Long Island might be The Bahamas’ road less traveled, but for those who have stumbled across this island gem that’s one of its most alluring charms. Strikingly beautiful, off the beaten path, and uncluttered, Long Island lies within easy reach of some of the best billfishing in The Bahamas. Add to that untold miles of virtually untouched bonefish flats that see almost no fishing pressure, and this destination quickly joins an angler’s bucket list.

A narrow spit of land— about 80 miles long from north to south, and up to 4 miles wide—Long Island sits on the eastern edge of the Bahama Bank a short run from Crooked Island, San Salvador and Rum Cay—where marlin, monster dolphin and wahoo roam.

Toward the island’s south end, Clarence Town’s harbor and the recently expanded Flying Fish Marina serve as the hub for the offshore fishing crowd. Long known as a reliable fuel stop for traveling sport-fishing boats, the marina now offers a much wider range of services.

The new two-story marina building sits at the end of a small peninsula and currently offers 21 permanent slips behind a protective seawall with plans for further expansion. Also on site: a marine store, fresh fuel, ice, Baitmaster baits and a small assortment of big-game tackle and rigging supplies.

Managed by Wendy and Jason Edler, an accomplished sportfish captain, the marina staff keeps up on all the current fishing action. A short walk away, Rowdy Boys restaurant on the beach serves up locally caught seafood and island cuisine. (Don’t miss the Friday night pig roast.) A little farther down the road and up the hill lies Nana’s Bakery, where you can get fresh island breads and wonderful homemade sandwiches.

According to Edler, the best wahoo fishing occurs October thru mid-March, and nearby Columbus Bank consistently produces ’hoos to 90 pounds. Yellowfin tuna migrate here from March through May, white marlin in April and May, and blue marlin from May through early July.

Only 6 miles from port, Simms Bar, also called The Finger, produces a lot of wahoo and a surprising number of marlin. Anglers bottomfish and deep-drop year-round for the typical Bahamian fare of snappers, groupers and wreckfish.

Long Island’s proximity to so many remote fishing spots keeps serious bluewater fishermen coming back. Pick a direction and you can be on prime fishing grounds in no time. You can make day trips or overnighters to Conception Island, Rum Cay, Crooked Island and the Acklins.

The Diana Bank, an awesome seamount, lies nearby and offers some of the most consistent fishing for pelagic species anywhere in The Bahamas. The upwellings it creates when the current strikes it start the whole circle of life with plankton blooms, bait, small predators and then the tuna and billfish, and it’s only a 28-mile run from the marina.

A favored overnight destination—Samana Cay, about 70 miles ESE—usually produces tuna, and big blue marlin are frequently in residence. Blues to more than 600-pounds have been caught there in recent years. You can always find a leeward anchorage to spend a restful night enjoying your catch of the day and sipping your favorite rum drinks.

The flats-fishing community centers around the Long Island Bonefish Lodge on Deadman’s Cay. The lodge offers accommodations and guided bonefish packages with fishing that rivals any of the more famous islands.

Long Island’s remote location means you will rarely see another angler. As the tide recedes, bonefish gather in the deeper channels that feed water onto the flats.

About eight miles north of Clarence Town on Queens Road, Lloyd’s Restaurant lies across the street from the turn-off for Dean’s Blue Hole, the deepest inland blue hole in the world, plunging to more than 650 feet. It hosts the Vertical Blue Free Diving International Competition each July, but it’s worthy of a visit any time of year to take a dip in the crystalline azure waters.

Further north another community clusters around the Stella Maris Airport and includes several restaurants, a secluded hideaway called Tiny’s Hurricane Hole, and the oceanfront Stella Maris Beach Resort.

At the extreme end of the island, Cape Santa Maria Beach—considered one of the 10 most spectacular beaches in the world—features soft white sand that stretches for miles. Amid this tropical beauty lies the ultra-secluded Cape Santa Maria Resort.

If you choose to sightsee on your trip, you’ll find numerous historic churches, some dating back to the 1800s and still in use. Others like St. Mary’s, thought to be the oldest church in The Bahamas dating to 1799, stand in stark ruins, the walls and altar still erect but open to the sky.

To tap Long Island’s greatest information resource, contact Ernest Major, who offers taxi service, guided tours, and boat-provisioning services, and is the island historian. His nickname is “Dat Guy,” and he should be on your speed dial for sightseeing, finding the best restaurants and the prettiest beaches, hooking up with bonefish guides, or getting you to the right places to provision your boat. Call or text him at 242 472-3365.

Long Island is an adventurer’s getaway where there are no crowds, no cruise ships and some of the finest bluewater and flats fishing to be found anywhere in the world. Once you experience it you’ll forever want to return.

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In the 1930s, Bimini hosted the true pioneers of big-game fishing. Legendary anglers Zane Grey, Ernest Hemingway and Michael Lerner cut their teeth catching marlin and tuna in the Gulf Stream little more than a mile off the island’s beaches.

Anglers worldwide read of their adventurous exploits in the newspapers and magazines of the era. The mystique from those legends continues to lure fishermen to Bimini to experience the excellent fishing and the ambiance that inspired many of Hemingway’s later writings.

Bimini’s cluster of three small islands lie only 57 miles from Miami, closer to the United States mainland than any of the other Bahamas. As a fisherman’s playground, Bimini offers seasonal migrations of blue and white marlin, sailfish, wahoo, and dolphin, as well as yellowfin, blackfin and bluefins tunas. Bluewater fishing primarily excels from March through early July with the exception of an amazing wahoo run that extends from November through March.

Bonefish prowl the flats between the islands yearround. Those flats have produced numerous line- and tippet-class world records, including the all-tackle record 16 pounder, caught in 1971. Bimini also produced the only grander blue marlin ever recorded in The Bahamas.

Visitors can arrive by plane, landing at the airport on South Bimini, near a small community and a natural-limestone well. On a historic note: explorer Ponce de León once visited that well in the 1500s, hoping it to be the elusive Fountain of Youth.

While a number of carriers fly to the south island, most anglers make the quick run over on private boats or board the Bimini Fast Ferry that departs daily from Fort Lauderdale. When entering the cut between North and South Bimini, fishing boats head to the marinas at the legendary Bimini Big Game Club or the Hilton Resort World.

The main road on North Bimini—Queens Highway—starts in Alice Town. Most who come here walk or rent golf carts; the tiny size of Bimini (only 8.88 square miles) limits cars. Ferries run between the two islands and a daily tram operates on North Bimini.

Walking northward from Alice Town, visitors often stop along the way for the famous cracked conch and cold Kalik beer at Joe’s Conch Stand. Stroll farther and you pass the location of the historic Compleat Angler hotel, where Hemingway allegedly worked on one of his novels in the 1930s. The hotel burned down in 2006.

A little farther north lies the prestigious Bimini Big Game Club, the epicenter of fishing activity on the islands today. It features a full-service marina, a famous restaurant, bar, hotel, dive shop and liquor store.

The Big Game Club also hosts charter operators who target bonefish on the flats or chase marlin, wahoo, dolphin and yellowfin tuna offshore. Bottomfishermen can book trips to pull on the grouper, amberjack and snapper that prowl the reefs and shelves around the main islands and nearby smaller cays.

Great Isaac Cay to the north features a historic 150-foot lighthouse built in London in 1852 and transported to this tiny cay in 1859. The island lies abandoned, its buildings roofless from hurricanes, but an automated light still warns boats away from the rocky reefs of the Northwest Providence Channel. Expect to catch amberjacks and groupers in those very reefs and rocks.

To the south, bordering the western edge of the Great Bahama Bank, lies a chain of small islands includes Turtle and Piquet rocks, Holm, Gun, North Cat, South Cat and Ocean cays. All offer fish-attracting structure for bottomfish, midwater structure for wahoo, and a deep edge scoured by the passing Gulf Stream.

Other Bimini highlights include the Healing Hole, a pond of mineral-rich fresh water that flows up through the surrounding saltwater habitat. The Hole is fabled for its supposed healing powers, dating back hundreds of years to when the Lucayan Indians roamed these islands.

Visit the Bimini Biological Field Station and Shark Lab in Port Royal on South Bimini for tours and instructional talks on the island’s marine life.

Bimini holds a very special place in sportfishing history and is still providing anglers fresh fish tales of their own today.

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The post Bimini: The Original ‘Island in the Stream’ appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

Though generally considered a single island, Andros actually comprises three land masses separated by bights: North Andros, Mangrove Cay and South Andros. At 2,300 square miles, Andros ranks as the largest island in The Bahamas with acreage greater than all other cays combined. This angler’s paradise offers excellent, nearby offshore fishing and what many consider to be the finest shallow-water fishing for bonefish and permit anywhere in the world.

The island’s unique location, with its eastern shoreline bordering a massive submarine canyon and its western boundaries abutting the limitless shallows of the Great Bahama Bank, provides the perfect habitat for chasing pelagic speedsters like marlin and wahoo one day and stalking the ghosts of the flats the next.

Some of the best fishing for pelagic species takes place off North Andros, where the Tongue of the Ocean—a canyon with depths surpassing a mile in places—makes a hard turn to the south in an area called “The Pocket.” According to Skipper Gentry, owner of the charter boat Carolina Gentleman and Gentry Lodge in Morgan’s Bluff, the hunt for gamefish starts within minutes of leaving the dock.

Within a mile of the eastern Andros shoreline, the water depth drops to more than 2,000 feet. Between the beach and the drop lies the famous Andros Barrier Reef, the sixth largest coral reef in the world, stretching more than 140 miles from north to south and popular for diving, snorkeling, sling fishing and bottom fishing for grouper and snapper.

“It’s the flow of deep-blue water pushing through the Northwest Providence Channel that is responsible for the superb offshore fishing we enjoy here,” Gentry says. “We experience seasonal abundance of the various gamefish. The wahoo fishing is spectacular, with great numbers arriving in January and staying through April. They prowl the edges of the reef and are caught within sight of shore.”

Blue and white marlin, dolphin and yellowfin tuna action rallies from March through June, and the summer months bring the best bottom fishing for grouper, snapper and amberjack, with a bonus run of blackfin tuna arriving in July and August, he adds.

Regardless of season, flats fishing stays hot. Bonefish can be found throughout the year. The central and western regions of Andros contain hundreds of square miles of mangroves, salt ponds, cuts, bights, flats and tiny cays that provide the habitat for vast schools of bones.

With such extensive habitat as well as protection from the local guides, who encourage catch and release, bonefish maintain a larger average size than those found in other highly regarded fishing destinations like the Florida Keys or Belize. The average size bonefish on Andros weighs 4 to 6 pounds with many running considerably larger. Many say Andros offers a greater chance of catching a true trophy-size bonefish over 10 pounds compared with anywhere else on the planet. A seasonal migration of permit from April through July provides an additional flats target.

For visiting fly fishermen, Andros represents an ultimate challenge. The many bonefish lodges located throughout the island in addition to independent guides offer a variety of services from pickup at your resort lodging to cottage rentals. Some of the best known lodges include Kamalame Cay, Eva’s Bonefish Lodge, Small Hope Bay Lodge, Andros Island Bonefish Club, Bair’s Lodge, Bonefish Bonanza, Mount Pleasant Lodge, Buccaneers and Bones, and Swains Cay Lodge.

Hermon Bain of Hermon’s Bonefish Lodge typifies an Andros bonefish guide. Calling on more than 20 years of experience, he might take you wading somewhere along the immense hard sand flats or pole his skiff through miles of mangroves. He knows all Andros has to offer and how to put his clients in the right place at the right time. Like so many of the brotherhood of guides here, he learned the ways of bonefish from his father and started poling boats even as a child.

Middle and South Bights, famed bonefish grounds, separate sparsely populated South Andros from the more populated and developed northern part of the island. Much of the island falls under protected park land overseen by The Bahamas National Trust. The West Side National Park alone encompasses 1 1/2 million acres of mangroves and flats, where no development is allowed, but fishing is encouraged.

While fishing helps keep Andros on the tourist map, the sightseeing and points of interest found here soon become a prime reason to extend your stay. The island features numerous blue holes, including several found inland like Capt. Bill’s, Cousteau’s and Uncle Charlie’s, all accessible from various points on the island.

King Kong’s Cavern is a huge ocean blue hole near Small Hope Bay, and the Conch Sound blue hole can be reached from the beach. Both consist of labyrinthine cave complexes that spiral out from the mouth.

The people of Red Bays, considered the oldest settlement on Andros, are thought to be direct descendants of the Florida Black Seminoles, who landed here seeking refuge in 1821. Today, the community thrives as a center for all things cultural—with sponge farmers, basket weavers and wood carvers at work and selling their wares.

Private boat owners can make the 130-mile run from South Florida to North Andros with a quick landfall at Bimini to clear Bahamian Customs. However yacht services on Andros remain sparse with the Lighthouse Yacht Club and Marina in Andros Town and Kamalame Cay Resort Marina among the few available.

For fly-in travelers, four airports serve Andros, bringing passengers on either scheduled or chartered flights with specialty airlines. A ferry service also brings visitors from Nassau.

With so much cultural history and natural beauty, in addition to great offshore and inshore fishing, Andros Island ranks as a true angler’s paradise.

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The post Andros Island: An Offshore and Inshore Fishing Mecca appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.