Posted on November 02 2009
Photo: Andros South Staff
On October 10th our 2010 Andros South season started by welcoming Frayser White and his group of long-time fishing buddies for a week of fishing.
These guys have a lot of experience in the Bahamas and we were looking forward to showing them the great fishery of South Andros Island. Come to find out a couple of the guys had already fished parts of South Andros while staying at other locales. I could tell as soon as they stepped off of Kermit’s bus that these guys were a good crew of well seasoned anglers. They asked for the Kalik first and the rooms second! They also knew how to heckle each other to the full extent which always makes for fun tiki hut conversations.
Due to the tide and moon stage we were able to offer the group a nice mix of fishing the West Side along with chances to go pretty far south as well. At times guests found themselves deep in the mangroves chasing small packs of bonefish, but then also had enough time to work some long sandy flats for cruising bones. The largest bonefish of the week came close to 8 pounds and a few between 5 and 7 pounds were landed as well. We also had a couple days where boats landed more than thirty fish for two guests, and that was without hanging around schools all day to do it!
Thankfully Mother Nature showed us her brighter side this week and Frayser and crew were witness to a full week of incredible weather. Temps were 85 to 90 degrees, winds were 5 to 12 mph and the skies were free of clouds almost every hour of every day. We didn’t see another week last year that was as nice as this one, and it’s October! To go along with the weather was the fact that none of these fish had seen pressure for quite some time. The flats have been quiet of fishermen all summer so the fish had no excuse to not eat anything thrown in front of them.
On October 26th we welcomed Stuart Pagel and Ron Boudreaux to Andros South for a half week trip. This happened to be Stuart and Ron???s first go at the mighty bonefish, and Stuart’s first time seriously fly fishing. They can spin fish with the best of them, but they just have not had the time to work at fly fishing.
The attitude of the fish this week helped both Stuart and Ron land two bonefish a piece on the fly rod the first day out, and that was with quite a bit of wind. After the first day we decided to upload a larger weight fly line on Stuart’s rod. It was so windy and the fish were only being seen very close so we knew this would help Stuart load the rod better at short distance. The second day turned out to be even windier, but the sun was out so the vision was ok. Unfortunately, this day ended with no fish landed for either one of the guys. We did spend some time that night working on casting techniques for the windy conditions and I think it paid off. The final day out and they brought too hand seven bones between the two of them. Not bad for never having fly fished for bones three days earlier.
As I mentioned the weather was windy, windy, and windy!!! We did have a lot of sun which helped some with seeing the fish and keeping the morale of the anglers on the positive side. No rain and no bugs because of the wind – Thank You!