Chub Cay, Bahamas

"Ooohhh, this fish is heavy," grunted "Chefie" Rufus Sands as he pulled the 20-pound margate to the surface, fist over fist in the traditional Bahamian handline style. He glanced and smiled at the 2-pound mutton snapper splashing at the jig end of my high-tech, $500 combo, and chuckled, 1 got another handline in my box if you want to catch a good fish."

Not too proud to pass up a new fishing experience, I baited up a hook tied to 100-pound mono with an overhand knot, with a 2-ounce rusty steel nut positioned above, and slipped it over the side, letting fifty feet of line peel off of a plastic spool bouncing around the deck at my feet. No sooner had it bottomed out than I felt a fish sniffing at my bait. Taking no notice of Chefie's style of setting the hook, I reared back my arm in a half circle arc that nearly ripped my shoulder from its socket.

"No, no," scolded Chefie. "Just go hand over hand and start pulling it in. That will set the hook good enough."

Rufus is the chef at the restaurant at Chub Cay, where wife Cathy and I spent a week beachcombing, fishing and snorkeling on our summer vacation. During the late summer "off season," the many sportfishing boats that pursue billfish and wahoo in Tongue of the Ocean are nowhere to be found, owners and crew opting instead to ply their home waters, which, given the list of sports and business luminaries who belong to the club, could be anywhere from Narragansett to Houston. Jack Nicklaus has two bonefish skiffs here, and flies in on the Sea Bear. Dale Ernhardt's boat is named Sunday Money. So when I asked some locals at the dock who was the best reef fisherman on the island, the answer was not a globetrotting charter captain at all, but was instead the cook, "Chefie."

Chefie's unconventional advice on hooking bottom fish went against everything I'd ever been taught. But, when I flipped the smallish Nassau grouper over the rail, I understood at once how this

centuries-old method of handlining had put many a reef fish in the pot for a Bahamian fish stew dinner.

The handline experience wasn't the only Bahamian first that Chefie guided me to. The day before, Chefie had baked a 3-pound slab of skin-on bonefish fillet for me to sample, covered in onions and peppers and dry baked in an oven. Halfway through the process, Chefie had removed as many of the bones as he could, and before that, the guide wielding the fillet knife had delicately cut several strips of bones from the fillet, while answering my questions about how to eat a bonefish with "at your own risk, that's how to eat a bonefish." But in spite of all their preparation, I still found myself picking bones from my mouth and piling them on the side of my plate in the fashion of stacking small branches to start a campfire. The delicate flavor was something akin to roast pork, and I wouldn't mind eating it again, if ever I find a "good woman" to pick the bones for me.

What gave rise to this bonefish-eating experience and talk of a good woman was a bonefish-catching experience with the island's top bonefish guide, Capt. Joe "No, I'm not a fighter" Louis. Joe's been fishing Chub and various parts of the Bahamas most of his life, and has had the pleasure of guiding the likes of Curt Gowdy, Bobby Knight, Andy Mills and Jack Nicklaus. He's also guided several record-holders,

mostly in the fly classes. But summer is not the best season to fly fish for bones, given the prevailing northeast winds, which puts a mild chop on the water that cuts down on visibility.

"The best season is November to May," explained Joe. "That's when northwest winds make it easy to see-you'll catch fish all day long. Tide doesn't matter--these fish feed all day long. A good fly

caster can catch 8 to 12 fish a day-7- to 12-pound fish." Joe's favorite fly pattern is "anything pink." His biggest fish was a 15 3/4-pounder, "caught by a guy from New York who already had a record on 8-pound

tippet. Took him 45 minutes to land."

We got lucky on the summer days we fished, enjoying a mellow southeast breeze and ideal sight-casting conditions. Joe poled us over a great submerged desert of white sand, every square inch covered with tiny little volcanoes-clams-puffing white dust into the tide. Perhaps that's where the phrase "happy as a clam"

comes from-they were all happy to be escaping the bonefish's crushers, those ridges of bone that go the length of a bonefish's head.















With only the shoosh of the wooden pole to break the silence, Joe listened to the breeze, saying that he hears bonefish before he sees them. Hmmm. I wondered if it were true. We had a shot at several schools that morning, but my skills with a fly rod made for difficult catching. After I proved my ability with several errant casts with a 9-weight, Joe got out the spinning gear and turned to his secret weapons-conch "slop" and live crabs. "If they come within 20 feet of conch slop or crab, they won't pass it up," he said.

The harbor at Chub is home port to a commercial conch operation, and every evening, several Bahamian men are found sitting on the inside rails of the boat, hunched over a pile of fresh conch. The cleaned meat goes in a bucket, the innards and remains (the slop) go over the side. On the outgoing tide, bonefish follow the chumline up into the harbor, while the locals sit on the rocky banks of the inlet, fishing with the same slop. If Joe knows the following day's charter is on the amateur side, he bags up a pound or

two of this slop, "just in case."

For the crab bait, Joe put us on an exposed sandbar and we went ashore with buckets and nets in hand, turning over rocks in search of juvenile blue crabs. For Cathy, being more the beach bum and snorkeler than diehard bonefish angler, walking around an exposed flat spotted with all sorts of flora and fauna was one

of the high points of her day. That was, until we finally tied into a couple of 7-pound Bahamas bonefish. Our previous bonefish catches in Belize had been in the 2- and 3-pound range, and we soon learned that double size meant quadruple the fight. And Joe quickly understood that the bones spotted on this day, in this breeze, on this tide, needed to be stalked while wading, so we anchored the boat and went for a walk across the pure white sand. Cathy was connected first, while Joe stood close by giving instruction, happy that his charter had finally accomplished the day's task. A few minutes later, the day continued to improve

as I tied into a 7-pounder.

On the way back to the dock, the skiff passed within sight of a submerged wreck of a small airplane, and Joe drifted along as Cathy and I donned mask and snorkel. Just the week before, John F. Kennedy Jr. was lost at sea in his small airplane, and I have to admit to a rather eerie feeling and lump in my throat as I held my breath and flippered under a wing.

"This one went down in the `70s," explained Joe. "A woman was the pilot. She came in for a landing and didn't make it just right, so she took off again. But then, the plane ran out of gas and she ditched it. She and her husband walked ashore-boy, was he yelling at her. Lots of small plane wrecks in the Bahamas. Good lobster spots."

Back at the dock, Joe explained that bonefish have so many bones to support all that muscle. At my suggestion, he cleaned one of the bonefish for my dinner and laughed about an old Bahamian saying: "You know when you find a good woman to marry, when she cleans the bones from a bonefish for her husband."

I asked him if he has found a good woman and he said, "Not yet, but I'm still looking. Still haven't found a good woman." Cathy remarked that I too have not yet found a good woman, not by Bahamian standards.

After leaving Chub Cay, as the plane banked for a final photo of Chub, I thought of what a club member with a beach house overlooking the ocean had told me about Chub: "Nothing to do, but not enough time to do it in."















The Family Islands

Chub Cay is part of the Berry Islands, also known as the Family Islands to many of the people who come here

with their children for summer vacations. Robert and Pamela Vaughn of Tavernier, with their children Ryan, 17, Catey, 15, Casey, 10, and Ray, 7, come here every summer, and the day before I introduced myself to them on the dock, they were trolling a foot-long Rapala Magnum over a reef patch in 50 feet of water when a 45-pound black grouper hit. They invited me on board for grouper fingers and conch fritters, and what a meal. They also speared two hogfish and numerous snapper. They've been coming over for five years on an annual summer vacation, piloting a 48-foot Pacemaker sportfisher and pulling a 15-foot Whaler.

"Chub is one of the few places you can take kids and let them have some freedom," said Robert. "And it's an easy one-day trip for us so that only knocks two days off our vacation. There is such a variety here-fishing, diving, beachcombing. But mostly it's an opportunity to be a family. It's only 35 miles from Nassau, just a couple of hours, so we always run over there for a few nights and see Atlantis."

FS

Florida Sportsman Classic, May 2000

(Many of the details regarding contacts and specifics of Chub Cay have changed since 2000, but the destination is still one you'll want on your list of Bahamas destinations)