Bonefish on the Brain Bonefish and all that relates (maybe a bit about tarpon too).

Happy in the Bahamas, a scene now likely to be repeated.

Reflecting on the news that the proposed regs look, really, pretty good, I think it makes sense to look at the ideas that got shed from the start, through the middle and to the (possible) end of this process.

• Guides issue licenses – This could have let a guide just decide not to give you a license, meaning you couldn’t plan a trip because you could get there and find no one wanted to give you a license.
• The Box – there were going to be set areas for DIY, not the best, and that would be it.
• No DIY on certain Islands – Along with the boxes, some islands would have just been off limits. The whole place is open for business, willing to accept your business in whatever form you can give it.
• BFFIA everything – At one point or another it was proposed the BFFIA would certify guides and lodges. They were going to decide where conservation money would go. They would take care of enforcement. That’s all gone. They’ll be part of it, but not all of it and it won’t be their show. If you wonder how He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named feels about the legislation, he’s on the verge of imploding over it, which I take as an excellent sign.
• No Confusing License Scheme – There was a time when you might, on a single trip, need three different licenses based on who you were fishing with. That’s gone.
• Foreign owned lodge ban – This was never likely, but the intent was in there, even if the mechanism couldn’t work.
• Second home owners can still fish – You can take your wife out or your buddy out if you have a house in Abaco or Exuma or Grand Bahama.

Basically, this is a straight forward proposal with all the idiocy removed. This is a pretty solid proposal and I support it. There will be a license. There will be certification and training to ensure the quality of the guides (that last Abaco trip I had maybe 6 or 7 guys tell me they were “guides,” who clearly were not, so that seems a good thing).

The Bahamas’ fly fishing industry has been saved (for now, at least).

What this means to me is that I will go back to the Bahamas. I will go back with my family for family trips. I will go back and fish with guides, at lodges and on my own. It means the Bahamas can continue to be a special place for me and I’ll continue to enjoy its places and people.

I’m happy for my Bahamian friends and I’m happy for my fishing friends.

There are very real threats to the Bahamas, mostly from over-development and industrial exploitation. We have to continue to watch these things and use our muscle, when we can, to keep things in the Bahamas as beautiful and pristine as possible.

You can go to the BTT facebook page and watch the presentation of the regs by the Permanent Secretary at the Bahamas Ministry of Agriculture and Marine Resources, Ms. Rena Glinton. It is also on the BOTB facebook page.

Here’s my first take on the regs presented at ICAST.

• DIY appears to be mostly, if not wholly untouched. Your DIY fears appear to be mitigated for the vast majority of anglers. The only folks caught out are boats with more than 2 people, although the language on that is a bit iffy for me at this point.
• There are not different licenses for guided or unguided or semi-guided. There’s just one license with different lengths of time.
• License fees are modest and in-line. $20/week and $60/year. I’m OK with that. The fee is still split between conservation and the general fund.
• The training and certification of guides will take place with guide associations… plural. That’s good. This will include the Abaco guide’s association too.
• The enforcement powers will be governmental, not NGO, which means it isn’t the Prescott show.
• Catch and Release is the law of the land, except locals are allowed to maybe keep one to eat, although I don’t know if that is per-day or what, exactly.
• I wasn’t sure if locals needed a license or not.

My main point of confusion was about if you needed a guide if you had a boat. Ms. Glinton might not have had this totally right. She said that if one person was fishing and another was poling, it was only one angler and wouldn’t require a guide. But, out of skiff, unless you are throwing hardware or bait, you aren’t going to have more than one person fishing at a time. You could have, in theory, 5 guys in a boat and only one of them is going to be fishing at a time. So, I don’t think that is actually what they mean.

They presented some numbers that were a little questionable. They said recreational flats angling accounted for $500,000,000/year. The previous study was $140M, so this is a 2.5X increase over those numbers, which make it possible, but not probable.

Funny to me, they presented the $500M/year number, a job number of 18,000 (both directly and indirectly) and a recreational angler number of 37,000. Then, on the heals of those numbers, they said because of those numbers it “… has become necessary to regulate and develop this sector…” Kind of like saying “Given the billion users and billions of dollars of income, we, the government, have decided the step in to help Facebook better serve its users and to ensure it will continue to grow.”

I’d argue that if recreational flats fishing contributes $500M annually to the Bahamas, that’s a pretty good argument to leave it alone, unless you think the regulation of the flats industry will add to the tally or preserve the future of that industry and the evidence that the industry is in peril is pretty scant.

Still, the regulations appear, at first blush, to be pretty good. DIY is in tact. The BFFIA is not going to get the keys to the kingdom. The government will be tasked with enforcement, not brute squads or the BFFIA.

It might be possible to improve on the legislation, but it could be much, much, much worse. Really, every previous proposal from the BFFIA/Fisheries has been horrific, but this is much more in line with the voices of reason.

That’s my $.02.

Well, it has been quiet here at Bonefish on the Brain world headquarters, but I suspect there will be news tomorrow. There should be news out of ICAST and I’m waiting to hear exactly what that is.

It has been a long year and I don’t expect any resolution. A shallow shoreline generally means the water is shallow too, meaning what you can’t see is often similar to what you can and what we have seen is just a long back-and-forth between Tourism (yay) and Fisheries (boo).

I do know that whatever is being announced has not been shared with the Abaco Fly Fishing Guide’s Association (we like them), which is one of those things that makes me a little uneasy.

So, we wait.

Feels like staking out a channel for tarpon and just waiting for them to show up. Long bouts of boredom followed my mere moments of thrashing, banging, crazy activity.

I write this post to the Bahamian people. I am not Bahamian. In fact, I live a long, long way from the Bahamas. There are some things I think you need to know about things going on in your country you likely don’t know much about. The reason you don’t know much about them is because they are going to be pretty bad for many of you, and, given how politics tends to work, those behind the efforts aren’t too keen to really let you know what they have in mind.

Your birthright

As a Bahamian you are born into a beautiful country. Your environment may be your greatest asset. Many of you make your living from your local waters. Many of you may do a bit of fishing to put a meal on the table. Some of you may just like to go out and fish for the joy of it.

This could be about to change. A group of fly fishing guides, together with the Ministry of Fisheries, is seeking to regulate exactly who can fish and where. A license would be required for Bahamians to fish on the “flats,” defined to encompass mostly any water that isn’t too deep (less than 6′). It could cost you $100 now to go fishing in water you’ve been able to fish for free since, well, forever. You want your wife to fish too? That’s another $100.

Your birthright, those beautiful Bahamian waters, are going to be held in reserve for those who can pay, mostly Americans and Europeans staying at expensive lodges. This might make the fishing a little bit better, in the same way there might be more American Bison if we didn’t let anyone into Wyoming, but the average Bahamian loses a right to do something you’ve been able to do since there was a Bahamas.

Feeling welcome

The full regulations are aimed more at foreign anglers than they are at locals who want to go catch a snapper. They are intended to make it harder for certain types of fishermen to choose how they experience the Bahamas. To those fishermen, many of whom have been coming to the Bahamas for years, these efforts seem very uninviting. The easy going nature of the Bahamas is being replaces by something unfriendly. The regulations say “It isn’t enough for you to spend your money in the Bahamas, it has to be with us.”

This is going to result in lost business for the independent guides, for the guest houses and smaller hotels, for the car rentals and boat rentals and little restaurants. Anglers that come with their families and want a relaxing vacation with a couple days of fishing in the mix, those guys are not pleased and may not return.

What it isn’t about

The regulations are not about preserving the fish. Nothing in the regulations does anything to address habitat loss, what is most likely the main threat to bonefish in the Bahamas. When it comes to sustainable fisheries, the issue of illegal fishing by Dominican factory ships is 1,000x more important, and these rules would do nothing to address any of that.

The opposition to the regulations isn’t about having to pay for a license. Anglers would happily pay a license if it were reasonable, easy to obtain and went to support the health of the fishery.

What your visitors are saying

Here are some comments by fisherman. These are just a few. There are many, many more. It is going to be a disaster for the average Bahamian.

Well written article which clearly states the outcome of passing these shortsighted “regulations”. It is abundantly clear to an outsider, the proposed regulations are are power grab attempt by a few. This group hopes to push all anglers into hiring guides, charge exorbitant fees which will enrich their coffers and in general push the DIY anglers out of the Bahamas. There is a distinct xenophobic cast to the whole business.

The fallout from Prescott’s selfie move will be worse, we think than anyone planned. Looking at his now shrunken by 80% BFFIA members, we see some pretty good guys caught up in this mess. Too bad.

I am continued to be amazed/dumbfounded by the lack of foresight by the policy makers in the Bahamas. Sure there will be lots of people that still go and fish via the lodge route. That is what I have done in the past. But I will tell you it is completely off my list for family trips or a buddies DIY trip. AND I live in Florida.

Simply put my wife and I go to the Bahamas every winter for a week or so, she reads and I fish – always catch and careful release.
Last year it was Long Island, during a time of low travelers as the island recovered from the hurricane.
The people we me seemed very glad we were there…

The consequence or mere possiblity of being hassled or worse for wading a flat is too much for me to risk to re-visit the Bahamas.
Frankly the whole thing is in the “hard to believe” colum.

Count me wading somewhere else. Thumbs down!!

What I find funny is the BFFIA wants to be part of the “policing” in all of this. Which you and I know means they will chase and harass any visiting angler that appears to be fishing on their own, even legally, until the BFFIA gets what they want: them to literally leave the water and never return again so that BFFIA and their members have a monopoly on everything.

I think the worst part for me is the ambiguity. I do DIY (mostly on E but was planning a trip to Cat) and I mostly bonefish but I also do blind casting. How is this covered? Definitely will look somewhere else.

Tell Minister Gray and the BFFIA that there is a real cost to their maneuvering and efforts to extract more dollars from traveling anglers – if enough anglers contemplating the Andros trip do as I am doing and stay away, the trip will be cancelled and $40,000 less will flow into the Bahamas this year. It’s too bad, because the pain will be borne most heavily by the lovely family that runs the lodge, not Minister Gray.

BTT doing work

The Bonefish & Tarpon Trust just recently put out a response to the Fisheries proposed regs. You can read them here.

The Abaco Fly Fishing Guide’s Association also submitted a lengthy rebuttal to the proposed regulations. Here is a link to their response (It is too long to post here, but this is a PDF of their reply).

Here is the thing. These thoughtful and well-intended responses to the proposed legislation don’t matter at all… and that underscores exactly how bad this whole situation is.

Minister Gray and Prescott Smith don’t care what BTT or the AFFGA have to say. In fact, much of what is in the proposals seems aimed at directly negatively impacting both organizations and their constituents. Abaco guides are on the outs with the BFFIA-crew and their interests are not important to the likes of Prescott Smith. Only Prescott’s interests are important to Prescott. And BTT? You notice how when BTT lists the people in the Bahamas who work with them, who help them fulfill their mission there is a stark lack of participation from the BFFIA folks? I have noticed. The BFFIA seems to view BTT, a bonefish conservation nonprofit, with suspicion and distrust and with the totally delusional idea that they could do what BTT is doing themselves (they can’t… not by a long, long way).

This “comment period” (which closes in the next couple days) is a sham because those asking for comment have no interest in hearing anyone’s concerns. Their minds are made up and all that is left is this farce of a process of consultation.

The cliff note version of my take on the proposals looks like this.

• This is an attempt to set up the BFFIA as King Makers in the flats fishing industry in the Bahamas. Enshrined by Fisheries, the BFFIA would run the show. This is an organization which has shown nothing but contempt for their customers and those who disagrees with them.
• This is an effort to take a birthright away from the average Bahamian and sell it off to the global elites. Bahamians forced to buy a license to fish the water out their front door is something I could not have imagined. They have no idea this is coming either.

(Really, I’m tired of writing about this stuff, but, ya know… this is kind of what it’s about right now)

Flywater Travel can take you to fish Atlantic Salmon. I totally borrowed this pic from them.

A word about the Quebec Connection

If you talk to the proponents of this newest BFFIA driven proposal, at some point someone may mention how great this whole thing works up in Quebec. Their license fee is, can you guess it? $50 a day. You can’t just walk out on the nearest river. There are some sections that are completely private, others that require a guide and others that you can walk out on, but only after you get your local permit from the local government.

This is what the BFFIA folks want. It mostly kills off the DIY game and consolidates access to the water in the hands of the wealthy and those who take them fishing.

This starts to fall apart though when one looks into it more.

First, before about 1980 all the rivers in Quebec were, more or less, private. The locals had no access. There was no economy dependent on the unimpeded access to those waters. There was no tangential tourism industry to kill. In the Bahamas there has been a long history of anglers coming and trying their luck on the Bahamian flats and there are a number of businesses which have grown up to cater to those anglers. Independent guides, guest houses, restaurants, car rental places and boat rentals. They all stand to lose and there was no such situation in Quebec, so the comparison is deeply flawed.

Secondly, bonefish are not Atlantic Salmon. Some of those rives may only get a couple thousand fish in a season. I’ve seen schools of fish in Andros with more fish in them than some of the best rivers in Quebec see in a whole year… in a whole YEAR. Take all the fishable water in Quebec for Atlantic Salmon and how much water would you actually have? I’d think you’d have more fishable water in a single Bahamian island. Atlantic salmon are also swimming to their death (they may survive the first spawn and head back out to the Atlantic, but most only spawn once or twice). It is a fish that requires a lot of management and is in a far, far worse state than bonefish are.

It just isn’t the same thing.

If the regulations proposed by the BFFIA and Fisheries passes there will be some winners and some losers. It is worth looking at the breakdown, as I see it.

Purdy.

Winners:

Lodges – Yes, lodges will win in this scenario. They get rid of a great number of anglers, even locals, and get the waters mostly to themselves. The threat of harassment, the complicated license fees, the massive possible fines will keep DIY guys off the water, in large part. That means the water will be less pressured and the safest way to access any of it will be via a lodge with the lodge guides. This is the Quebec version of fisheries management.

The BFFIA – Made kingmakers by this legislation, they would get to determine who guides and who doesn’t. It puts them, and our good pal Prescott, in a position of power and authority to be able to dictate to the guiding community.

Cuba, Belize, Mexico – Those who don’t go to the Bahamas will go other places. Even if the DIY game is not the same, the animosity being created will keep some folks away, but they’ll still go fishing, just other places.

Um… I can’t see any other winners here.

Losers:

Independent guides – The folks that came with their families and wanted to grab a day with a guide in addition to a little walking around on their own will, to one degree or another, go somewhere else. Having to get two different licenses for the different types of fishing isn’t great either. There will be fewer days of guiding for indie guides.

Assisted DIY providers – A different license, a different classification and having to deal with the BFFIA make this a much harder business to run under the newest proposed regs.

Smaller hotels/guest houses – Those places the families and DIY folks stayed at won’t get that business.

Small businesses – Some of the families who come to do some fishing and other activities will go other places, so fewer meals to be sold, fewer cars to be rented, fewer Kaliks to be sold.

Second home owners – A place like Abaco has a number of second home owners, some of whom have their own boats. They wouldn’t be able to fish with anyone else unless they hire a guide. It will likely mean some interesting places will be on the market though.

Bahamas Environment – If you have fewer people experiencing the wonders of the Bahamas, you’ll have fewer people who will care if some of that is destroyed. If fishing becomes less of an economic boost, other industries will fill the void and exploit the resource and cries to stop that will fall on ears slightly deafened by the reduction in the importance of angling. People fight for what they care about and they care about the things they know.

Bonefish research – The BFFIA is pretty much openly hostile to “American” science, even if Bahamians are deeply involved. If you look at who participates with the BTT you’ll notice a conspiciuos lack of BFFIA leadership.

Anyone who has disagreed with the BFFIA – The leadership here seems to really know how to carry a grudge. I can’t imagine they would use their new powers lightly. Maybe not immediately, but I’d bet some of the opposing forces would find it harder to do business if this sort of thing gets passed.

The average Bahamian – It has always been the case that the average Bahamian could walk out on their local flat, maybe right in front of their home, and fish. This changes that. Is that water considered a “flat?” Well, pay up or you can’t fish there. Considering how much of the Bahamas could be considered flats, that is a huge part of the country. I can’t imagine the local Bahamians have any idea they are about to have one of their birthrights stolen from right under their noses.

It is important to note that the proposed legislation does not outlaw DIY fishing, it just makes it much less appealing. The multiple licenses, the draconian fines, the possibility of being harassed on the flats, it all makes it likely to keep some people from heading to the Bahamas. Some business will continue to flow, but other business will dry up.