Able Women - Ambergris Caye, Belize

The Able Women site launched this week.

The video was shot over a few days on Ambergris Caye in Belize. 

My wife and I visited Ambergris a couple weeks after the Able Women team visited. One of the ladies fishing there, artist and fly fisher Andrea Larko, is an acquaintance of mine. In fact I'm lucky enough to have acquired one of her original works very early on, in a trade for some SmithFly gear. (I've intentionally warped it in the photo below to avoid the ability of reproducing it digitally, I'm not THAT bad at photography)

I watched in anticipation of Andrea's trip as I saw it unfold on social media. The report when she returned was not so hot. Lot's of rain and tough conditions that limited opportunities. I'm fairly certain that the weather when the ladies were there was dictated by a tropical depression parked over Cancun. So it was pounding rain after pounding rain most of the week, though you wouldn't know it from the video.

Needless to say when I heard about her experience we were concerned about our trip as well, but were much more fortunate. We had minimal rain for our week at El Pescador. Though we did some serious down pours. You can even see the El Pescador Palapa in the background of some of the videos, though I think the girls stayed down the island a poke, not at El Pescador proper. But I think they did fish with some of El Pescador's guides.

I am an Able Woman from Able Women on Vimeo.

Below are a few more pictures from around the Amerbergris area taken during the SmithFly trip. I actually didn't have the Matecumbe sealed drag reel complete yet, so I took three unsealed Brush Creek reels and they stood up to the rigors of salt, just fine. I made sure to rinse them out after each use, but overall they are still hanging in there really well.

I admire the work that Abel and Mayfly Outdoors is doing here. Fly fishing is a male dominated sport and women can feel a bit intimidated and left out so focusing on a specific outreach effort is a great idea. Hopefully someday, fly fishing won't need this type of chromosomally derived affirmative action, but for now I think it is a great thing and look forward to more great work from these ladies.