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Jim Vogel has weighed in on the issue of privacy for lady anglers with a note about a new female bonefish guide hired by the Captain Cook Hotel on Christmas Island. Vogel wrote us in response to a report by new subscriber Kathryn Maroun on her trip to St. Brandon’s Rocks.
I am writing to respond to her accommodation and privacy problems as a female angler. On my last trip to the Captain Cook Hotel on Christmas Island, I was pleasantly surprised to see that Tinia, the manager, and Nareau, the head guide, are taking steps to address this issue. Aware of the fact that more and more female anglers are traveling for their sport, they have added a female guide named Debbie to their guide-training program.
“As you know, most of the fishing on Christmas Island involves day-long wading across the flats, which necessarily creates privacy problems. Having a female guide on staff will surely be a welcome development for female anglers contemplating a trip to Christmas Island. I had the pleasure of fishing a few days with Debbie, and, although she wasn’t quite at the finished stage of her training, I found her to be a delightful young woman with great enthusiasm and an awareness of her groundbreaking role. She had great fish-spotting talent. She needs very little additional polish before being added to the ranks of the guide pool. If such consideration of the needs of female anglers can be addressed in Kiribati, which is basically a third-world country, it should certainly be something lodges in so-called more progressive parts of the world can address.”