Posted on December 02 2009
Photo: Andros South Staff
November started out strong with fine weather and great fishing.
The first guests to be welcomed to Andros South in November were Wayne Walts, Peter Viau, Fritz Parker and Donovan Pieterse whom have all fished with us before at Andros South and Alaska West. Wayne will be joining us again in January.
The fishing this week was quite good for the most part. Fishing was very steady for both numbers and size of fish, and though no monsters were landed, some were sighted. Fishing was done throughout the south of Andros Island and a bit on the west side as well. As usual the numbers in the south were the big attraction with big schools of bones with sizes ranging from 2-8 lbs. Going south is also a visual experience beyond compare at places like “The Airport” where a few permit were sighted, along with hundreds of turtles, barracuda and other sea life. It’s truly a National Geographic experience. The west side produced some nice size fish with a bit tougher conditions for the experienced angler. If you like working on 1’s and 2’s and would rather stay away from the schools of bonefish then the west side of South Andros is the place to go.
The weather was quite nice this week until the last day when we started to see small remnants of Hurricane Ida. Through the week the temps ranged from a low of 80 to a high of 90 degrees with winds between 5 and 15 mph until Friday when it jumped to about 20 mph. Ida stayed near through the middle of the next week. Fortunately she passed by, leaving us no worse for wear and it’s the last we saw of “Hurricane Season” on South Andros.
The third week of November welcomed back Bruce Chard for another fall week of the “Chardy Bonefish School”. This is the first of two weeks of “Bonefish Schools” that Bruce hosts. His second is coming up in early January and it should be a fantastic trip for all involved, as was this one! Bruce brought back a few past guests with him along with a few newbie’s as well.
Father and son team Dave and Eric Burba came back again for another go at the flats. Steve Jacobs got his fall bonefish fix in once again! And David Anchell came all the way from Ireland to see us again and he brought his new to bonefishing friend Jim Hendrick along with him. Pete and Sandra Bracken were first timers to Andros South, but not to bonefishing, which the guides can attest to! John Elliott fished with us at Alaska West recently and could not get enough so he decided to try us out for bonefish! And Frank Pattillo called Bruce at the very last minute to get in and ended up flying his own plane to the islands.
Anyone in the “Bonefish School” spends the first day learning just about everything there is to know about bonefish. Bruce gives a fantastic and fun crash course on everything you need to know to catch bonefish. The catch rates alone can attest to how well his information is passed onto to his students. The fish this week really played the part by being very aggressive to the fly. Catches this week were quite high on some days and everyone had a great time wherever they were. Fishing was done throughout the south with a lot of deep inland fishing in the creeks as well. Quite a few nice fish were landed this week, but no one was able to land anything over about 8lbs, which is still a stellar fish. Cudas were on the bite this week as well for anyone that wanted to mess with the “Toothy Critters”. A couple in the 30lb range were hooked, but not landed.
The weather this week was quite nice overall with temps between 80 and 90 degrees and winds between 8 and 15 mph the whole week. The Bahamas has 320 plus days of sunshine a year so it is rare to have anything but nice weather most of the time.
The last week of November welcomed Dan Roman, John Stasik and David Batchelder for a short stay so that they could get back home in time for Thanksgiving. Dan and John booked us through Cabela’s and had never fished bonefish before.
John had never fly-fished before coming to Andros South. Both of them were experienced fisherman which helped a lot, and low and behold the first day they each caught a couple bones on the fly and a whole bunch on spinning gear jigs. The second day out was pretty tough due to grey skies and a bit of wind which made it very tough to see the fish. They both hooked fish, but none were brought to hand on the fly. The third day was the coming of age for Dan and John. They both hooked and landed quite a few fish on the fly and pretty much laid the spinning gear down for the day. Congrats to both of you!
David caught quite a few fish both days he was with us and since we had no one else to pair him up with he was able to fish solo for both days. Needless to say he had no shortage of fish to hand. David had fished bones before so he had no problem with some wind and grey skies. He kept a great attitude and was rewarded in turn with nice fish and happy guides.
Overall we had a nice November with a lot of fish landed per number of guests. The weather held her ground and only handed us a few bad days out of 30 so we can’t complain about that. We look forward to what the fishing Santa will bring us for December.