Destination: Walker’s Cay, The Bahamas

By Carol M. Bareuther, RD

If you build it, they will come … back. This recast movie quote rings true for Walker’s Cay, the 100 northernmost acres of the Bahamas, where a new 96-slip marina opened last year. Famed as a sportfishing destination since the 1930s, due to its location on the edge of the Little Bahamas Bank combined with a 1200-foot-plus drop-off eight to 10 miles to the northeast, Walker’s field was bought in 2018 by American businessman and philanthropist Carl Allen, who is bringing the hurricane-ravaged island back to life as his Field of Dreams for sportfishing.

Walker’s Cay Today

If the attendance of both fishermen and fish at the 2^nd Annual Walker’s Cay Invitational, held May 18-21, is a barometer of success, then Allen should be pleased. 35 boats from the U.S. East Coast and Gulf of Mexico released 74 billfish—29 blue marlin, 29 white marlin and 16 sails—in three days of fishing, with Robert Baker’s 70’ Spencer, Reel Pushy, the winner with nine releases.

“We have a rule that we have to catch at least one fish every day. I love offshore trolling for blue marlin, but I love the backcountry too with its bonefish and tarpon, the permit, the mutton snappers and horse-eye jacks. The variety at Walker’s is just unparalleled. I always tell people it’s where bonefish meet billfish and everything in between,” says Allen, whose recreational fleet includes an 80’ Viking for offshore, an 18’ Hell’s Bay Walker’s Cay edition Marquesas for bone fishing and a 39’ SeaVee for grouper fishing on the reefs.

Allen first visited Walker’s as a 12-year-old boy with his stepfather aboard an old fishing trawler. The stop was short, only long enough to clear customs as the island is only 105 miles northeast of Jupiter, Florida. Allen’s stepfather then headed south to Marsh Harbor and Long and Crooked Island for angling, but Allen’s heart never left Walker’s. When he retired in 2016 at age 50, he and his wife, Gigi, cast about for a new project. Bringing Walker’s back to life, something he wanted to share with his children, proved a no-brainer.

What’s There: Dockage & Facilities

The Walker’s Bay Marina opened in July 2021. Visual piloting rules are the rule in the Bahamas. However, the Marina button on the Walker’s Cay website lists waypoint coordinates for the entrance channel into the marina. There are 96-slips on Poralu Marine-built floating docks, plus gangways, a boardwalk and two bridges around the basin. The docks can accommodate everything from 50 or more center consoles to ten 200-foot superyachts as well as the heart of Walker’s, convertibles and enclosed-bridge-type sportfishers on the main dock. A replica of the original Walker’s Cay sign on the gantry is at the end of the dock and a great photo op. The mean low-water depth is 12 feet. Dockage is U.S. $5/foot with water and electricity included. Both diesel and gas are available.

The marina office is open 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. EST daily (1-833-869-2553; info@walkerscay.com; VHF Channel 74. There’s a 2600-foot runway for small planes as well. On-site customs clearance for boats or airplanes is by appointment (1-242-357-6656). Visitors are requested to use Click2Clear to enter the Bahamas.

There are no shoreside accommodations yet on Walker’s, but these and more are on Allen’s drawing board. In fact, he has 16 cottages under construction in Stuart, Florida. These will be barged over and set on pre-made foundations, hopefully with a few available by the end of the year. A restaurant, pier building with a dive shop, a general store and a meeting room for tournaments are all planned. Walker’s Cay’s official Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and TikTok accounts are a good way to keep up with the latest developments.

When to Go

February and March are peak months for white marlin, while March through June is when the blue marlin bite is best, according to Capt. Billy Black, who first went to Walker’s in 1977 to run charters on the 50’ Hatteras, Duchess, for the island’s previous owner, Robert Abplanalp, and continues charter fishing to Walker’s today from his homeport in Stuart, Florida.

“The fishing was fantastic back then, and it still is now,” says Black. “We’ll usually leave Walker’s dock around 7:30 or 8 a.m. and zoom right out Seal Cay Channel. From there, it’s about a half-mile to the drop-off. We’ll often troll on the way out with lead lines for grouper and snapper. At the edge, at about 600 feet, we put out the lines and start marlin fishing or looking for wahoo. There’s really good wahoo fishing from November into February. Not far away are the tuna grounds. We held Walker’s record for a long time with a 781-pound bluefin tuna back in 1983. But if you’re just looking for big marlin, it’s as close as three to ten miles off the Walker’s Cay dock. We did a lot of half-day trips or two half-day trips morning and afternoon.”

The Walker’s Cay Invitational occurs in May in time with the billfish bite. Robert “Fly” Navarro ran the 2022 tournament. “The blue marlin fishing can run into July as well. I had a couple of boats fish the Blue Marlin World Cup this year out of Walker’s, and they had three or four bites,” says Navarro. “The best thing is that Walker’s is only a three-hour run by boat from Florida. Or, if you have a private plane, it’s a short hop to Palm Beach International in West Palm. So Walker’s Cay is an easy destination to fish anytime.”

Allen Exploration Opens New Bahamas Maritime Museum

Carl Allen’s exuberance in rebuilding Walker’s Cay is matched by his enthusiasm for treasure hunting. In 2016, Allen founded Allen Exploration, buying a fleet of exploration vessels including dive boats and the 180-foot Damen Yachting-built support ship, Axis, which carries exploration equipment like a Triton 3300 submarine, and hiring over 40 divers. With this armada, Allen and his team explored the debris trail left by the 891-ton Spanish gallon, Nuestra Senora de las Maravillas, when she sunk 45 miles west of Walker’s Cay in 1656.

One of the most stunning finds is an 887-gram gold 70-inch-long filigree chain made of circular and tubular links and decorated with four-lobed rosette motifs. Nothing exactly like it has surfaced in other excavations. It’s a piece that fisherman at the Walker’s Cay Invitational in May received a sneak peek of at the Awards Ceremony. On August 6, Allen cut the ribbon to open the Bahamas Maritime Museum in Freeport, Grand Bahama. “In three years, we’ve collected about 11,000 artifacts. Everything from pottery shards to musket balls, silver bars to gold coins,” says Allen. “Not one artifact has left the Bahamas, and it won’t. It’s now on display at the museum in the Port Lucaya Marketplace.”