Today, Art and I took a ride over to the Madison Valley to meet Dan and Nancy Delekta. They own a fly shop, lodge and outfitting business called Bear Tooth about 18 miles south of Ennis.
Nancy called me a couple weeks ago and said she heard I was the person to talk to about going to Andros Island. She said they had never been there and even though it was very short notice, they would very much like to go in early March. After several phone calls and e-mail we managed to arrange the trip for them. I kept an eye on the air fares through Orbitz and one afternoon I called Nancy and told her to log on to them and book the trip now. She did and got a very good rate. Lodging on Andros was also a problem as I had all the rooms booked at Hank’s but we worked that out also. I had to give up my room as Hank asked if I would mind staying on this yacht that was tied up at the marina across the channel. It belongs to a friend of his from the states and he was keeping an eye on it for him. I hesitated for about three seconds then told him I would make the sacrafice just to make the other guests comfortable. I mean staying on this fancy yacht that is tied up in a perfect spot to cast to the tarpon that come up the channel is quite a sacrafice on my part I thought. I should be compensated for having to sleep on this thing with the gentle rolling and all those noisy tarpon splashing around the boat. In the interest of having Hank’s and my guests be in comfort I guess I’ll suffer through it.
Any way Dan and Nancy will be fishing with me a few days while I show them some areas where they can go off on there own later. They also booked a couple days to go with Hermam Bain, who I consider to be the guru bonefishing guide of Andros Island.
I forgot to mention that Allie, their 19 year old daughter who also guides out of their lodge on the Madison will be along and she wants to learn how to pole. This is another sacrafice I will have to make, letting her pole while we fish.
Some times when you get four guides and fly shop owners together at the same time it gets a bit chaotic. Such was the event today. After the initial introductions and exchanging fly patterns and comments about them it went totally off the scale. I noticed at one point that all four of us were talking at the same time while listening to each other also. Try that some time. We spent a couple hours doing that and enjoying every minute of it.
Dan has a series of fly’s on the market called the Delektables. If your in a fly shop that has his patterns, look them over and I’m sure you will want them. I know our shop will be carrying them.
I’m looking forward to fishing with them at Andros Island.