The Abaco Club is a 458-acre luxury sporting club in The Bahamas built around the placid water of Winding Bay on Great Abaco’s western shore.
The club features luxury accommodations in cottages and cabanas; a championship 18-hole golf course; tennis center; full-service spa; fine dining and a gorgeously empty 2.5-mile powder-soft sand beach.
And while all of those amenities are spectacular and worthy of a visit, a fairly large percentage of both Club members and guests couldn’t care less. Because The Bahamas in general and the Abaco islands in particular are world-famous for something else: fishing.
The anglers attracted to Abaco are not your stereotypical worm-on-a-hook, dangle-and-wait kind of fishermen. The oceans in and around Great Abaco, both shallow and deep, offer some of the most interesting and varied fishing grounds in the world, and serious sportsmen visit the island annually in search of their elusive prey.
And fishing for these varied species of marine life is fascinatingly different.
Many visiting anglers arrive with their long, whippy fly rods and head out into the vast expanse of the sandy-bottom shallows and mangrove flats that surround many of the Abaco islands. With a flat-bottomed skiff and an experienced guide pushing a long pole, the sport is finding the elusive silver bullets that are the native bonefish, and laying a fly down just the right way in their path. If you’re lucky, you’ll find permit, the “grey ghost of the flats” and the ultimate flats fishing trophy. It takes stealth, and cunning and quite a bit of luck, but there are few things more exciting than hooking and holding on for dear life!
Other anglers enjoy trolling along the many submerged coral reefs that protect and defend many of Great Abaco’s harbors and inlets. Out here, in deeper waters, there are grouper, snapper, triggerfish, hog fish and other species. Most of these make for a delicious dinner (and the Abaco Club’s chefs will be glad to prepare your catch for you) and put up an excellent fight.
Finally, those in search of the big pelagic species – the blue marlin, mahi mahi, tuna and barracuda – can charter a boat and head for the deep blue, a mere 10 minutes offshore, where the bottom lies beyond the reach of the sonar. Hook onto one of these monsters and be ready for a long and spectacular fight to get it back to the boat.
The Abaco Club’s Experience Concierges can arrange any of these fishing expeditions for members and guests of the club. Boats, guides and experiences for anglers of all abilities can quickly be arranged. And the stories are guaranteed to last for a lifetime.
