bonefish, bonefish, bonefish

AMBERGRIS CAYE, Belize — “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this,” I asked.

OK, not a very original line but this time an honest question.

Lori-Ann Murphy is the fishing and guest relation’s host for one of the best fishing and most famous lodges in the tropics, El Pescador Lodge in the Central American country of Belize.

via Slam: Six degrees of Kevin Bacon – ESPN.

Lori-Ann is also in the new fly fishing show Buccaneers and Bones, the successor to Pirates of the Flats.

Lori-Ann Murphy

A little article about the Florida Keys Fishing Guides Association (the website touts a 2007 event, meaning they spend more time on the water than at the computer).

About five years ago the Upper Keys had a hatch where the number of guides almost doubled to over 300 that work between Key Largo and Islamorada during the prime tarpon fishing months of May and June. While the numbers of fishing guides in the area have soared, the quality of the guides have dropped, Burke said.

“There’s still only a limited number of guides who do this business well,” he said. “That’s why it’s good to hire a guide that is a member of the Florida Keys Fishing Guides Association when you come down to Islamorada. The fishing is great every month of the year, but only about 25 percent of the guides are seasoned, knowledgeable and going to provide the quality fishing experience that will create lasting memories.”

via Keys guides protect their own – ESPN.

If you haven’t checked out the Flatswalker blog, you should.  Not only is it a good read with posts that are on the other side of the ordinary, but they are the work of Davin Ebanks, fishing guide out of Grand Caymen.  Here is a Youtube gem of his from a pilgrimage to Andros.

First, I need to say, I never would have bought these glasses. I am cheap.  I break things.  I usually buy sunglasses that are polarized and less than $30 so when I break them or lose them I don’t stroke out.

You know that feeling you get when you realize that you just broke or lost something that was valuable?  I buy cheap sunglasses so I can confine that head-hanging feeling to my skill at destroying or losing waterproof digital cameras (I’m on number 4 for the past 6 years).

However, currently, I have a pair of Costa Del Mar Zane’s (Matte Black finish, Silver Mirror Glass).

These shades were given to me to sport and review and my cost was $0.  These shades retail for a pretty penny, something around $239, making them two Benjamins more pricey than I’ve put down for sunglasses in a while.

That said, these glasses = sweetness.  I wear them just about every day and certainly every time I go fishing.  I have not had a chance to get them out on the flats just yet, but I have had them in still water, urban streams, mountain streams, Disneyland, swim lessons, various parks, one princess birthday party for a three year old and a couple thousand miles of highways and freeways.

The construction of these glasses is superb. The lenses are glass, although they don’t feel heavy.  My lenses are unscratched and the frames look as if they just came out of the package. They look great, they work well and they are my constant companions.

I understand why someone would buy these glasses.  I might even recommend that YOU buy these glasses. If you do, you’ll be supporting a company that has gotten behind conservation in Belize and the upcoming film project project Itu’s Bones, just to name a couple of their very cool projects (another would be the Permit tagging program with the Bonefish & Tarpon Trust). I’d be a fan of Costa Del Mar even if I didn’t have my Zane’s and I was sporting a pair of whatever was cheapest and polarized up at the Ted Fay Fly Shop.

This is how I roll... for a 3 year old's princess party.

Costa Del Mar… I’m a fan.

Shane Kohlbeck is a friend of mine, working as a guide out of Redding, CA, which is pretty much Trout Central for California.  Shane works for The Fly Shop, one of the biggest fly shops anywhere.  Not only does The Fly Shop guide on the Lower Sacramento River, a river that is fishable almost every day of the year, but they have the physical shop, an on-line catalog, private waters… even a real estate venture.  As you might expect, they also book international travel… a lot of it.   Since Shane is one of the better anglers you could ever hope to meet and because he has some saltwater credentials, he was sent to evaluate the fishery on a remote, very remote fishery in the South Pacific.  Sounds good, doesn’t it?  Turns out to be a great diet plan.

Here’s my interview with Shane about that experience.

What was the name of the island you were on?

Two names, Penrhyn, and the local name is Tongareva. It’s north of Rarotonga and  south of Christmas Island.

Not a bad looking place.

What’s the main challenge in getting there?

Once a week flights, and that’s it.

From where, how long does it take?

From Rarotonga, the capital island of the Cook Islands, it was probably about 4, 4.5 hours in a little duel prop plane and we had to stop and refuel on Aitutaki.

Is that a little scary, the travel there?

Yeah.  There’s not much dry ground and what’s there is frigging tiny.  The islands are all pretty small, so it’s a little sketchy.

How built up is the fishery there?

It’s not, that’s why I went.  Originally, only a few guys had ever fly fished there, some guys out of Australia.

What do you think the potential is for a Penrhyn to develop as a fly fishing destination?

Not so good.  That was pretty much the conclusion after I came home.  I got sent there to fish it for two months straight to figure out if it could handle a groups of 6-8 anglers a week at a time fishing throughout the season or for an extended season.

The water temps were critically warm by noon on a lot of the days, on the decent weather days.  On shitty weather days we had good water all day.  But when the summer came and the storms were all gone and the heat showed up and stayed, especially on neap tides were the worst when we didn’t have a lot of tidal fluctuation, it wouldn’t circulate the water enough in the lagoons, there’s only two places water came in and out of the lagoon and the lagoon was 9 miles by 12 miles approximately… so it needed a good tidal flush to keep the water in the lagoon cool… and that’s what happened on those hot, sticky calm days, especially during the neap tide weeks, not enough tidal flush and by 12-1 the  water temps on the flats were hitting 90, 91.  We would catch  fish up to 87, 88, after that, we wouldn’t get them.  They’d take off.

The flats themselves are just on the inside rim of the entire  lagoon.  There really weren’t any pancake flats or separated flats.  It was all on the inside of the lagoon. There were zero  flats on the outside, all hard coral and pounding surf.

Where there other species you could target beyond bonefish?

You can catch Bluefin Trevally until your arms fall off. There were Bluefins all over the place.  I never did see GT’s, they are around, I just never saw them.  They are usually on the outside.  The Bluefin were a lot of fun and then there are a lot of little snappers and a little fish called the sweetlips, and goat fish with the little whiskers coming off their chin, on the outside I caught wahoo, yellowfin tuna, sailfish, shark, African pompano, barracuda… I never did get dogtooth tuna, but they are out there a lot.  On the outside we had a lot of fishing opportunities.  We’d have to go out there pretty much every couple of nights to fill the coolers because, ya know, there were no stores to go shopping.

Nice Bluefin

You get sick of seafood in a situation like that?

Yeah, I lost 20 pounds.  Rice and coconut products and fish. Once in a great while we’d get some chicken or something like that flown in, but lettuce or fresh produce?  Out of the question.  None of that.  Lot of rice, lot of toast… peanut butter and jelly… stuff that doesn’t spoil.

On a good day, when everything came together there, was the fishing remarkable or was it so-so?

I had  probably one of the best days of my bonefishing career there… next to one of my better days on Christmas. As fast as I could get ‘em in and get ‘em off the hook and recast I’d get another  one.  They were coming from all directions.  Multiple fish caught with less than five feet of fly line out of the tip of the rod. To where you couldn’t stip anymore, you had to jerk the rod to keep the fly moving to get them to eat it and there weren’t spooky.  I had fish come up to me, and I’d play stork, freeze, and they’d swim around me, usually twice and then start veering away and I’d put a fly five feet to their left or right and they’d  charge it and eat it.  As long as you didn’t make any rapid movements and spook ‘em.

Penrhyn Bonefish

There were a ton of blacktips in there. A Ton.  To my knowledge I only lost one bone to a blacktip and that was post release. We figured out, I was always fishing with another Tahitian guy named Bara that I was training, we figured out how to call the blacktips.  If he had a fish on, and we noticed the blacktip getting aggressive, sniffing out the water, ya know, they can sense something is wrong, you can take your rod tip and put it in the water in front of you and thrash the water with the tip of the rod and they’d pretty much make a bee-line for it and they’d bite the tip of the rod off if you  didn’t stop doing it when they got there.  You could call the blacktips off the bones, unless they had a visual of the fish and usually they didn’t until the last second. They are just sniffing stress and they can feel it. You can call them right in… it was cool

One day I was walking the boat over some reefs, sloshing my legs and one fucker came right at me, I had to jump up in the boat.  Literally, between my legs, about a 3.5-4 foot blacktip. It wouldn’t have killed me or anything, but it would have tore my skin up a bit.

I’d imagine you were a little far away from a hospital there?

Yeah, there’s nothing there.  There’s two little communities and that’s it and I was living across the lagoon on a little private black pearl farm. There was nothing there… just us.

Is there any possibility that someone will build out a fishing operation there?

I don’t think it’s a place where a fly fishing lodge is ever going to get built.  Not with the warm water problem. It’s in the middle of nowhere, it took me 36 hours to get home.

Do you have a favorite rod and reel for bones at the moment?

Galvan Torque 8.  I’ve never had a problem with my Galvan Torque 8.  I’ve landed all kinds of shit on Torques.  G. Loomis GLX Crosscurrent 8 wt. (editor’s note, I think that might be Shane in the pic on the G. Loomis page for the Crosscurrent).   That’s what I’ve been fishing about 5 years, that Crosscurrent. It’s got the recoil guides so I don’t feel too bad about throwing that rod around a little bit.

As far as tying go, do you have anything you are liking now that’s new?

I saw an article in Fly Fishing in Salt Waters about using Fox Fur.  My Psycho Puff has had a Fox Fur wing on it since I designed it five years ago.  I also tie a little bit with badger.  It’s got some really cool qualities to it. It’s got some guard hairs with back tips what look like antennas and feelers.

I tie my own bitters and I purposely don’t use epoxy.  On spooky fish on Los R. I feel like the epoxy head on the bitters contributed to the loudness of the splashdown or set down of the fly when the fly hit the water so I purposely didn’t tie a ball of epoxy on head of my bitters in LR, I just used extra small chain bead eyes and tied the fly around that and feel like the fly landed lighter and didn’t make a big “Kabloop” like the Bitters sometimes do.

Beyond the blacktips, what have you seen out there on the water that was really unique?

One thing I’ll always remember about Penrhyn was at night, once in a while we’d have to run across the lagoon at low light and the coral heads glowed.  There were greens and blues and reds and they’d glow, in the middle of the lagoon.  It was pretty cool.

Coolest thing that happened there was probably a double hook up on sailfish… that was pretty badass.

You can hardly see that fish... perfect for its environment.

Thanks Shane.

Want to read a book set in a Grand Bahama bonefishing lodge?  Well, there happens to be such a book… Island Salt. The author of the book is Sydney Watson.

The little story about the book was something I found on Bahamas Islands Info.

Island Salt, is set in a legendary bone fishing lodge on Grand Bahama, which becomes the vortex for murder and misplaced loyalty.

via ‘Island Salt’ book launch packed with support.

This is the description from Vimeo:

This video was shot in June 2009 by Gabriel Bendersk, a talented and able filmmaker from Argentina. Scott Olson, Patagonia Fly Fishers was fishing with his friend, Martin Carranza, a tremendous guide and also owner of some fishing lodges in Patagonia, Argentina and also Northern Argentina. The tremendous power of a bonefish relative to it’s size can only be described as Martin said: “This is formula one!” The music used is symphonic from a Ralph Vaughn Williams symphony. Scott edited and uploaded the video to Vimeo.

Trout and I are on pretty good terms.

Bonefish are my obsession and I’m still figuring them out.

Surf Perch… we don’t get along.

I went out to the surf south of Santa Cruz today… swells were small, 2.6 or so… easy compared to the first time I was there.

See, that isn't so bad.

I wasn’t alone out there… saw a bunch of seals, even a couple dolphins cruising just beyond the breakers.

I was out with my TFO Clouser 8 wt. throwing a T-400 and throwing and throwing and throwing… stripping, throwing, stripping, throwing and every once in a while bracing for a bigger wave.

Ruh roh.

Hold on.

Nut’n. Zero. One grab and that was it.  Two and a half hours and one, unconverted grab.  My line hand was getting to be non-functional and I started losing the line on the double haul.

Oh, Surf Perch, I don’t know you at all.

The surf zone is still pretty hard for me to read and the fish… the fish aren’t visible, don’t show themselves, the structure is merely hinted at by the surf.  With a trout you can look at a run and pretty easily identify where the fish is going to be.  With bonefish you see the actual fish.  Surf Perch… you don’t see anything (or at least I don’t).

Might need to get some help on this one.

I’d rather be fishing for bonefish (or trout, or bass, or carp).

At least I don't have crabs.

Well… you might want to do so quickly before every last mangrove in Bimini is taken out, filled in and turned into golf courses and resorts… because the world doesn’t have enough golf courses.

I found this little video of Bonefish Ebbie talking about the Bimini Bay development that is dredging up bonefish habitat to make way for pure and bottled greed.

Read more about the badness that is this Bimini Development.

Bonefish Ebbie can be found here.

#UPDATE# – Colton Harris was caught today in the Bahamas… I had a feeling this would be the end… he wasn’t even fishing! Read more here.

I read the first story in Outside Magazine a while ago and caught news today via the OM Facebook page about a possible update on Colton Harris, teenage criminal mastermind and modern day Robbin Hood (without the benevolence or otherwise good intentions).

Seems Colton may have stolen a plane in Indiana and flown to Abaco… where he promptly crashed.  The kid taught himself to fly, but has yet to get a hang of the landing part.

From the Black Fly Bonefish Club:

@BFBonefishClub :Much excitement over the barefoot bandit landing in our frontyard at the lodge. Local hog hunters were not successful in finding him.

Let’s see… a 6’5″ white kid roaming around Abaco?  How long could the kid really hold out?  I’m guessing he’ll be sticking out a bit when he isn’t crashing in the vacation homes of wealthy Americans who may have second/third/fourth homes in the Bahamas.

I didn’t see a fly rod in this picture…

Hi... I'll be staying at your Abaco beach house, if that's OK with yoou... and even if it isn't.