Biblical rain

Dec 10th: Yesterday saw rain in Abaco the like of which I have never seen in my life. With 5.5 inches in 24 hours and four inches in just one mid-morning hour, the rainfall was of biblical proportions and we were starting to think of readying the ark.

In the middle of all this, two guests, Maurice and James Henchey from England, were out fishing in the Marls and had just caught their first bonefish of the day when the heavens opened. They have absolutely no idea how their guide, Ishi, managed to get them home since visibility was reduced to just a few feet. “Drowned rats” would be a charitable description of their condition.

The deluge capped a difficult week that featured a lot of wind and some heavy cloud cover, which frequently impaired visibility. Despite this, all anglers caught several bonefish with Tony Hoag from the US and Irish anglers Peter O’Reilly and Mary Donovan recording the best catches for the week – in Mary’s case, her first ever bonefish. Peter (recently listed by Flyfishing & Flytying magazine as one of the 39 most influential people in European flyfishing over the past 100 years or so) took the best fish of the week at about 5.5 pounds.

Kelso Sutton from New York, eccentrically fishing with a 2-weight rod, somehow managed to catch a bonefish which put up a phenomenal fight and recovered successfully thereafter. But we will not be making a habit of using such uber-light tackle.

Doug DeHoll from South Carolina had 12 bones one day, but the numbers of fish seen were generally down on the previous week, when Irish angler (and current Club record holder with 49 fish in a day in 2009) had catches of 16, 16, 13,  5,  3 and 0.