Black Fly Lodge
For 15 years, Black Fly Lodge has trusted East Cape skiffs to navigate the razor-thin flats of the Marls. How a single test ride grew into a fleet of custom Vantages, a new 17 EVO V, and a friendship that keeps redefining world-class bonefishing.
At first light on Great Abaco, the sea is an iron skillet — flat, hot, and whispering promises. Inside an office that smells of cedar shavings and salt-cured chart tubes, Clint Kemp sips strong Bahamian coffee and does what he's done for fourteen years: sends a quick message to his daughters, then thanks the good Lord for the skinny water that changed his life.
"Most of my mornings start right here, before the sun comes up," he says, "and almost every day I'm reminded — I've got to be one of the luckiest people in the world."
Luck, of course, has little to do with it. Back in 2010, Kemp and marine artist Vaughn Cochran looked at a half-finished harbor in the village of Schooner Bay and imagined something finer than a place to hang a rod rack. They imagined a world-class fly-fishing lodge that felt more like a crackling dinner party than a hotel lobby. Not long after, Garden & Gun called the fledgling retreat "the Bahamas' best new flats-fishing destination."
Watch the film — Black Fly: an East Cape shortWhere the boats are the pulse of the place.
On paper, Black Fly is a boutique resort with chef-driven conch fritters, cigars on the veranda, and a gear wall that would make Lefty Kreh grin. In practice it's something rarer — a "thin space," Kemp likes to say, where the natural and the supernatural nearly touch. Strangers arrive with tangled leaders; they leave hugging guides, swapping numbers, plotting return trips.
Flip Pallot once quipped that flats fishing is "poling through God's own living room without scuffing the floor." Down here, the living room got an upgrade. The skiffs are quieter, the reach longer, the fellowship thicker than the mangrove roots that stitch the shoreline.
Built like the lodge runs
East Cape's resin-infused, carbon-reinforced builds mirror the lodge's attention to every last detail.
The floor comes to the flat
Factory crews fly down, wrench on skiffs, listen to guides, and tweak hulls till the next one runs better than the last.
Boats that don't blink
When the fleet runs, guests fish more flats — and book their next week before they've unstrung their rods.
"There is always noise in the universe about any product, and boats are no exception. If you want to know the truth about the East Cape Vantage, Black Fly Lodge may be the best place on the planet to hear it. We have been running Vantages 300 days a year for over a decade. We run some of the biggest water anywhere and demand everything from these boats. Day in and day out we hear from clients who fish all over the world that these Vantages are the best skiffs they have ever been in. You won't find a stress crack or any structural issue with any boat in our fleet — and when there are issues, the East Cape team has always taken care of us like family."
— Clint Kemp, Ambience Director, Black Fly Lodge
Learn more about the boats.
A fleet of Vantages and a new 17 EVO V carry guests across the Marls every day of the season. See what goes into one, or start the one you'd run.