If you've got the time to hear the story about how I got to be called Bonefish Folley, then I'd be happy to tell it.
Fact is, it goes back all the way to the rum running days, the time of American prohibition, when I was living in Bimini. Course I was just a kid in those days, so I'd hang around and watch them take the booze off the boats it came in on, pack it up real good so as no one could tell what it was, and load it onto the big ship that'd be heading back to the States.
Well, I was around so much I guess the folks on that big ship must have taken a shine to me. After a while, mister Carl Folley, the man who owned it, started taking me to school, treating me like the kid he never had, and before I knew it, everyone was calling me 'Folley'.
Not that I minded you understand. There were a lot less Folleys than Rolles, which is my real name by the way. And that song they made up about me Bonefish Folley, he's the one and only wouldn't be half as catchy if it was Israel Rolle.
Why I'm known as 'Bonefish' should be easy enough to work out. It's on account of how the fish have always seemed to prefer my lines. Word got round to folks who were visiting that if you wanted to have the best sport and catch yourself the biggest bonefish, you'd come out with me.
Over the years, I've been deep-sea fishing with people from China, Japan, the USA, England and all over the world. Famous folk, too, like President Nixon, Ernest Hemmingway, Prince Rainier of Monaco, Robert Taylor, Lana Turner, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and my old friend John Wood, who's the US Ambassador to The Bahamas.
Nowadays, I've got my sons and grandsons to help me out. But I'm still fishing around the West End where I live. And I'm a lucky man because the fish are still biting.
Bonefish Folley, storyteller and fisherman - Grand Bahama Island
