By John Bell
From the Lucayan Indian word meaning “two islands”, North and South Bimini along with its smaller cays, is part of the Bahamas.
For generations of angling and diving enthusiasts, Bimini—less than 48 miles east of South Florida— has been and remains the gateway to the Bahamas, a portal to adventure and experience perched at the edge of a sheer underwater cliff and the eastern edge of the mighty and mythical Gulfstream.
Legendary angler and western novelist Zane Grey and his captain, Tommy Gifford, recluse billionaire Howard Hughes and retailing genius turned scientist/naturalist Michael Lerner heard the call of Bimini.
Ernest Hemingway was an early apostle to the Bimini experience in the 1930s, where he drank, brawled and wrote his way through several fishing seasons, traveling back and forth between home in Key West and his beloved “Island in the Stream”. His creative workshop was the Complete Angler and his characterizations came from a world populated by giant blue marlin, bluefin tuna and schools of sharks almost too large to count. With his literary acclaim and sporting prowess, Hemingway, together with countless other kindred spirits, established Bimini as the Big Game Fishing Capital of the World—home today to some 50 world record catches and counting.
