Berry Islands, Bahamas

Off Chub Cay in the Berry Islands, the roomy cockpit of the sportfishing cruiser Nita M suddenly seemed crowded. Lines crossed and three anglers began sniping at each other in traditional angler fashion as they stumbled about to keep up with spirited but undisciplined fish. The crew did nothing to straighten out the mess. In fact, the crew was up to its own neck in the mess, for this triple hookup was with yellow-tail that weighed perhaps a pound apiece.

Neither the size of the fish nor the mass of the bedlam deserve to be mentioned in the same breath with those of skipper-owner Frank Meek's previous tripleheader of only a few days earlier. In that case, the trio of attackers had been blue marlin, one of which had escaped by its own devices, while the other were being fought and, finally, released.

If the two episodes constitute a study in angling contrast, it's a contrast that widely pervades Bahamas sport-fishing. Big game and bonefish may be responsible for the boldest headlines, but it's the wealth of hungry (and tasty) reef species that are responsible for the biggest share of angling satisfaction. And among those frequently found partaking of the Bahamas' reef delights are the same anglers who specialize in chasing trophies.

In this case, although he didn't need one, Frank had a good excuse for going yellowtailing. Karl Wickstrom, Ralph Hudson and I had flown to Chub Cay for the very purpose of dabbling on the reefs.

Frank, who hails from Savannah but who lives aboard his 43-foot Post at Chub for months at a time, had volunteered to do the skippering.

A huge lump of coral known as Mamma Rhoda rock lies just a mile or so off the entrance channel to the Chub Cay marina. It is one of the most familiar landmarks in all the Bahamas for transient yacht traffic, of which there is a great deal, for Chub Cay is the southwestern most of the Berry Islands-a strategic spot on one of the most heavily traveled routes from South Florida to Nassau and the Eastern Bahamas.

Mamma Rhoda is also a landmark of another sort for Frank, who has found fine yellowtailing grounds just the other side. He circled the barren rock, lined up a particular rooftop with the center of it, and poked his way to the 40-foot depth where he felt sure the yellowtails were roaming. The water was the familiar powder blue with dark bottom patches that is typical of so many Bahamian reef areas.

At Frank's order, Capt. Andy Anderson dropped the anchor. Andy, whose home port is Destin in the Florida Panhandle, is skipper of the private sportfisherman Invader. Since he had no fishing on his own schedule, he was eagerly recruited by Frank as a crewman for this trip.

"No exact spot here," Frank said. "Just a dependable area for chumming. The fish should start showing up in 15 or 20 minutes!'

They were early. I hooked the first two yellowtails after about 10 minutes but broke both of them off. I decided the 6-pound mono on that spinning outfit was a tad too light for the small but abrasive teeth of the hard-pulling little snappers. By the time I threaded and rigged my 10-pound outfit, everyone else with a line in the water was already at least a couple of fish up on me.

Our chum was the ordinary ground stuff, shipped from Florida. Smaller and less wary than the hard-fished "flag" yellowtail of the Keys, these fish didn't care whether we baited them with cut squid, cut fish or whole small frozen minnows. They'd take them all, but still insisted on at least a bit of finesse.

The fish responded best when the bait was presented with no weight at all. When we became impatient and added a split-shot sinker, the response slowed down only a little, but when we used half-ounce sliding sinkers, or jigheads, that sped to the bottom quickly, the yellowtails went off their feed.

Maybe that was because triggerfish, grunts or red hind grouper were beating them to the punch.

If there is a "Big Three" among small Bahamas reef fish, they would have to be the yellowtail, queen trigger and red hind-all of which are plentiful, cooperative, great sport on light line and, as important as any other trait, marvelous table fare-even the triggers. Especially the triggers, many anglers would say.

Fishermen throughout the islands regularly match wits and tackle with that cooperative trio, although their approaches vary widely. Often as not, the trip is with a native guide in a nondescript skiff. The guide hammers a hole in a conch and extracts its innards, cutting up the tough muscle for bait and using the gloppier contents for chum. This is fishing at nearly its most basic--lowering juicy natural baits and, almost without exception, cranking up either a fish or a hook from which the bait has been stolen.

This sort of a-bite-on-every-cast fishing is widely billboarded as being an attraction that can keep wives and kids entertained at virtually any resort in the Bahamas Out Islands, while the macho household head goes forth in quest of larger and more fashionable species. So it is, of course, but don't bet against the family's alleged top fisherman joining in the fun at every opportunity.

Grown-up male anglers who are self-conscious about dabbling for yellowtails and triggerfish can call upon the built-in excuse that they are teaching the less experienced members of their clan. More than a few avid billfish-chasers, however, make no bones about the fact that they like their reef fishing, whether in the form of battling big grouper or spinning for smaller game.

As to the angler-mate relationship, it does not always meet the stereotype; that is, it may well be the woman who is infected with big-game fever, and her husband who'd rather stay in shallow water and dabble. During tournaments at Chub Cay and other Bahamas locations, I have known a number of couples who fit the reverse pattern.

Perhaps the most memorable of these were the late Ralph Evinrude and his wife, Frances Langford Evinrude. During the Chub Cay club's early years, they would fish the billfish tournaments aboard their ocean-going yacht Chanticleer. However, it was not Ralph F. but Frances L. who boarded her cruiser of name to compete in the marlin events.

Her husband, though a burly sort, much preferred to go out in an outboard vessel for a couple of hours and catch ye1lowtail and triggerfish, rather than bounce around all day in blue water.

Ralph exhibited a particular fondness for the queen triggerfish, praising its fighting ability and food quality alike.

They'll give you fits on a little spinning outfit" he would say, both to me and to many others on the dock, "and they taste better than yellowtail. Don't believe it? Come aboard this evening and I'll cook some up.”

I don't recall anyone ever saying they didn't believe it, but Ralph's spiel remained the same regardless, his intent being to recruit guests for a fish fry on Chanticleer's sun deck.

He confided to me that he was one of the world's great fish-fryers, a talent he wished to demonstrate while at the same time proving that triggerfish were one of the world's great treats.

To spare you the suspense, I will say that he was right on both counts. Those triggerfish fillets were at least as tasty as the yellowtails that shared Ralph's open-air cooker. And as for his claim to greatness as a fry-chef, he really did exhibit a certain adroitness at dropping the fillets into sizzling oil and dipping them out again once they attained golden perfection. That was his only cont

ribution to the procedure, the fish having been cleaned, breaded and seasoned by the galley staff, and transported to the dining deck by a steward.

Although you couldn't prove it from what Karl, Ralph and I caught on our recent outing, which took place over a blazing September weekend, Chub Cay has always been a great reef-fishing destination, and for much more than just the `little three." As in most Bahamas areas, both bluewater angling and reefishing undergo a dramatic upsurge in the fall, when the weather cools just a little. The late summer and early fall period, while far from dormant, is at least siesta time. Most of the big grouper are cooling off in deep water and, offshore, even the usually dependable dolphin and wahoo are questionable targets.

While waiting for the annual influx of wahoo to come along in October and fire up the big-game brigade once more, the few trollers who stick around during Dog Days can reasonably expect occasional shots at the heat-resistant blue marlin and little else.

As already noted. Frank and Andy had tangled with three blues earlier in the week of our arrival, a fact that influenced the three of us to interrupt our chumming sessions and try a day of bluewater trolling, an activity for which Chub Cay is ideally situated, having access to a pair of outstanding grounds.

Running east of Chub, and then steering north, trollers can work the edge of the Tongue of the Ocean all along the eastside of the Berry Island chain to Great Harbour Cay, largest and most extensively developed of the Berrys, and then on to Great and Little Stirrup Keys at the edge of Northwest Providence Channel.

Although that stretch of ocean has produced many a big-game prize (and Frank Meek says that's the ground he would work if searching particularly for yellowfin tuna), Chub's most fabled trolling territory lies to the west-northwest, culminating in a relatively narrow "V", where mile-deep Tongue of the Ocean waters jut into the shallow Great Bahama Bank at Northwest Channel Light, about 15 miles from Chub.

A little more than halfway to the light, off the northern edge of the deep, lies Rum Cay. If you drew a line on a chart from that point across the narrow Tongue to the opposite dropoff, you'd see that it forms the base of a triangle-the other two sides being the V-shaped dropoff of Northwest Channel. The inside of that pyramid, often referred to as "The Pocket" by veteran skippers and anglers, has produced many more catches of blue and white marlin over the past 30 years or so than any other area of similarly confined scope in the Bahamas.

Bristling with six lines, each one of which offered both a skirted trolling lure and horse ballyhoo (just in case an indecisive marlin should be raised), Nita M diligently cruised both legs of the V that day. Frank devoted the lion's share of effort to the Joulters Cay side, where he had found his most recent action, but he didn't ignore the Rum Cay side, either, for it was there that his 11-year-old grand-daughter, Alissa Menendez, had fought and released her first blue, estimated at over 200 pounds, earlier in the year.

As we trolled the pocket, I day-dreamed of past trips, in prime seasons, when I caught blue marlin with some frequency and white marlin almost expectantly. I also shuddered a little as we trolled due east of the bedraggled light structure, remembering many fine grouper heads I had pulled up from 100 feet or so of water on deep-jigging trips. Big sharks do like to gather up the neck of The Pocket but, strangely, they have never posed a recurring problem to billfish trollers.

In winter, when big Nassau, black and yellowfin grouper roam the reefs near the dropoff, all three readily hit those same kinds of trolling plugs--almost as well as the leaded swimming mullet that most charter and private skippers pull on wire line, or behind a heavy trolling sinker, when trying to bag a trophy grouper.

Some years back, I was treated to a vivid demonstration of this bait's effectiveness by two of the all-time great skippers--Bob Lewis and the late Red Stuart. The three of us were chatting in the cockpit of Red's boat after a day of tournament billfishing at Chub Cay when Bob suddenly announced that he would like to vary the crews' diet by putting on a fish fry. One stumbling block to the plan, however, was the absence of fish.

No problem at all, Red decided. While Bob rigged a fat leaded mullet, Red nosed his boat out of the marina. We began trolling the bait on 50-pound line just east of Mamma Rhoda rock. My role in the grand plan was to crank in the 30-pound yellowfin grouper that hit the bait no more than five minutes after it went over. We were back at the dock inside of 20 minutes, and Bob commenced to fry up enough grouper fingers for all the crewmen in the tournament, plus any anglers who cared to join the feast.

It should be obvious by now that if you're one of those wishy-washy anglers (like me) who has trouble deciding whether to go for action on the reefs or test some of the world's best billfishing grounds, you'd better plan on spending at least several days when you visit Chub Cay.

Like other places in the Bahamas and Florida, the Chub Cay Club suffered severely from the ravages of Hurricane Andrew, but manager Michael Kaboth has the place all spruced up again and is continuing to expand the guest capacity.

If you go in September, plan on fast and furious light-tackle fishing for yellowtails, red hind and triggerfish. If you go at any other time of year, bring all the tackle you own. FS