Long Island (Bahamas) Fishing Report and Forecast: August 2015

Capt. Luke with a rare Escolar. PHOTO COURTESY of Reel Addictive Charters.
Capt. Luke with a rare Escolar. PHOTO COURTESY of Reel Addictive Charters.

[dropcap]S[/dropcap]harpen your spears and get your dive gear ready. August is here and the 1st is open season for spiny lobster. Long Island has a great advantage for lobster diving as the commercial fishing banks are just offshore. We are able to use spears and lobster hooks in the Bahamas and with our commercial fishing license we are able to get as much lobster as we like. Some days we have been lucky to get as much as 500 lobsters in one day. That means a lot of butter and garlic. When lobster fishing, we come across many lobster condos, which are what the commercial fishermen set to harbor the lobster. Although not obligatory by law, it is always respectable not to spear the lobster out of these condos because it means taking a livelihood source of income from your fellow neighbor. We simply spear around the reefs or set our own condos to fish. The rod and reel fishing is slow this time of year, especially for pelagic species. We tend to focus around deep dropping for grouper, snapper and escolar during this month. Most people know the method for catching snapper and grouper, but few know how to catch escolar, or even know what they are. We target escolar either day or night with the same rigs we would use for swordfish. Instead of squid, we use split tail blue runners for bait. Day time we target them around rocky ledges from 1800 feet to 2500 feet. We deep drop with electric reels and we fish the bait 50 feet off the bottom. They don’t seem to fight much when hooked until they are pulled up into the sunlight and when gaffed they go crazy and will beat up everything and everyone in the boat, so be sure to lock them in the fish box right away. They make for excellent sushi and sashimi. They are known in the sushi bars as white tuna. We have caught them from 60-pounds to 180-pounds in size. Be sure not to eat more than 6-to-8 ounces of meat, or you may find yourself running to the toilet. The meat is saturated with waxy esters and omega 3 oils. it is very healthy for you, but in very moderate amounts. Safe diving this lobster season and tight lines.