The Bonefish

The mighty peacock bass of the Amazon Jungle, the fighting tiger fish of Africa, and the powerful bonefish found around the warm water islands of the world, are my three favorite warm water fish.  It has been my privilege to have caught trophy fish (on the fly rod) of the first and last one, and possibly the first to catch the tiger fish on the fly rod. Probably more luck than skill, but there they hang on my wall anyway.

I had fished for the bonefish of Belize on numerous occasions, out of Ambergris Caye. One of the many fine web sites about the island is http://www.ambergriscaye.com/. Bonefish there run in the five pound range, which is about average world over. This time, I had opted to go out to Turneffe Islands where the reef comes right up to a small island known as Rope Walk, at the southern end of the chain.

See: (http://www.belizenownetwork.com/Maps/Cayes/Turneffe/ ). Rope Walk is so small it is not listed on many of the maps, but at the end of the chain, here is a small piece of paradise! An excellent map showing the relation of Ambergris Caye versus Turneffe Cayes to the nation of Belize (about 30 miles out) can be seen at http://www.belizenownetwork.com/Maps/index.htm. I had met some Chinese people who had built me a small cabin a few feet from the water's edge, with wading to the Belize Reef only a few yards away.

Some of the excellent sites about bonefish can be found at:

http://marinefisheries.org/FishID/bonefish.html

http://blueox.uoregon.edu/~dmason/Mckenzie/linkdb/results/byquarry/bon.html

http://gorp.away.com/gorp/activity/fishing/features/globtopten4.htm

I had been fishing my #9ófour piece Orvis fly rodand Able reel, in the waters between the cabin and the reef off and on through the morning and catching some fish in the 3 to 5 pound category with my floating line and ìpuffî flies, when I came in for lunch and a chance to sit a while.

After lunch I decided to wade out and looking across the turquoise colored Caribbean Sea toward the Barrier Reef I kept thinking I could see movement we know as ìnervous water.î This is caused by the schools of bonefish (yes they travel in schools most of the time) swimming in the shallow water (most bonefishing is done in 3 to 5 feet of water).  Bonefishing is done by sight (seeing the fish in the water, a flash of his scales in the light, his small ñ shark shaped tail protruding out of the water, are the most common ways of locating them).

They can be fished out of shallow draft boats which are polled by a guide who watches for the schools and points to them, or by wade fishing where the bottom is not too soft. The bottom is perfect here at Rope Walk area! Out I goóslowly wading toward the reefóit is then that I see the largest bonefish tail I have ever seen, raised way above the water as he bottom feeds! I began to sweat much more from the thought of catching an island trophy than from the heat of the tropical sun shinning down off the sea and reflecting back into my face!

The bonefish will bolt at the slightest movement above the water, or a sound in the boat being transferred into the water.  A cast more than about 14 inches in front of them will spook them, and much more than 20 inches away there is not much chance of them going to it.  I started crawling on my hands and knees over the rough area near the reef least I spook the fish of a lifetime (going to the above links one will see this fish is among the top caught in the world).    Holding the fly rod in my teeth,  I crawled until it was about fifty feet to the fish - I started my casting, but afraid of an cast being too close I kept coming up way shortóbut each cast was a little closer, and fortunately landing with the softness of a butterfly with sunburned feet!    Finally, there the perfect cast wasóabout 14 inches in front of his nose.   He turned, took it and in a split second was moving out at some 30 MPH over in a straight line about the distance of a football field!   They don't jump, they don't dive, the just move like a torpedoóstraight outóthen a U turn and back they comeówith all my might I trying to get the excess line back on the reel.  This happens a couple of times, each run being shorteróbut with a fish this size (13 lbsó31 inches from nose to tip of tail!) the rod can be bent almost double, and mine was!   Fifteen minutes or so later I wobbled back to the cabin, still shaking from the exhaustion of the fight, and there was a trophy bonefish racing away, tired, still trying to figure out what bit his inside lip so hard.   (The picture is the fiberglass replica produced of the fish.)  A fly fisherman's dream come true! Happy Traveling