Screw the recession. For the world's high-rolling fishermen, 2009 won't be a year to penny pinch, but rather to spend big bucks to tango with the largest, toughest game fish in the ocean at a series of private fishing clubs. The buy-in for this Hemingway experience is a slick $100,000. (Hold on, let me check under the couch cushions, I think I can wrangle up a down payment.)Here's the scheme, and it's a good one if you have the cash: Angler Clubs International is building several luxury vacation homes near the top saltwater fishing holes off the coasts of Mexico, Central American and the Caribbean islands. After your $100,000 buy-in, you pay $5,000 annually for the right to use any of the houses. Membership is capped at 400 people, so if you haven't bought a Christmas gift for your fishing buddy, now's the chance.
The company's aim is to give the elite business set access to the elite fish set. It's CEO meets 1,000-pound blue marlin. The two tops of the food chain then duke it out from the back of a fishing boat. And the spots where Angler Clubs International is setting up are world-famous for bonefish, tarpon, marlin, sailfish, tuna...are you drooling yet?
More important, perhaps, than the fishing access is the accommodations. I've fished in some mystical waters, places that make you fall to your knees in praise of big fish. But after said religious experience I would slink back to a roadside trash pit of a motel where a chilled bottle of champagne, I mean a chilled bottle of Miller High Life, waited in the sink for me to celebrate.
Not so at the Anglers Club. Their set-up is royal. The staff-to-guest ratio is a minimum of 1.5:1 according to an article in the Wall Street Journal's Marketwatch. Private chefs, housemaids, fishing guides, they're all there to make it a fishing fantasy.
It would suck to pay that much, though, and then get skunked, huh?-
