POSH in the Joulters

‘Cause Fancy Camping is a Thing

It was easy to see the Tongue of the Ocean’s black and blue water from the air. It’s color contrasted sharply with the turquoise brine that coated miles of white sand flats. Jacques Cousteau explored this area back in the ‘70s, but my black and white TV set didn’t capture the magic. In those days I was just a knock about kid, and Cousteau’s proof that both sides of Andros were connected by a system of underground rivers was lost on me. Those Aqua Lungs and double hose regulators were the shit, and they made me want to go to the place Spanish explorers called ‘Espiritu Santo.’ Any place called the Island of the Holy Spirit was for me.

I heard that there was a lot of development during the Go-Go ’80s and that some of it ended abruptly courtesy of Ronald Reagan’s Zero Tolerance program. When the opportunity for a cheap trip to Bonefish Capitol of the World appeared like some Square Grouper in a mangrove tangle, I jumped at the chance. And I knew North Andros beyond the scuba tanks and bikinis, for I saw it every time I mixed a Dark N’ Stormy in the summer. North Andros was Sir Henry Morgan territory, and that pirate’s face is on every bottle of Captain Morgan Rum.

The plan was to stay at a friend’s super swanky cottage that was part of an ‘80s party/dive/fish/residential development. He hadn’t been there in a little bit and was happy to see someone get use out of his place. I didn’t have the scratch to go all out, but a DIY camp/kayak trip to the remote, unspoiled Joulters was a plan. A captain could ferry me out and when I was done exploring the magnificent cays I could paddle my way back. A week or three should be enough for me.

My Bahamas Air flight bumped down on the Andros Town landing strip that sat barely above sea level. I grabbed a cab to the resort but thought there had to be a mistake. The cottages were there, and they sat off packed sand streets. They were privately owned and were untouched, but the buildings owned by the developer were stripped clean. Paint peeling from the humidity was replaced by colorful graffiti, some of which was so good it could have hung in an art museum. But that deep water dock was a mess. The decking had been stripped backwards by a brilliant scavenger. He’d remove planks furthest away and worked backwards towards shore. All that remained were a few planks close to the beach and pilings sticking out of the water like stilts.

I found the front door key hanging from a nail under a rafter and went in. It smelled musty, normal for a closed up cottage on an island. My buddy was understated when he said he hadn’t been here in a bit, the quarter inch of dust in the ashtray proved that. A fancy resort? Yeah, so much so that I shoved my gear underneath a bed and hoped no one would find it.

I walked to the beach. Two men overlooked a giant flat and laughed like schoolgirls. The smell of burnt oregano was in the air, and one turned around. He smiled and waved me over.

“You the guy who just got in?” he laughed. “Where you from, mon?”
“Boston.”
“You know Boston George?”

Oh, shit, that explains it. These were Boston George’s haunts.
“I don’t know Boston George.”
“No? You from Boston, he from Boston, you must know him. We ain’t seen him in a while.”
“He’s in prison,” I said.
“Boston George in prison?”
“That’s what the news says. And George Jung wasn’t from Boston, either. He was from Weymouth.”
“He get in trouble for this?” He held out a spleef half as long as my tibia.
“Take it,” he said. “You come back to buy more, yeah?”

I accepted more to avoid being pinned as a rude American, but I wanted to break up with Mary Jane and fast. I figured the best description of purgatory would be looking at a flat loaded with tailing bones through a chain link fence rimmed with concertina wire.

I tucked her in my pocket and walked down the dusty street. An old man was tying flies in front of a rough-framed house. On his table were shrimp and crab patterns the kind of which I’d never seen before.
“You the guy going fishing?” he asked.
What was this, Cheers, where everyone knew my name? “Those are nice,” I said. “Are you selling them?”
“Not for sale, mon, for trade.”
“Trade for what”
He laughed. “You know for what,” he said. “I can smell it.”
“How about a dozen, six of each.”
“I give you two crabs and two shrimp,” he said.
I pulled out the blunt and his eyes got so wide he lost all of the skin folds in the corner of his sockets.
You get it from the guys at the beach?”
I nodded yeah.
“Ok mon, I give you 18.”
“Total?”
He paused. “I give you 18 shrimp and 18 crab.”

With that rapid movement I could’ve scored at least twice as many. But good things happen when folks are bullish, not piggish.

Mine came the next morning when I awoke to a day beyond perfection. The sun burned off the dew, and the temperatures had to have been at least 60 degrees warmer than home. A light variable Sou’wester blew 5 if it blew at all, and the water’s surface was as smooth as a Zamboni’s polished ice. This was summer weather for me, so I pulled on a cotton t-shirt and gym shorts and humped my kit to the boat ramp.

A pelican perched on a derelict piling and stared at the crunch, crunch, crunch I heard from behind me. It sounded like boots crushing shell, and when I turned I saw a pair of fly rodders. They wore heavy flannel shirts buttoned to the necks and blue jeans tucked into tall athletic socks. On top of it their jeans flashed like the rhinestone encrusted jacket worn by the Ultimate Showman, Liberace. These guys had to have been part of some modern version of Flagellants, for they obviously believed in salvation through self-punishment.
“Where are you fellas going?” I asked.
“Fishing,” one said. “For bones.”
“What’s that shiny stuff wrapped around your jeans?”
“Plastic wrap.”

Jeans wrapped in Saran Wrap to go bonefishing? Those guys were effed outta their minds. Fortunately for me a skiff loaded with a kayak pulled up to shore.
“Which one of you is going to the Joulters?” the captain asked.
I nodded and stored my gear in the cockpit. One Shiny Blue Jeans chuckled, and things went from good to great when the skiff came about. I was on the port side.

POSH, Port Outbound, Starboard Home, the luxury side of the steamship during the Golden Age of Travel. I didn’t have a mahogany lined stateroom complete with a white marble sink, but I was going to cast to fish that seldom saw a fly. I’d fish all day and sleep in my bug proof hammock at night. I’d return when I was damn good and ready.

We ran for under an hour and I got out near a good-sized cay. There were palm trees and low vegetation. If things didn’t work out here then I’d paddle over to a different cay. I dropped my gear for I was dying to make a few casts.

The bottom was soft, kinda spongy, and was covered with turtle grass. I figured some bones might be up here around high tide, but now they’d be out in the current swimming over the oolitic sand, granules made by layer upon layer of calcium coated around a tiny granule of shrimp feces. I was walking on shrimp shit and man was it gorgeous. They went on for forever and ever until even they got tired and simply dropped straight off into a channel.

I found that edge because it was where the color changed to a turquoise-and-emerald green. On the bottom were swimming fish, so many different species that I felt like I was peering at them through the glass at an aquarium.

I turned around and I was a long way from the cay, and that gave me several thoughts. The first was that I had the possibility of catching one hell of a lot of fish on my walk back home. The second was that I needed to keep up a pace brisk enough to catch bones but not get whacked by a lemon shark. And third, this was such a spectacular place that I hoped there never would be a lodge or private home or a development. It was rustic and remote, and totally bad to the bone.

I saw the first slivers of silver tail tips sticking out an inch above the water’s surface. There were three of ‘em, no five, no seven, no more. A lot of water moved from the front of the Vee, so those were probably fish with some shoulders. The trailers looked a bit small, but what did I care? I was on the Joulters, and that meant I should pitch my shrimp ahead and beyond ‘em and let it sink to the bottom.

I waited for the bones to close the gap, and when they did I gave the fly a short quick strip. It lifted off the bottom and the tail tips disappeared. A push of water charged in the direction of my fly, and I got tight. The fish thrashed, and when he did the school blew up. Bones went to the left, to the right, some came towards me, and others went away. I hoped mine would go deep into the backing, but at about 75 yards the drag stopped spinning. He was one of the smaller but faster stragglers.

I was sweating pretty good now, and the salty taste of sweat mixed with Deet hit my lip. There was a bite, one big enough to leave a red welt. A fly, a Doctor Fly, one that resembled the ravenous greenheads I find in my striped bass marsh back home. I swatted it, sprayed on some more bug dope, and cranked in my fish. It’s tough to keep from sweating on a perfectly hot day, and the more I sweated the more bug juice washed away and the more Doctors came for an ounce of flesh. Today turned into a rinse/repeat kind of day. If given the chance I’d have swapped half of my water rations for a flannel shirt and jeans wrapped in plastic and it wasn’t even noon time.

One morning I woke up and decided I’d caught enough fish. The Doctor Flies (and I had to come to an agreement long enough for me to stay on a few different cays and walk one heck of a lot of flats. I pointed my kayak south towards North Andros. I arrived back in port in time for Rake and Scrape. There was no starboard home on this trip, there just was home.

Music played in the streets. There were a few guitars and drums, spoons, mouth harps, and even a hand saw. I smelled spicy food coming from a few booths, and it seemed like there were two options: conch, conch, more conch, and chicken. I had my fill of conch, so I ordered the chicken.

There was a man drinking rum from an enamel coffee cup. “Save me the bones, mon?”
“Whatcha need ‘em for?” I assumed he was making a gris-gris charm.
“Got to feed my dogs.”
“You feed your dogs chicken bones?” I asked.
“Every night.”
“They ever get sick?”
“No mon. None yet.”

The sun went down and I saw all the stars. Messrs Blue Jeans were drinking Kalicks, happy because they were out of their wet pants. The taxi driver waved to my buddies from the beach who were grinning from ear to ear.
They all stared at me when the fly tier walked up.
“Those flies work?” hejuk, asked.
“Like a charm,” I said.
“Lemme know if you wanna swap for more.”

The wheels in my head were turning, and though I hadn’t left I was looking for a way to get back.

A Word to the Wise: There have been a lot of recent changes in the Bahamas, and they go far beyond the abundance of POSH sporting venues. On August 31, 2015, the Bahamas National Trust and the Bahamian government created the Joulter Cays National Park. The park sits two miles north of North Andros and is comprised of 113, 920 acres of habitat. It’s home to a portion of the Andros Barrier Reef, the second largest barrier reef in the Western Hemisphere, which is important for fisheries productivity. The park habitat includes extensive banks of oolitic sand, seagrass meadows, mangroves and tidal creeks, all of which provide nursery areas and feeding grounds for sharks, conch, sea cucumbers, spiny lobsters and marine turtles. These marine ecosystems support local communities, as well as a lucrative tourism industry that draws anglers and divers from around the world.