The MarlsA dozen Vantages, one water.
An East Cape short · No. 02
Great Abaco,
Bahamas.
Bahamas.
The Marls · before the sun
Black Fly Lodge · Clint Kemp
A thin space.
For fifteen 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.
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Chapter I
Before the sun.
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, in this room, before the sun comes up."Clint Kemp
"It is just one of my thin-space moments, where I can just sit here, be quiet, and then just start reflecting on what we need to be doing. But a lot of times it's about who we are."
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."
"When we started this whole adventure, we had a very simple goal in mind," Clint says in the film. "It was to build a world-class lodge and have fun doing it with a group of friends that loved fly fishing. It was that simple."
"I find myself saying almost every day: I got to be the luckiest man in the world."Clint Kemp
Chapter II
Where the natural and the supernatural nearly touch.
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.
"A thin space for people to come and enjoy the supernatural and natural world coming so close together, in the thin water that we fish in."Clint Kemp
19 Vantage
A fleet of them. Run harder than anybody in the world, 300 days a year, in water you can't imagine.
Chapter III
Eight inches.
The Marls don't forgive a boat that slides. Every morning starts in a creek with a hairpin in it.
The hairpin creek · scroll to run it
"They have to run very skinny. We've got a hairpin creek we have to run out of every morning."
"If it's low tide there's a slot there that's about eight inches deep, and you've got to be on plane and the boat can't move. It can't slide, or we can't get in and out."
"Then we have these massive runs over big water — sometimes 20, 25 miles — and we need a comfortable, safe boat that can manage that."
"We get to where we're going and we're on these massive flats. So we have to have a shallow-draft boat that can fish way up on those flats."Clint Kemp
8in
of water in the slot at low tide
25mi
of big water on the long mornings
300days
a year the fleet runs
300
days a year
Harder than anybody in the world.
"We run these boats harder than anybody in the world. We run them 300-plus days a year in conditions that you can't imagine — from flat calm to, you know, stuff you'd never want to be in. And they have proven to be everything we thought, keeping our clients comfortable, safe, fishable."
Chapter IV
One boat, taken home.
"I'd never even heard of the company," Clint says, "but we were at the place where we knew how to get a new fleet of boats. I just got to tell that story — because at this point, looking back, I can say that investment was the most important investment we've ever made in anything to do with the lodge."
"We were impressed enough to say, listen, to the East Cape team: we're going to buy one of these boats, take it home, see how it runs in our water."
"We did that, and we were absolutely blown away. Our guides at the time were blown away. It was the most incredible boat that we could even imagine, because it did everything that we wanted to do."
"We couldn't believe a boat could maneuver as quickly, could turn on a dime, at speed, not slide, and manage the shallow water."Clint Kemp
"And so we ended up buying a fleet of these boats."Clint Kemp
Chapter V
The fleet.
SkinnyWhere the fleet fishes way up on the flat.
ClintAmbience Director. Sometimes angler.
The guidesThey were blown away too.
The castQuiet boat, long reach.
The releaseWhat the whole place is for.
The creekEight inches, on plane.
Every boat better than the one before.
"The East Cape boats were not just technically what we needed, but again, the customer service, the relationship we had with the East Cape team was absolutely brilliant. And we have had that same relationship straight through. Anything we wanted — changes made, or ideas, or anything like that — so accommodating to what we needed, including sending their team here on a regular basis to help us maintain the boats."
"Every time we get a boat from them, it's better than the ones before. And it's such a treat for our guides and for our clients, who tell us on a regular basis: these are the most comfortable boats we've ever fished in, anywhere in the world. I don't know how many of our clients have bought them — but a lot."
Shared obsession
Built like the lodge runs.
Resin-infused, carbon-reinforced builds that mirror the lodge's attention to every last detail.
Field-tested R&D
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.
Reliability
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
Last word
My small ambitions could never have captured where we are today. I sit here and just am thankful, humbled, and amazed by what Black Fly has become.
As Clint says in the film.
The tide's about right
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.
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