After arriving at Old Bahama Bay—itself a great destination for visiting anglers—we checked in with immigration and then motored down the island a few miles away to Bootle Bay Fishing Lodge, where we were greeted by the owner, amiable Vida Hepburn, and his friendly staff. Vida grew up fishing at this same site with his Uncle “Baby Doc” Grant, who taught him how to fish in his old Chris Craft boat. Vida still talks of his uncle’s exploits—of Bahamas record tuna weighing up to 845 pounds back in the ’70s. They both loved fishing and Vida, in turn, took his uncle fishing one last time, just before “Baby Doc” died a few years ago.

Marinas in the lee of Grand Bahama--such as Old Bahama Bay, shown here--recovered quickly from huricane season.

Vida runs the lodge and the fishing while his wife, Lashanda, a gourmet chef, manages the kitchen staff. They turn out some of the best seafood and chicken souse you’ll find anywhere. Their steamed fish, lightly fried and served in a sauce, tastes nothing like its name and will melt in your mouth.

We quickly checked in, and then picked Vida’s brain about the fishing before unloading some of our gear. Hotspots change from day to day, especially for trolling. Eager to drop our lines, we ventured just offshore and began deep-dropping with an electric reel outfit and a 6-hook rig, weighted with a 6-pound sash weight. We used squid, cutbait and whole baits.

The year before, we’d launched our first half-day of fishing in the same area, using conventional tackle and anchoring up in 90 to 100 feet of water. Then, we put out some chum and soon had yellowtail, mutton snapper, cero mackerel and other action right away.

This trip, though, we motored out deeper to 900 to 1,200 feet where we dropped our first rigs. We weren’t getting much action, so we moved in to 500- to 700-foot depths and soon began reeling in yellow-eye snapper, grouper and silk snapper. Also, we caught a couple of sharks and barracuda, which cut some of our fish off before we could get them aboard.

When deep-dropping, anglers must become conservationists and decide when enough’s enough. Most of the fish you catch—besides sharks and barracudas—must be kept because they don’t survive the ascent from such depths. This was unlike the fishing we did on the first trip in shallower water where we could be selective and return fish we did not want to keep.

Shallower still, we anchored and broke out conventional tackle to catch yellowtail snapper, mutton snapper, gray snapper and groupers. We enjoyed the variety.

Bottom and drift fishing proved very good, but trolling would be the highlight of the trip for Kyle and Kinzy. On the second day, they ventured offshore while I stayed on the island for some shallow water angling on fly and spinning gear. I caught lots of snapper, blue runners, mackerel and hooked some bones, but lost several that broke me off in the mangroves. My pals had better luck on dolphin than I had on bones.

In fact, Kinzy and Kyle had awesome luck. They should have known it was going to be their day when they found a very large cooler bobbing along the surface early into their trip.

“We pulled the cooler aboard,” said Kyle, “and when we opened it, we found it filled with cans of drinks. That was right before we found the long stretch of weedlines and the dolphin action.”

I asked Kinzy about his favorite part of the trip.

“Filling our newfound cooler with dolphin,” he said with a grin.

Kyle and Kinzy trolled between Bootle Bay and Great Isaac to the southeast. Plastics and tuna feather rigs enticed fish when they located sargasso weeds loaded with dolphin. The fishing was awesome during each run by the weeds. They both caught big dolphin, in the 20-pound class, picking up fish on almost every pass along a 2- to 3-mile stretch.

After all the dolphin action the two headed toward Great Isaac to catch grouper, yelloweye snapper and hefty margates. When they returned, we spent the next hour or so cleaning fish and washing down the boat and rinsing the reels. We took some fillets to the kitchen and when we finished our work, we retired to the dining room for a scrumptious fresh catch of the day.

FS