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A MONTHLY NEWSLETTER
August 2003 Vol. 16 No- R
(Edilor Nole:
Angling Report
Presidenl/ Publisher Don Causey made
a quick visit lasl month to Flamingo Cay Lodge on
the West Coast of Andros Island and came away
mightily impressed. Here's his assessment..)
Anyone who knows the Bahamas very well has heard at
least vague stories about a private island somewhere
on the west coast of Andros Island where friends of
the owner have been privileged over the years to
enjoy some of the most pristine fishing left in this
hemisphere, along with duck shooting if they were so
inclined. Well, those stories are not just
"stories."
The very real, 20,000-plus-acre
island is called Flamingo Cay, and the owner of it
is a third-generation white Bahamian by the name of
Charles Bethell, whose ancestors were influential in
the pre-independence government of the Bahamas. Old
Man Bethell, as Charles' grandfather is
affectionately remembered, bought Flamingo Cay in
the 1920s and used it as a family retreat and a
place to entertain friends and acquaintances, some
of whom happened to be members of royal families in
Europe.
The island camp is, literally, in the middle of
nowhere. Unless you have lots of time for an ocean
journey, the only way to reach it is by floatplane.
Out front, is the west coast of Andros - miles and
miles of it yawning away in both directions. In the
other direction, there are hundreds of square miles
of saltwater marsh. The nearest neighbor in that
direction is over 30 miles away.
(Flamingo Cay Lodge is 10 minutes from the West
coast of Andros. Note also how close it is to famed
Williams Island.)
The
immediate appeal of Flamingo Cay is the easy access
it provides to the famed west coast of Andros. Yes,
other lodges access the west coast, but they do so
by running upwards of an hour and a half in each
direction. The run is so long and arduous (e.g.,
butt-busting) that most of the lodges charge an
extra $150 a day for accessing the west coast.
Guests at Flamingo Cay can fish the west coast
within 10 minutes of leaving the lodge. They can
also fish remote ponds and rivers in the interior,
reachable only by airboat when conditions make
coastal fishing impossible. Even more important,
week-long guests can even arrange to fish the
ultimate Bahamas "honey hole" - namely, the remote
Williams Island flats, where all three of the top
flats fish (bone fish, tarpon and permit) occur in
great number.
The deeper appeal of Flamingo Cay is
the ineffable "feel" of the place. This past month,
I had the privilege of spending a night there as a
guest of Charles Bethell. We flew down both coasts a
ways on arrival, took an airboat tour of the marshes
and made a few casts at bonefish the next morning.
Yes, I caught a few of the many dozens I saw in
spite of spending most of my time tangled in my own
line.
There were just the two of us in camp,
along with his assistant, Cindy Rimstad, and a
skeleton crew of Bahamian workers. A new building
is going up, so there was a bit of back-ground noise
of saws and hammers. It being late July, it was hot.
Breathlessly so at times. The saving grace was a
strong breeze that blew sonorously through the
Australian pines planted long ago by Old Man Bethell.
The trees and some of the older structures
of Flamingo Cay have been there so long they have
molded them- selves around one another the way trees
and shrubs in England have shaped themselves around
stone fences. One of the original duck-shooting
punts Old Man Bethell used back in the 1920s hangs
in the dining area, along with pictures of the
patriarch draped with teal.
The summertime doldrums
not-withstanding, you could sense the contours of a
totally different kind of experience than that
provided by most fishing lodges. Charles Bethell
loves Flamingo Cay. Maybe a better word is, he
reveres it. Some of his earliest childhood memories
are of coming to Flamingo Cay with his father. The
trips were old-fashioned, male-bonding rituals that
pulled the family together. If you have ever read
The Bear by William Faulkner and felt the mythic
power of those trips he describes into the endless
woods of Mis- sissippi, then you know what those
family trips to Flamingo Cay meant to Charles
Bethell.
At this point, Bethell has closed some other
businesses and begun to devote almost all of his
energy to operating Flamingo Cay, so he is serious
about running it as a commercial enterprise. But
that does not mean he is going to operate it as a
take-all-comers fishing and shooting lodge. As much
as possible, he wants to screen would-be clients to
keep out those who don't appreciate the gentleman's
sporting lodge environment he wants to maintain. In
conversation, he made it clear that he is not above
canceling a client's trip mid-week if he begins to
spoil everyone's good time.
Bethell's concern for the long-term health
of the resource is almost palpable. He insists that
clients release bonefish at the boat without
touching them, even to take photographs. He's even
more protective of the resident tarpon in the area,
which he insists clients break off after a few jumps
and/or after they have touched the leader. "I am
absolutely adamant about that," Bethell said. "No
one should come here expecting to lift a tarpon out
of the water," he said. "And 1 don't make exceptions
just because a client hooks his (or her) first-ever
tarpon here."
What Bethell is apparently trying to do is
generate the necessary revenue to preserve Flamingo
Cay without sacrificing the relaxed bonhomie of the
place he recalls as a child. Ultimately, that may
mean turning the is- land into a private club, he
says. Right now, though, Flamingo Cay is quietly
gaining a following as a straight-up fishing and
shooting lodge. Last year, Bethell says he hosted
around 100 clients, and he wants to boost that
considerably this coming year, especially by finding
additional cast-and-blast clients in the late
fall/early winter months of October, November and
December. That's when good fishing coincides with
the migration through the area of tens of thousands
of teal, mostly bluewings and green wings, along
with a few American widgeons and pintails. The teal
land in saltwater ponds, right amidst bonefish. It's
not the standard way to hunt and fish these ponds,
but in years past Bethell says he has left anglers
on ponds with both a shotgun and a fly rod and come
back later to find frustrated clients complaining
about bonefish running through the decoy spread and
becoming tangled in the lines. Now, that’s a
cast-and-blast experience, no?
All of this talk about
gentlemanliness and shooting should not be allowed
to obscure the quality of the fishing at Flamingo
Cay. If you can cast a fly, you'll catch a
satisfying number of bonefish there and even a
tarpon or two. On visits to Williams Island one even
has a reasonable chance at certain times of year of
taking a grand slam.
Just don't consider this place if you
are what Angling Report subscriber Robert E.
Gieringer calls "faint of wallet." Gieringer fished
Flamingo Cay this past spring, and it was his report
that drew my attention to Flamingo Cay and inspired
my visit out that way. Gieringer had the misfortune
to visit Flamingo Cay in the middle of a storm that
delayed his arrival and milked-up the water, which
is a well-known problem with the west coast of
Andros. He still hooked a number of bone fish and
enjoyed his stay,
"Charles Bethell is a gracious host,
offering wines, Cuban rum and cigars for those of
that pursuit, and his assistant, Cindy Rimstad,
works up a tasty kitchen fare," Gieringer writes.
"Charles has the appearance of Peter Falk in his
younger years, and he has the conversational
personality of Jason Alexander. His stories of 19th
and 20'h Century events in the Bahamas were
fascinating."
Gieringer goes on to compare the
costs of Flamingo Cay to the costs of a fly-out
lodge in Alaska. And he is right. The daily rate is
$450 for meals and accommodations. Fishing is
another $200 per person per day, if two
people fish together. Duck hunting (and a limited
amount of pig hunting) is $350 a day. Anyone opting
for a day of hunting can hunt and/or fish for the
same price, perhaps combining a morning of bone
fishing with an afternoon of duck hunting. The
float- plane ride to and from Nassau is another $350
per person.
The capacity of the lodge this coming
year is being expanded to eight, but the typical
group consists of six people. That is not a lot of
people to cover the cost of outfitting trips in such
a remote location. And that is why the place is so
expensive, Bethell says, noting that his
infrastructure includes generators big enough to
support air conditioning in all cabins, a float
plane, a reverse-osmosis water system, four flats
boats and an airboat with a power plant large enough
to whisk six clients through a mangrove swamp. A
trip through the marsh in Bethell's airboat is a
must, incidentally, if you go to Flamingo Cay. You
sit up high above the marsh watching ducks, egrets,
and other birds scatter in all directions. Some
parts of the marsh are
absolutely filled with bone fish, and
the water back there is clear as a swimming pool.
To haul all of the heavier supplies
necessary to operate a lodge, Bethell has bought a
functioning World War II landing craft big
enough to put a tractor trailer inside. He uses it
to run all the way to Miami and/or Nassau for
supplies. During my visit, an exceptionally high
tide provided an opportunity to bring the craft
right up the small river in front of the lodge. It
was a hoot, maneuvering that giant craft up the
creek.
So, who is this lodge right for? Not for the "faint
of wallet," of course. And not for the fish-counter
either, who divides the daily fee by the number of
fish he catches to see if he has gotten his money's
worth. Flamingo Cay is a gentleman's club cum lodge
that is unlike anything I have seen in the organized
world of international fly fishing. It is an
absolute gem for the mature angler who has caught
enough fish and now savors the overall experience of
being on the water and in a congenial environment.
A final anecdote may bring the Flamingo
Cay experience into focus. Last year, Bethell says a
group of clients decided it would be nice to have a
suckling pig slow-roasted in the camp's
barbecue-cooker. Seems everyone had seen some of the
many feral pigs that live on Flamingo Cay, and had
been treated to the full story of how they are all
descendants of a boar named Horace that Old Man
Bethell released many years ago. The effort to kill
a pig and then prepare it on the cooker became the
whole focus of the day. Eating it and telling
stories around the fire became the focus of the
evening.
You get the picture. Flamingo Cay is
one of a kind. -
Don Causey.
TRIP REPORT
Fly Fishing Adventures
888-347-4896
flyfish@napanet.net
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