Fly Fishing in Salt Waters keeps on delivering good bonefishy wonderfulness to my mailbox.  I pay them to do it, but I still appreciate the quality of the content.

Good Stuff

I got my May/June 2010 issue of Fly Fishing in Salt Waters the other day (took longer than usual due to the mail being forwarded to the new, Bay Area address).

Just solidness.

A story about Aloha Bones from Dave McCoy, featuring, among others, Captain Duff.

An article on Release Mortality Rates by John McMurray that helps spread the news that many saltwater anglers are having a hard time accepting… that bonefish and many other saltwater species have to be handling carefully or they either die or are eaten… quickly.

A article about reading flats fish by Captain Nick Sassic.

Print, it turns out, is not dead and Fly Fishing in Salt Waters keeps putting out interesting reads.  Subscribe.

There is a lot of wisdom out there about bonefishing (and a few other less important topics).  I was glad to find a few tid-bits in the e-pages of Fly Fishing in Salt Waters from some of the greats… Lefty, Al Pflueger and Richard Stanczky.

Lefty:

With spooky fish, cast at an object such as a clump of grass, mound or mangrove sprig 30 to 40 feet away from them. Bones often meander toward such structure, plus you have a reference point as to the location of your fly.

See… pearls of wisdom that I wouldn’t have picked up on for years.

Read all the bits of knowledge here.

Lefty

Text used with the blessing of Fly Fishing in Salt Waters

Have you ever said to yourself “Man, I’d tie a Gotcha but it is just too hard!”

Yeah, me either.

Still, time is wasted as you switch between different materials and the single material fly is a cinch to tie.

Enter the Sweet Ernie.  Found in the e-pages (i-pages if you are reading this on a mac) of Fly Fishing in Saltwaters, the Sweet Earnie is hook, eyes, thread and single material.

http://www.flyfishinsalt.com

Photo grace a Fly Fishing in Salt Waters.

There, in my inbox was a nice little email update from Fly Fishing in Salt Waters’ Mike Mazur about a recent bonefishing adventure in the Bahamas… GBI to Adros.  Having just watched Bonefish: A Fishing Odyssey with my father today, this was just what I needed… some great images and fun accounts of Bahamian bonefishing.

Fly Fishing in Salt Waters has a good website with lots and lots of info, forums, tips, gear reviews and more.  You can sign up for email updates, like the one I got about the Bahamian bonefishing.

Not only to they fly fish in salt waters, they catch too!

Used with the blessing of Fly Fishing in Salt Waters

I’m not a wizard at the vice.  Mostly, I tie simple nymphs (like the Eng Theng) designed to fool trout and I find that trout are pretty easily fooled when it comes to nymphs (I’m in that “presentation-is-king” school of thought).  To satisfy my bonefish fixation I’ve taken to tying bonefish patterns.  When it comes to bonefish patterns the king (as far as I know) is the Gotcha.  The Gotcha is just a really easy fly to tie and it’s pretty easy to vary an element or two to make it your own.  I tie a lot of Gotchas.  Really, I tie way more than I could really use in the next decade of fishing.  Still… I keep tying them.

Turns out the Gotcha is McVay’s Gotcha and it has a pretty quirky birth… cab carpet fibers.

variations on a gotcha theme

There is a tutorial here, at Fly Fishing In Salt Waters Magazine.