15. April 2012 by Jack.

scan00021.pdf

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20. February 2012 by JohnH.

I know it is only February, but I am already seeing higher and higher numbers of fidler crabs out and moving around.  Now is a good time to start scouting for wading flats.  There are not many good predicted wadable tides in the next 4 weeks or so, but if you pay attention to the water you might be able to find a few days with higher than predicted tides.  Fishing high tides in spring can be frustrating…you just have to realize that this early they usually are not on the flats in numbers.  Typically in Mar-Apr-and sometimes May I am finding 1-2 fish ever 2-3 trips.  It is a great time of year to scout flats, observe where flats get water first, and as a bonus you might even get an early comer to the flat.  With are warmer than normal winter, and warmer than normal water temperatures I think that it will be highly likely that fish will show on the high tide flats earlier than normal.  Good luck and don’t be afraid to get out there!

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11. January 2012 by Jack.

Fishing in Boundry Water Canoe Area

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5. January 2012 by Tuck.

An Article by one of our fly club members. 

http://www.southcarolinasportsman.com/details.php?id=1752

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5. January 2012 by Tuck.

Below is instructions to use blog.  Please email me at tuck@baystreetoutfitters.com if you need to get a username and password, new or replace forgotten.   

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22. December 2011 by Craig Dumesnil.

I’ve been shopping around for a kayak, reading comments on various kayak/fishing forums trying to decide. Leaning in the direction of a Wilderness Systems Ride 135: this is a ‘yak designed for standing, which would be nice. Anybody have one? Comments?

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5. November 2011 by Craig Dumesnil.

Fellow fly club member, Craig Fox, and I recently returned from a 4 night/3 day’s trip to the North part of Andros Island in the Bahamas. Our requirements in choosing a lodge were simple: Find the best fishing at the lowest possible price. After looking at various choices on the web, we chose Frankie and Melinda Neymours’ Two Boys Inn in the Behring Point/Cargill Creek area. With their lower rates, we decided to book the trip as single occupancy…separate rooms and private boat and guide each day.

The fishing did not disappoint. We fished vast areas of the North and Middle Bights and never saw a soul, rarely even crossing paths with each other as the guides worked the waters independently. Craig Fox ventured to the west side of Andros where the permit and tarpon are found. I understand that the North part of Andros has less fishing pressure with fewer lodges and more fishing grounds. Also, the economy seems to be hurting the guiding business…many of the nearby lodges seemed to be without guests while we were there.

 ONE KEY ADVANTAGE to fishing the Bights is that we were able to fish in any direction, keeping the wind at our backs or finding sheltered areas in the lee of small cays. This is a big help for the less skilled caster, minimizing the frustration of not being able to get a cast out to the fish. For anyone who has been reluctant to give bonefishing a try out of concern for the casting skill required, let me make it clear: If you can repeat a decent 40 foot cast, the guide will put you on fish. It’s that simple.

 Rural and largely undeveloped, Andros is the largest Bahamian Island, lying southeast of the Florida Keys, having only a permanent population of 6,000. The US military operates two submarine tracking stations on the island. The Behring Point area is a local settlement with a dozen or so homes in addition to the fishing lodges located there. Short of taking a walk along a dirt road to nowhere, there is no other entertainment. Not the destination for a non-fishing companion.

The Two Boys Inn consisted of four rooms each with two queen beds and private bath and a dining/gathering/bar room where meals are served and where the guides returned each day to participate in the end-of-day story telling. Breakfast and dinner are served at table and sandwich fixings are put out in the morning for taking on the boat for lunch.

There is a fly tying station and if I were to go again, I would simply ask the guides to tie up a selection of flies for my use rather than spending money on flies bought stateside that end up not being used. In fact, if one were to take a few dozen fly hooks (hard to come by and expensive) the guides would most likely trade finished flies for the hooks. www.twoboysinn.com

Getting to Andros is relatively easy and can be done basically two ways. Take a non-stop from Atlanta, Charlotte or Orlando to Nassau and connect with a mid-afternoon flight for the short hop to Andros Town (also known as Fresh Creek). Alternatively, there is direct scheduled charter service from Ft. Lauderdale to Andros for those willing to make the drive down to Lauderdale. We ended up driving to Orlando and flying on Jet Blue to Nassau.

All in all, the guided fishing exceeded our expectations. We caught many bones, but who’s counting?

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31. October 2011 by Jack.

SIFFers, best be gettin ready for what we call Magic Time, i.e., Nov, Dec, &Jan.  These are the best months for finding brother spot tail.  Check your fishing logs, and if you are trying for reds, these months stand out as the most productive.  Why?  The water clears up with cooler temps as algea dies, and fish tend to school up better.  Bait is less abundant and the fish are less picky.  Conditions require stealth and good casting skills so work on both and get out and enjoy some great fishing.  Lots of fish out there and Magic Time is the time to find them.  Hope to see you at Nov meeting and Dec Christmas party.

Jack

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12. April 2011 by Craig Dumesnil.

BONEFISH ADVENTURE

By Craig Dumesnil 

Being relatively new to fly fishing, I have wanted to try for the elusive bonefish ever since viewing my first TV fishing show about same. A first attempt ended in a dismal failure: a vacation to Vieques off the southeastern coast of Puerto Rico. I had read a few articles on DIY fishing spots on Vieques and there were supposed to be at least two knowledgeable guides. As it turned out, one guide was out of town and the other had moved back to Chokoloskee. Ultimately, I paid a bunch of money to a local claiming to be able to put me on fish only to find out later that his real experience was in deep sea fishing and he knew next to nothing about stalking shallow water bones.  

As the days of this past winter turned shorter and colder I began to get the itch again and started looking around for a destination. Belize and the Costa Maya offered what seemed to be the most developed fly fishing opportunities with many well known lodges beginning south of Tulum in Mexico on down to coastal lodges in Belize and offshore spots like Ambergris Cay and Turneffe Island.  Cancun is easy enough to get to but I wasn’t keen on the 3-4 hour drive south or the prospect of spending most of the day getting to a final destination in Belize and having to repeat the procedure on the way home. 

I look forward to great fishing in the Bahamas some day but not during the winter. Enough said. 

Ultimately, I opted for the Turks and Caicos, geographically part of the chain of Bahamian Islands but far enough south to be warm year ‘round. Also appealing was the fact that Providenciales, Provo as it is called, is easy to get to with daily flights from Atlanta and Charlotte. Leaving on the 6:30 AM flight from Savannah, connecting with a 10:30 flight to Provo out of Atlanta puts you in the Turks and Caicos by 1 PM. Six hours of travel including a two hour layover in Atlanta. Not bad.   In addition to guided fishing, what further got my attention was the opportunity for DIY wading in various spots around Provo. 

The Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI) were once politically connected to Jamaica but with Jamaican independence, TCI became a British Overseas Territory. An interesting bit of political history is its hundred year flirtation with Canada. If it were not for the fact that the TCI does not meet the overall population requirement for becoming a Canadian province it would have been annexed long ago. Currently on the table is a proposal to make the TCI part of Nova Scotia! More recently, British Parliament disbanded the local, autonomous government over corruption charges in 2008 and the Islands are currently under the direct control of Great Britain with a governor appointed by the Queen. Nonetheless, the US dollar is the established currency. 

30 days and counting… My summertime wading buddy and fellow Fly Club member, Craig Fox, has signed on. We have made our travel arrangements and booked accommodations at Harbour Club Villas www.harbourclubvillas.com . In addition to being within our budget, HCV advertises its location as being adjacent to two shallow tidal lakes, Flamingo and Turtle, suitable for wading. On the recommendation of our host, Barry Morton, we have booked a guide, Darrin Bain, for our third day. www.turksandcaicosbonefishing.com . Emails back and forth to the guide suggest we bring a supply of Clousers, Gotchas and Charlies. 

At the March meeting of the SIFF, Tony Royal supplies us with a selection of flies to fill out our complement of flies. Not being able to get a reliable answer to whether or not I will be allowed to carry-on my Orvis Safe Passage gear case, I make a trip to the Savannah airport to ask the folks at the Delta counter, face-to face. Their answer is less than encouraging. Reluctant to check or even gate check the case, I have decided to carry-on a rod tube and a boat bag that will fit under the seat.   

DAY ONE March 22 

A travel day.  We head to the Savannah airport around 5 AM for the 6:30 flight to Atlanta. No sooner have we merged on to I-95, we encounter a wreck with all traffic stopped. My anxiety level begins to rise as I imagine missing the flight and the once-a-day connection to Provo in Atlanta. After a few minutes of standing still, the wreck is cleared and we are on our way again. No further delays. In Atlanta, we catch the 10:05 flight to Providenciales and after two hours and fifteen minutes we begin our descent.  As promised, a Daihatsu Terios is waiting out front for us and we head over to Turtle Cove Marina http://www.tcmarina.com/MarinaMap.html  to sign for the rental car and to pick up fishing licenses. $31 for a 30-day license. There is no one- week license. After checking in at the villa and picking up a few essentials at the IGA, we decide to drive to the western tip of the island to a place called Bonefish Point.  

Spectacularly beautiful, desolate, but a half hour of bone -jarring driving on a road that hadn’t seen a grader in a while. A word about the roads.  Only the main arteries are paved. Everything else is scraped and graded. Since the entire island chain is uplifted coral, geologically speaking, with almost no topsoil, road building consists of scraping off what little topsoil there is and then bulldozing and grading a road bed out of the coral substrate beneath.  This makes for a firm surface to drive on but is subject to erosion and the pot holes that follow, when it rains.  We didn’t fish at Bonefish Point that day, but returned there on Friday.  On the way back, we  

decide to stop at “Da Conch Shack” for a dinner of fried conch and delicious conch fritters. Provo is reputed to have the only conch farm in the Caribbean. 

DAY TWOMarch 23  

I get up early, leaving Mr. Fox to sleep in for a while and head down to Flamingo Lake, one of the two saltwater lakes the Harbour Club overlooks. Standing by the shore, I see a big push within casting distance.  Unfortunately, what I have in my hand is a cup of coffee, not my fly rod. The water is clear and only about two feet deep. I wade around for a while but return to the villa for breakfast with nothing to show for my efforts. After breakfast, we set out for Discovery Bay, a beautiful flat along the shore nearby. We run into two other anglers, frequent visitors to TCI, who confide that they’ve seen nothing. We return to Flamingo Lake after lunch and with the sun high and at our backs, we see lots of singles and pairs. Finally, we have at least seen bonefish! After a while, we separate. I walk a couple of hundred yards to a point and see a bust up of water within casting distance. It is a shoal of fifty bonefish cruising. I make a bad cast, then a better cast, fish on!  

Today is our day with a local guide, Darrin Bain. We meet him at Walkin Marina at the eastern most end of the island. Rods and gear aboard, we’re off in an Actioncraft flats boat with a Merc 150.  Thirty minutes at full throttle, we head south over the vast 65 miles of the Caicos Bank. The water is crystal clear no deeper than ten feet.  Finally, the water shallows to two feet as we approach a sand bar. We anchor and walk a good ways, our guide searching for fish. The flat stretches for more than a mile in every direction.

  Darrin doesn’t like what he’s seeing so he asks us to walk over the sandbar to deeper water while he goes back for the boat. As soon as we walk over the bar into the water we scare a pair of bones cruising the shoreline. We head farther south another ten minutes and anchor again. This time, after a short walk, we come upon a shoal of innumerable bonefish, Darrin estimates at a thousand. They are being pestered by two circling lemon sharks. With me casting left handed and Craig right we separate by a hundred yards to get a better angle. 

This is easy pickings for first-timers and we immediately begin to hook up. We catch enough to stop counting, using small bead head Charlies.

Casting into the middle of the school results in a hook-up every time. A better double-hauler could have easily caught a hundred fish in this one spot.  After an hour and a half we return to the boat for sandwiches and a break.  

After lunch, Darrin moves the boat to the mangrove shoreline of Middle Caicos Island and he begins to pole in four feet of water. We take turns on the casting deck and each hook larger fish than on the flat. My largest gets well into the backing but after a minute or so, breaks off. We head for slightly deeper water, using heavier flies. With the correct stripping technique, Darrin shows us how to coax the fish up where we can easily see them following the fly.  

Finally, about 3:15 we begin to head back having been on the flats since 9 AM. It’s about a forty minute run back to the dock with a quick stop to see the “Blue Hole”, a circular drop off a hundred yards across  and four hundred feet deep, easily visible in Google Earth. The Caicos Bank is so vast we come to realize that we could fish the flats and mangroves everyday for a year and never fish the same spot twice. Darrin was a great guide and, as it turns out, has fished with Raz Reed and Fuzzy Davis at a private fishing club, nearby. 

DAY FOURMarch 25

In the morning we agree to return to Discovery Bay for the incoming tide. After an hour we decide that there are probably fish but against such a uniform bottom of white sand we just can’t see them. Our backup plan is to return to Bonefish Point. Although it seemed like forever getting there the first time, it turned out to be a timed 21 minutes. This place is by far the most beautiful spot we’ve fished.

Bonefish Point

We chase a few bones near the shore but it is now high tide with about four feet of water over the flat. Next time we’ll come and fish either side of the low. Later that day, my TCI fishing adventure ends catching a juvenile ‘cuda with my other rod rigged with a bite leader and a big red deceiver.  

DAY FIVEMarch 26 

Our bonefish adventure wraps up with an early afternoon flight back to Atlanta and on to Savannah. Six and a half hours. All and all it has been a great trip and a successful introduction to bonefishing. The weather was ideal, the destination easy to travel to and the combination of both guided and DIY fishing offered us plenty of fishing opportunities.    

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6. August 2010 by Rich Vidinha.

Here’s another great video put together by Rogue Water Chapters.

Some great under water footage.  It says first in their chapter…hopefully some more nice video’s in the future!

http://roguewaterchapters.com/

Rich

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