Grand Bahama Lodge: Favorite Flies of East End Lodge

The East End Lodge on Grand Bahama Lodge has done a great job with our clients this year. With comfortable accommodations, good food and a great fishery, this lodge has been a solid choice. We've also organized some terrific combo trips with East End Lodge and Water Cay Bonefish Lodge on the north end of the island. These trips were suggested when there wasn't enough availability at either lodge to satisfy our client's desires so we combined each lodge's open dates creating a unique itinerary with great results.

I recently asked the East End Lodge's American manager Robert to give me a list of the "go-to" flies used by the guides. Robert was kind enough to photograph the guide's favorites and send the photos to me. I thought I would share this info with the FLY PAPER readers.

I thought it was interesting how three of the guide's five favorite flies from East End Lodge are the same as from My Top Five Bonefish Flies post … namely the mantis shrimp, the gotcha and a tan crab!

East End Lodge Head Guide Cecil Leathen
Let's start with a unique pattern from EEL head guide Cecil Leathen's called the Cecil Special. Light tan in color with a trimmed brown hackle body it can be tied with lead eyes, bead chain or no eyes (blind).


Cecil Special
The next are the three flies I really like best: the tan crab, the gotcha  and the mantis shrimp.


East End Crab

Good ol' Gotcha

Mantis Shrimp


The EEL mantis shrimp is tied with craft fur, mono shrimp eyes, rabbit fur and rubber legs. The mantis shrimp pattern enters the water silently with very little splash

Next is another unique East End Lodge fly pattern called Jacoby's Revenge. This example is tied in brown. Please notice the mono eyes…


Revenge Brown
 ...and finally the classic Simran. It can be tied with lead eyes, blind (unweighted) or with wrapped lead.



Simran lead