01.17.21 Did Martin Luther King Jr. fish?

 

Photo Colin Archer, North Bimini, 2011

     In 2011 a handful of journalists and fly fishers were invited to attend the re-opening of The Bimini Big Club Club which was then being reopened by artist Guy Harvey as Guy Harvey's Outpost Resorts. It was there were I met and spent some time with Ansil Saunders, a legendary guide on the small island of North Bimini in Alice Town in the Bahamas. It was in Bimini where Dr King would pen his legendary speech, "I've been to the mountaintop" in 1968. He delivered that speech, his last,

on April 3rd, 1968. It would come to be one of the greatest speeches ever recorded in history. Sadly, the following day he was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. I wonder how the United States, and all of us, would be different if he lived longer, and what he would think about the mess and division we are 

currently living in. For Saunders, who was indicted into The Fly Fishing Hall of Fame in 2021, he recalls poling Dr King around the mangroves while he penned the famous speech. There aren't any pictures of him that day, nor while fishing, because he didn't. He wasn't there to fish, he was there, according to the upcoming movie "Mighty Waters", which was part of the 2021 Fly Fishing Film Tour, "King wasn't even that interested in fishing, he mostly just wanted to get out thee to those mangrove flats just to find that tranquility and find some clarity".

    As far as that February 2011 trip? It was my second destination trip that I took as a photographer and fly fisherman for publication. The other was with writer Chris Roslyn up to Cooper's Minipi Lodge, where 6 plus pound brook trout take big Bomber and mouse fly off the top. We also worked together on 

some more local projects, above a striper article for Eastern Fly Fishing Magazine. But back to the Bahamas, you can see the original post, HERE. Its hard to believe that trip was 12 years ago. That was the first time I met Joe Cermele, Pat Ford and Vaughn Cochrane. It's also hard to imagine that Dr King was on the bow of Ansil Saunders skiff 54 years ago this year, and I was just three months old, born in January 1968.