FISH.........a four letter word!

To say the least, our fishing on the first leg of this cruise has been disappointing. To recap a little, we fished 3 days in Bimini and 2 days here in Andros. The first two days in Bimini we trolled the edge to our 2 favorite reef spots. We surely must have caught every Barracuda in Bimini but no Dolphin. It was very rough on the two reef spots and we had a terrible time getting the anchor to hold. Each time we finally got it to hold we had drifted off our spot. We got Freddie to fish with us the third day. He told us the Dolphin had not arrived yet due to the very cold winter they had and recent cooler than normal weather. We decided to troll in 30-50 feet of water for some Grouper. We found a few more Barracuda we had not caught yet and had a couple good strikes thought to be Grouper but once again did not get any in. With Fredddie's keen eye we were able to anchor on a new reef spot and caught lots of fish. Here in Fresh Creek, Andros we hooked up with a young fisherman named Micko for our first day. The plan was to run out very early and check out the "North Buoy". The US Navy have several AUTEC bases here and have several buoys anchored along the coast of Andros for testing submarines. AUTEC stands for Atlantic Underwater Testing and Evaluation Center. The main base is here in Fresh Creek. CJM kept her eye on the sonar as we were fishing looking for a sub to come up under us but never saw one. Back to fishing. These buoys serve as a permanent floating "magical piece of debris" which holds bait fish and larger fish all the time. Unfortunately the Dolphin again are not really here yet. We trolled by the buoy a few times and didn't have any action so we reeled up and backed up near the buoy and started chumming with frozen chum and cut up squid. We finally got a few Dolphin interested. They did not seem hungry as we presented bait after bait to them without much luck. We finally were able to catch 2. One on a piece of squid and the other on a piece of ballyhoo. The Dolphin disappeared so we moved in to the reef for a quick swim and Jeannie and Leann did a little snorkeling. We moved a little farther down the reef and anchored up and fished. We had pretty good action. Caught several Yellowtail Snapper, a Queen Trigger and a Bonita. It was not the wild action we had at Bimini, but plenty of fish to fill our bellies that night. Our second day of fishing here in Andros was shortened a bit by searching for "Fins" but once again we chummed up a few Mahi around the "South Buoy" but could not get any to bite. We trolled the edge a while and caught the last 2 Barracuda in the Bahamas that we hadn't caught so far. Everyone keeps saying the Mahi aren't here yet so we think we will surely find them as we head South towards Georgetown, Exumas. Our luck we will probably pass them as they move North. Oh well that's fishing. By the way while we were fishing the North Buoy we saw JB's fishing boat also trolling around but did not know it was his at the time. CJM said it looked like one of the fisherman had a cowboy hat on, maybe Alan Jackson, but we did not get close enough to check it out..........as it turned out, I guess it could have been Jimmy. Heading to Nassau and will probably fish a little on the way. Will report on any catches later. Happy Mother's Day!

CTM