EDITOR, The Tribune.

An open letter to V Alfred Gray, Bahamas Minister of Agriculture and Marine Resources

Dear Minister Gray:

I am writing per your suggestion that stakeholders should email their thoughts to you on the proposed fishing regulations restricting sport fishing on the flats for non-Bahamians.

I first came to The Bahamas with my family for a one-week spring vacation 20 years ago. I wanted to go to a place in the Bahamas or Caribbean where I could bone fish for a couple of days and the family could enjoy the beach. We ended up visiting Treasure Cay and fell in love with the place. I fished with a guide named Orthnel who guided me to hundreds of fish and was patient with my many mistakes as an inexperienced flats fisherman.

Hooked on the Treasure Cay area I came back many times, sometimes with family and sometimes with a fishing buddy, but I always went home with a friendly feeling about Abaco, the water, the fishing, and the people.  In those visits I had the privilege to fish with some very famous guides, O’ Donald McIntosh, Danny Sawyer, Buddy Pinder, and Justin Sands to name a few. The experience of visiting Abaco became the highlight of the year and as the years went by my wife and I took a big chunk of our life savings and bought a second home in Treasure Cay.

Originally we came to Abaco for the beaches, the swimming, the flats fishing and the warm weather, but in the end it was the genuine warmth of the Bahamian people that cemented our decision to become part of the community. We now spend three to five months a year in Abaco and consider it our winter home. I fish with guides once or twice a month, especially when we have guests staying with us. I regularly walk and fish the flats around Treasure Cay in awe of the natural beauty. I like to think of myself as one of the Bahama’s best salespeople, always selling the assets of my adopted home.

This positive feeling was shattered by your letter outlining the new proposed rules for fishing the flats. After years of doing my part to be a responsible member of the community I am in your words “a foreigner” rather than a welcome guest and the activity that I enjoy the most, flats fishing, is being priced out of my reach. Since I fish about 15 days out of a month, the $30 daily permit would cost me over $2250 per year. This is way excessive in comparison to license fees in other countries. Further, if I want to take my boat fishing I will now be required to hire a guide. Since the cost of a day trip with a guide is significant, I would be compelled to greatly limit the number of times per month I can enjoy this treat. So the impact of the law on me would be to seriously limit my fishing experience to the point where I am not sure it makes sense to continue visiting Abaco. As you can imagine, as a second home owner with a large group of good friends in the community this thought causes me great distress. While the distress of one family may not be significant in your planning process, my many conversations over the last two days with other fishermen/homeowners confirm that I am one among many.  In fact, one friend was in the process of looking for a house in Treasure Cay but has put this plan on hold. Without a reasonable fishing environment, he is no longer interested.

If you care about our relationship, and you genuinely want my suggestions here they are:  

1) Offer an annual license to people who have invested in second homes in the Bahamas. Make it reasonable so your seasonal guests will feel it is a fair value. (Anything over $130 is out of line in my experience.) These are the people who buy groceries, pay VAT, pay property taxes, buy cars, pay for auto registration, pay house repair bills and pay real estate commissions! Treat them right and income to the Bahamas General Fund will grow. Treat them wrong and they will disappear like spooked bone fish!

2) Charge a reasonable fee for a daily flats fishing. Anything over $10 is out of line with the competition. These are the folks you want to come back year after year and stay in your hotels, lodges and vacation homes. Please remember they have other flats fishing choices, including Mexico, Belize, the Florida Keys, Caymans, Christmas Island, Hawaii, South Texas and soon Cuba. To attract their business the Bahamas must deliver an excellent fishing experience. Treat them as good friends like I was treated in Treasure Cay 20 years ago and they will buy homes and pay taxes.

3) Make the application for fishing permits available online with payment by credit card. This should be simple and quick. Don’t even think about making your customers hunt down a guide or Minister to buy a fishing permit every day at dawn. Applicants should be able to buy and print the permit for the specified duration of their stay on their home printer. The Bahamas Government will have the money before they arrive and they will have a permit in hand when they get off the airplane.

4) Drop the requirement that every flats fisherman have a guide in their boat all the time. Lots and lots of people want to come to the Bahamas to fish with guides a few days and on their own for a day or two. Embrace the do-it-yourselfers. Their money is good and, in a tourist-based country, that money creates jobs. New visitors, treated right, become regular customers. They come back time and again, they hire guides and then they buy houses and become permanent contributors to your economy.

5) Don’t make guides responsible for selling fishing permits. Use the money from the online permit sales to support the marine conservation programme, including hiring trained wildlife officers to administer the programme. Guiding and bookkeeping are different jobs. Besides the really good guides are too busy taking care of customers to mess with selling permits and being bookkeepers.

6) Encourage the flats sports fisherman to report poaching, (netting of bone fish, killing of turtles, etc) to authorities. Put an email address or a phone number on their permit so they can report poachers. The visiting flats angler loves the flats more than anybody. They release all their fish and can help maintain the quality of flats fishing you say you are concerned about. And they will do it for FREE.

7) Good guides are in demand. They quickly become successful based on their hard work and acquired skill at....spotting fish, positioning the boat, and helping the client cast to the right spot. They are among the hardest working people in the Bahamas and because they work so closely with visitors they are your most important ambassadors. Treat them right and listen to them!

8) Don’t worry about overcrowding from do-it-yourself fishermen. According to Wikipedia the Bahamas has over 7,000 miles of coast line! 7,000 miles is about the length of the east and west coast of the United States combined. There are thousands of square miles of bone fish habitat. Do-it-yourself fishermen who arrive by plane for a week fish by wading or maybe by kayak. They can’t fish much more than a mile or two away from their starting point. Guide boats zip by them on their way to hundreds of square miles of flats the wade fishermen can only dream about. Often, the following day the do-it-yourself anglers hire a guide to get out where the action is. Do-it-your self anglers that have boats can be frustrating to guides who run miles to a favourite spot and find someone already there.  This is understandable but the problem can be addressed by setting up guidelines and schedules for when DIY boat anglers can fish certain high use areas and then posting the rules agreed on. No need to get the government involved.

9) Listen to your best guides and best customers. These are the folks who can tell you if you are running a sound programme and meeting the needs of the sport fishing market while, at the same time, ensuring good conservation practices. Be suspicious of disgruntled guides who are not working. There is a reason for this. Good guides are always in demand.

10) Be aware that there are rogue guides who are willing to slash tyres and sabotage boats of anglers fishing on their own. Make honest efforts to bring them to justice. A few bad apples can ruin the reputation of a whole country.  

RICHARD SWAN

Reno NV & Treasure Cay, Abaco,

June 23, 2015.