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Peace & Plenty - Feedback?

2K views 8 replies 7 participants last post by  mdbones 
#1 ·
Looking for a place to take the group for this years trip - over the last five years we have been to Andros (3), Sandy Point, & Bimini. One of the group members suggested P&P in Exuma. I rember reading that Bob Hyde had set a solid fishing program up at P&P at one point, but have not heard much recently. Based on the website (which is light on info when it comes to Bonefishing) it appears that the hotel brings in independent guides. Anyone have any recent experience with P&P or the quality/name of guides.
 
#2 ·
Surprised no one has been down to P&P lately?

I made many visits there back before the guide situation changed and always had a great time.

Not heard much about it recently though ...

If I was going to do the guided thing on Exuma again I would probably stay at the Beach Inn since the better fishing is Mid Island and North and you can head either South, North (even sideways :) ) depending on conditions.
 
#4 ·
It seems that more and more top Bahamian guides are going independent, as they can make more than the pittance paid to them by lodges. These guys typically have a steady customer base and are doing rather well.
If I was doing a Bahamian bonefish trip, I'd call one of these guides and ask them where to stay. Oftentimes they can arrange accomodations, and the overall fishing experience is vastly superior; you save money on paying all the intermediaries of the lodge industry. The downside is that you have to do the legwork to find the guide.
 
#5 ·
Booking guides through a lodge in the Bahamas is hit or miss. Like Josko said, find the guide first and then book a room somewhere. Otherwise you might end up with some lazy blind guy who shows up late with a broken down boat.
 
#6 ·
Other options are available

A friend and I wanted to go to Exuma a couple of years ago and we got some fairly negative reviews about P&P. As one other post noted, they have the market cornered and act like it. We did some modest research and basically did it on our own. Goto exumabonefish.com, or it might be exumabonefishguides.com. There is a group of about 6 guides that used to guide for P&P that formed their own service, but they do the guiding on thier own and are very, very good. Garth Thompson is kind of the ringleader, and we were originally going to go with him, but we got some negative vibes from him and he put us with another guide named Drexel Rolle, who was fantastic. Garth is a highly recommended guide, but seems like a player that may not pay attention to the serious fisherman and wants the sugar daddies. I could be wrong and my intent is not to bag on a specific guide, but that was just my impression.

Drex is a great guide, knows the water and works his ass off. During the whole week, he's the only guide we saw that would get us out of the boat and steer us away from the muds to the flats. We also had one day of pretty rough weather, and we were virtually the only guide boat on the water. We saw other guide outfits afternoon after the weather improved and Drex said that he talked with some of the other guides the night before and they were all going to "recommend" to thier sports that they just do a half day.

I would highly recommend Drexel Rolle. We stayed at the Peace and Plenty inn in Georgetown, which was blue hair central but a nice place. The docks were accross the street and Drex picked us up each morning. You could also stay at Regatta Point or any other place in George Town. Plenty of local eating spots in George Town that are reasonable (Eddies Edgewater comes to mind) and we were both very happy at the end of the week that we didn't go with a full service lodge. Give it a looksee.
 
#7 ·
A little more info for you

Regatta Point is next to the P&P Inn and is more of a condo situation. If you have 3-4 guys going, that might be the routine. About $110 to $125 a night if I remember right.

Fishing was great. The buzz about Exuma is that they are all small fish. I've fished in numerous bonefishing destinations and yeah, the fish could have been bigger, but we primarily wade fished the flats and targeted individual fish and caught plenty of big bones. My friend hooked one that was pushing 10 pounds. Some of the best sight fishing I've had. The fishing was really pretty good, and there are some spectacular flats if you don't mind tooling in the boat for a while and/or making your guide do some poling through some creeks. Don't believe the buzz about small fish. There definitely are places in the Bahamas that have bigger fish, but Exuma has some great ones. Stay in George Town and book an independent guide separately and you will be happy. You should have a great time.
 
#8 ·
Exuma has plenty of small fish, but it also has some very large ones as well. I hooked the largest bone of my life there and there were many giants working the flat that evening. Some tails were dorsals, I nearly sh*t my flats pants when the tail popped up behind it.

The fish took most of my backing but I battled it back until it finally broke the tippet on a churning run once it felt the bottom on it's belly in a fast outgoing tide.
 
#9 ·
P&P

The real issue is number of quality guides. As many of the posts seem to indicate finding one guide or two is not a problem. Our group is being paired down from 12 to 6 or 8 members based on difficulty in securing 6 quality guides in anyone location. So we need between 3 and 4 good solid guides.

Because we are dealing with more than one guide we face the challenge of trying to find multiple guides with solid skills. My past is experience with asking 1 guide for a rec is that they might be able to come up with one or two but they also might put a friend on their backup boat to maximize profit (this has happened more than once).

IMO this is what makes it so difficult to stray from the Middle Bight area in Andros -the high concentration of quality indendent guides makes it a much safer bet than rolling the dice in other area.

I am familar with the Exuma Bonefish Guides website, and would be interested in any additional feedback the guides not already discussed in this thread.
 
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