With so much water to cover, good cartography is key when fishing the Bahamas.
FishTrack Staff
Big-game fishing is rooted in the Bahamas. This island nation has hosted angling greats like Ernest Hemingway and IGFA founder Michael Lerner who made the 50-mile run from South Florida to Bimini. Many of the Bahamas islands offer quick access to deep-water drop-offs, but you're going to need the latest cartography on your plotter, such as the 4-D charts offered by C-MAP to help you navigate around coral heads and find the fish.
Every spring and summer anglers can find massive populations of mahimahi throughout the Bahamas. The trick is to keep an eye out for birds and floating debris. When you find the fish, make sure to mark the spot on your fishing charts. You will also want to keep a pitch bait rigged on an 80-wide handy because if there are lots of mahi around, there's bound to be a few blue marlin. Photo by Charlie Levine.
Finding beautiful blue water is not often a dilemma in the Bahamas. However, water clarity varies depending on the season and monitoring <a href="http://www.fishtrack.com/fishing-charts/bahamas_58671 " target="_blank">chlorophyl charts</a> could be the ticket to finding a nice color break along a marlin-rich stretch of water like The Pocket on the northern end of the Tongue of the Ocean. Find that isolated break and it could translate into a marlin bite that's about to erupt.
The Abacos are home to some of the sports most popular big-money fishing tournaments in the Caribbean. If you want to land in the money, you have to know where to put the baits. White marlin and the almighty blue marlin prefer to hunt around structure and drop-offs where they can find bait. To locate such areas, <a href="http://www.c-map.com/" target="_blank">high-resolution fishing charts</a> are an indispensable tool.
The topography of the Bahamas varies from shallow reefs and lagoons to 1,000-fathom deep trenches. If you're not careful when steaming from island to island, you're going to run into trouble. Make sure you update your onboard electronics and have the latest fishing charts on your plotter and mobile device such as C-MAP's 4D MAX+.
Using FishTrack's satellite imagery in conjunction with the latest C-MAP cartography, crews can pinpoint temperature breaks over structure.
When all of the components come together, you can score on multiple billfish species in the Bahamas. Do your homework, plan a route and make sure you have plenty of bait in the cooler. Photo by Charlie Levine.
