Guana Cay, Abaco, Bahamas Vacation Report - Diving, Fishing, Spearfishing, Grabbers, Nippers

Guana Cay, Abaco, Bahamas Spearfishing, Fishing and Freediving Report

We loaded up the Bluewater 2550 on 5/30/09 to head across to Guana Cay for a week of fishing, diving, drinking and relaxing. We left Ft. Pierce inlet and were pretty quickly greeted by decent seas for most of the ride. The plan was to head to Spanish Cay Marina to clear customs. Rain threatened most of the trip but didn't really hit us until we got into Abaco. A little rain didn't bother us. We made it to spanish around 1pm to clear. Customs was a breeze and friendly as usual. Spanish is although now charging $50 to clear customs there if you are not staying though. This was a little bit of a surprise. From Spanish, after the rain, we headed south to our house on Guana Cay.

We rented out the Blue Coral Landing house on Guana Cay. It is a nice little place with a decent dock on the bay. A perfect place to make dinner and crash after a long day of fun in Abaco. Grabbers is right around the corner for a convienient place to go for a swim and grab a drink. Guana Cay is great place to stay in Abaco. It boasts all the quiet remotess of most Abaco islands but also offers some amenities as well. A grocery store, a couple bars and places to eat, a couple small shops. It's a great place for a fishing and diving vacation where the girls won't get bored too!

We spent a lot of time on this trip spearfishing. We did troll for a marlin off of Hope Town for a half of a day. We had one fish come in the spread and hit 3 baits but we couldn't get a hook in him! Oh well - we did great spearfishing! We had our best luck on the reefs on the north end of Guana Cay. The reefs right off the beach after you go around the cut seemed to hold some great fish for us. The best route we found was to run the beach. The water was at least 5 ft deep almost right up to the sand. Make sure you run in decent light so you can see the patch reefs and coral heads...they are everywhere.

I bought a custom pole spear from Crist Spears. What a big difference this made! I didn't shake off any fish I shot at while spearfishing freediving. We shot quite a few hogfish and grouper. The biggest fish of the trip was a 30 pound Nassau Group shot with the Crist spear on the north end of Guana Cay. We didn't see anywhere near as many hogfish on this trip as we did last year. Even hit some spots where we shot a bunch last year and didn't see any. Most of the fish we saw swam quite a bit faster than I could! The lobster were also out there in good numbers; too bad they were out of season! We caught some good grouper and trigger fish hook and line fishing from 50-150ft water just out of the passes to the north of Guana. The conch were easy to find and we got our limit as needed. Thanks to Troy, our neighbor, for cleaning what would have been 2 hours of conch for us in 10 minutes.

Grabbers was a great night cap each evening. They have a fresh water pool and serve some tasty drinks. Be carelful though, their signature drink is a lot stronger than it tastes! I enjoy Grabbers more than Nippers. It was a bit quieter and a lot more laid back. I definitely reccomend you stop there if you make it to Guana Cay.

Our trip home was a bit more eventful. We made it all of the way to within 40 miles of Ft. Pierce but were greated by a monster storm that seemed to have no break in it. The WX channel said 40 knots winds! We turned back and ran the 40 miles to West End and stayed the night and ran back in decent weather the next day. The ride from the storm back to West End was rough with 4-6ft head seas almost the whole way. We were exhausted but the boat handled it great! We can't wait to go back.

Pictures:
Big Nassau grouper shot off Guana Cay, Abaco