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When you look at Andros Island on the map it's easy to see the southern, middle and northern regions. Over the years I've been lucky to fish all around this island, the largest in the Bahamas. This essay will deal with the area on its most northern tip.
The town we most often stay in is called Nicholls Town. This town is near Morgans Bluff and the San Andros airport. Nicholls Town has a beautiful beach just about 35 feet from one of the best conch bars in the Bahamas. A conch salad at The Sly Fox is as local as you can get...and I'll keep going back for more. Across the mostly sand street is The Big Shop, a very Bahamian bar. I'm guessing the building is 150 years old, and when the townfolk fill it up in the evening it is a loud, raucous, Kalik Beer, and rum and Coke kind of event.
Our good friends, Philip Rolle and Betsy Sandstrom, live in Nicholls Town. Philip is a bonefish guide, oil painter and all around great guy. Betsy and Philip are both certified scuba dive-masters. We fish the nearby Joulter Cays with its huge flats and super-blue channels. Some individual flats are knee deep for over 10 square miles. The bonefish average about four pounds, but there are plenty of fish over eight. Our big fish standard is 30 inches. In addition to bonefish we have seen some nice permit, tarpon to 60 pounds, lots of cuda, and lots of sharks. We also see many different kinds of jacks, and our dinner favorite, snapper. We keep and eat a couple mutton snapper each trip, but also have caught the lane, mangrove and cubara snapper.
Around to the west side of northern Andros is a lifetime of flats fishing opportunities. Philip runs his skiff into backcountry lagoons that are full of rather easy to catch bonefish, a few tarpon and mangrove channels full of snapper and jacks. There are also so many miles of unexplored estuaries, that the visiting flyfisher will barely scratch the surface.
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