nice job in the tourny 3rd aint bad at all...pretty work.

Cant wait to see the vids.

Brandon