Anglers head out of Cargill Creek at the Andros Island Bonefish Club.

Pete’s fly rod was bowed up witha yellowfin tuna, as our 24-foot flat-bottom skiff drifted in 4,000 feet of purple water. We drifted quietly, not far from one of the moored Navy buoys in the Tongue of the Ocean, very deep water but only a few minutes from dry land. As the tuna sprinted around like an oversize bonito on amphetamines, our guide Ricardo glanced at the buoy 100 yards away, where prowled on the surface a half dozen fat sharks in the 7-foot range. Lazy brutes, they hung around the buoy like gargantuan cobia, and seldom ventured far. Fish too close to the buoy, and they grab your fish for lunch. Topple in the water there and it really gets exciting. As much as I wanted to shoot underwater photos under the buoy, I was advised against it. Three local fishermen are missing limbs after a bad day with sharks, and I doubt they even made the Discovery Channel.

Hordes of skipjack tuna continued to blast and free-jump around us, but this yellowfin took its sweet time getting landed on a 10-weight rod. Though tuna aren’t big in winter, my new friends assured me the average tuna is 80 or 90 pounds and bigger each summer. (A July e-mail from the lads said they were using live jacks and hooking awesome yellowfins from the same skiff.) That’s why I made a mental note to book another trip.

And not just for tuna: The guides at nearby Fresh Creek assured me mutton snapper are plentiful on the flats during May, something I’ve always wanted to see. Casting to a school of cherry red tails on a protected, inshore flat has a certain appeal. Bonefish guides and fly rodders have been known to grow weak at the knees at the sight of even a single mutton tailing in thin water, almost a rarity in Florida these days. Though I was to cancel two trips to Andros in May and June because of inclement weather, the guys were tearing up the big muttons inside the creeks at night, though they said the mosquitoes were amazing. (Andros is just like Florida many years ago, and that includes not spraying for mosquitoes. The bugs are gone in winter, however.)

As for deeper water, our quiet drifts and occasional slow trolls with small, diving plugs on spin gear produced a handful of tuna that day, if we kept a respectful 100 yards or more from the buoy’s sharks. We had hoped for more fish, including mahi, where many had been caught the week before—even though a persistent, large blue marlin kept feeding on the mahi and spoiling the action. On the weekday we fished there, two other Bahamas boats appeared with Florida captains, and immediately began live-chumming with large pilchards, like they were fishing for snook in the mangroves. My Bahamian friends were disappointed with that.

“It shuts down the action every time these guys show up and do that,” said Ricardo. “A mahi eats a few free pilchards, and that’s it, he’s done for the day. I’ve seen boats slinging out buckets of live chum at these buoys. Why do they do that? These fish are hungry, or they wouldn’t be here. The fish aren’t stupid; they see pilchards out here that don’t belong in deep water, and motors rumbling overhead, and many of them figure out something’s not right. But if you drift quietly, tossing artificials, watch what happens. And it doesn’t spoil the action for other boats.”

It should be noted that smaller boats that don’t carry live chum have a tough time competing against those that do. On the other hand, we caught the only fish landed this day. When the two chum boats roared away empty-handed, (one was a 75-footer returning to Nassau), another boat, a 25-footer, appeared. They made several drifts too near the buoy, but refused our advice to shut off their motor. They appeared to be concerned about deep water and getting their motor started again. They finally caught one oceanic triggerfish and left. So, our flat-bottom boat certainly outfished three much bigger offshore vessels.

Larry Kinder nabbed this runaway bone on fly during the trip.

Back inshore over the huge barrier reef, laden with healthy coral and incredible dropoffs, we shook out a couple of lipped diving plugs—trolling up and down about a mile. Tiger grouper were the dominant predator, as well as barracuda. Our tally was eight grouper and four ’cudas. Few people, especially the locals, ever troll this reef, preferring instead to anchor and use handlines.