Piton Passion

St. Lucia's Dynamic Big‑Game Bite Explodes in the Shadow of Towering Peaks.

No more than a mile from the dock at Soufriere, our artificials pushed water behind our outriggers in their search for the big-game species lurking in the deep water just a short distance from shore. Minutes later, a baby barracuda took a liking to our surface flat-line bait.

We landed and released the toothy fish. Since our focus that day aboard the 33-foot Bertram, Reel Affair, was on the big blues St. Lucia is famous for, we were fishing big baits, big teasers and 400 lb. test leaders. We were trying to deter smaller fish from striking. Our elaborate teasers consisted of a plastic bird followed by 18-inches of line to a three-way swivel. Off one eye of the swivel was a slope-head lure on a two-foot leader, with a flat-head chugger followed by three plastic squid off the remaining eye – quite the concoction, but quite effective at attracting the kind of attention we were looking for.

The bottom of the sea fell from 200-feet about 15 minutes out, to more than 1,000-feet within a mile or so. Regardless of the promising terrain, the marlin fishing was slow that day. We gazed the surface in every direction for signs of weedlines or floating debris that could increase our chances of productivity as both attract juvenile sea life and forage which attract dolphin, wahoo and tuna – meals made for marlin. We also searched for water color variations which could reveal prime spots for locating large blue-water adversaries.

The waters on the leeward side of St. Lucia were relatively calm. We trolled from the Pitons at the south end, northward toward “Barrel of Beef” located about a quarter mile off the southern entrance to Rodney Bay, home to the largest marina on the island. The five miles or so between the northern tip of the island and Rodney Bay features several shoals near the coast, however the waters just offshore drop to 2000-feet, attract plenty of billfish, and have accounted for some of the most spectacular St. Lucia marlin catches.

From there, the normal progression of a local charter boat is to continue trolling northward toward another bank approximately 18-miles northeast of the island. That bank drops to over 1,000-feet and lies besides two submerged mountains. The area is notorious for attracting tuna, feeding billfish, and a few commercial fishermen. The deepest stretches within the channel between St. Lucia and Martinique to the north is also a hot spot and where many giant marlin have been fooled.

While one captain in the vicinity reported a hook-up on a blue and a successful release 30 minutes later, our search for a marlin slowly continued. Plenty of booby birds and frigates were airborne and juvenile tuna were slashing baitfish in several directions, but our quest for a big billfish was not to be that day. Two boats nearby focused on tuna and had plenty of fun with them. We unintentionally caught one and then had another wahoo strike our offering. Besides the billfish we were after, our catch that day was a variety and what most angling guests enjoy about St. Lucia.