Fish Tails

High Spirits

(This is a piece I submitted for publication. It, eventually, didn’t make the cut, but I still like it, so, I’m sharing it with you good people.)

Typical

They call Florida “The Sunshine State.” It’s marketing. At 44.82″ of rain annually, Islamorada gets more precipitation each year than Seattle. When the rains come, it comes in biblical torrents. When heading to Florida it is hard to get the vision of sunshine out of your head, but you are a fool if you don’t pack your rain jacket.

Our trip held out hope for sunshine, as all tarpon tourists do, but that was not the card we got played. Each day the sky was dark at noon and the rains followed. Every day we watched it bear down on us, starting from out there and then arriving. We never dodged it. There was a dark inevitability about it.

As Matt and I were wading one flat he turned to me. “Do you hear that? You can hear the sound of the wind on the water!”

I was near the shore and Matt was further out as we searched, in vain, for bonefish. We couldn’t see anything beyond the odd shark which was large enough or careless enough to push some water and let us know where they were. We cast at them. They didn’t eat.

What Matt couldn’t see as he turned toward me was what was coming up behind him. There was a wall of rain, a visible sheet of water advancing at his back. The sound was the rain.

It rained when I fished with Adrienne and Martin. It rained when I fished with Davin and Derek. It rained when Matt and I fished on our own and it rained when I fished with Adrienne and Bill.

We had traveled hundreds, in some cases thousands, of miles to be here, in Florida for Tarpon. This is where and when it was supposed to all happen. We had come together as a group specifically for this place and this time, never having met in person, eager to share the Florida experience.

When we got to Florida the lights were off, the flats were dark. The fish were there, but invisible. Our opportunities literally swam by us unseen.

Every one of us was disappointed with the weather, but despite that we all tried to stay positive. Maybe it was because we were new to one another. We were making first impressions. No one wanted to be the bummer. No one wanted to be the one crushed by the rain and darkness. You are supposed to power through, and so that’s what we did.

We fished. We fished hard. We got some shots. We missed some shots. We missed most of our shots, truth be told. We didn’t get a chance to settle into a groove or ditch the jitters which naturally present themselves when you see 140 pounds of tarpon within casting range.

At the end of every day we found ourselves back at home base talking about how wet we got, the fish we missed and our hopes for a drier, brighter tomorrow. We went to bed late after a few six packs and we got up early and we fished. We fished relentlessly in the rain every day until we had to go back home.

Maybe, if we knew each other better, someone would have had a tantrum. Maybe someone would have sulked. Maybe it was for the best we had not settled into being comfortable where we could have complained and bitched a bit. It would have been easy to let the weather get under your skin and blow the trip apart.

I’m glad it worked out as it did. We managed to tell ourselves we were having a good time so often I think we actually did. We were there for Tarpon, but we found friendship instead. I’d take fishing with people I like and having crap weather over nailing the fish with people I can’t stand. So, there’s that and in a certain light, that looks a lot like victory.

Shooting the shit… and learning.

Fish Tails — 4 Comments
06
Jan 14

Grand Slam – Bucs and Bones

I watched the “Grand Slam” episode of Buccaneers and Bones last night. It was great to see the show back for another season and it was great to see the familiar cast of characters at El Pescador in Belize.

I’ve been to EP twice, once in 2010 with my friend Shane and in 2012 with my wife for our honeymoon. What can I say? I love that place.

Honeymooners

The show itself was fun to watch. Yvon Chouinard gets a grand slam, but gets the finish (the bonefish) out of a mud, something he says he was not very proud of. His permit was a thing of beauty, caught after three casts and complete with the spool falling off his reel. Pretty classic awesomeness.

The permit. Not a big permit, but a permit.

My El Pescador Grand Slam permit. Not a big permit, but a permit.

El Pescador continues to be the best place to get a Grand Slam of any place I’ve heard of. That’s where I got mine, featuring my first ever tarpon and first ever permit. Hard to beat.

There aren’t a lot of options when it comes to flyfishing shows, so it is especially nice to have a show like Buccaneers and Bones featuring people I respect in places I hold dear.

The show is intended to raise awareness of conservation issues and supports the Bonefish & Tarpon Trust, which I am very much in favor of.

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31
Dec 13

2013 Year in Review

Well… what a year that was, eh?I had two trips this last year and a bunch of other life events making for a rather entertaining rollercoaster from start to finish.

Bahamas for Spring Break – This was a trip I wanted to do for a long time. I got my wife and daughter (along with my folks and brother) out to Grand Bahama and got to show them what I love out there. I also got to fish out of Deep Water Cay and Water Cay Lodges and got to see the sharks get fed at Pier One Restaurant. It was great.

Fish on at Deep Water Cay

Florida for Tarpon and Rain – I got to go fishing in Florida with a whole cast of characters. The fishing was tough due to rain, rain and more rain, but I got an introduction to a place I plan on coming back to periodically over the remaining decades of my life. I got to fish Biscayne Bay, an important point that features later.

Shooting the shit... and learning.

Pregnancy – I didn’t so much get pregnant as my wife did, but still, there was that. She dealt really well with it all, it has to be said.

Work ups and downs – I got laid off from my high-tech sales job (might have had something to do with there not being a product to actually sell… hard to sell if the product is never in a state it can be sold, right?). That was stressful, but was also an opportunity. I started doing some work for Angling Destinations and eventually, I landed a fantastic job as Director of Client Services for Machaon Diagnostics, a clinical reference lab in Oakland specialized in coagulation testing. I’ve landed well.

Oliver Biscayne – Just as the year was drawing to a close we added a new family member in Oliver Biscayne Stromsness. He’s doing great and after a bit of a false start, his sister eventually rated having a brother at “a gazillion” on a 1-10 scale. I’m a happy man.

Welcome, Oliver.

Looking Forward

2014 will most likely have a fishing trip in it. It looks like the Ragged Island Trip is suffering from cancellations and it is very likely we’ll shift to another island at a lower price point for the March trip. Beyond that, we will have burned up my wife’s PTO with maternity leave, so we likely won’t be back in the Caribbean this year, but I have high hopes of getting the family either to the Bahamas or the Keys in 2015 once again.

I’m going to keep on posting on the blog, although I’ve had some difficulty getting posts up these last few weeks. I intended to write this post last night, but my son was asleep on my chest for about 2.5 hours and I figured that was more important. I’ll find a balance in there somewhere and I continue to look for and share interesting stories about bonefish and the people and places related to them.

All the best to you in 2014!

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30
Dec 13

Bonefish Inflation

It happens. The guide wants you to have a good day on the water. He wants you to brag a little, to feel good about your angling abilities. Maybe he just wants you to have fun, maybe he’s also a little bit interested in how your fun level translates into a tip (if you take a cynical view of things). Either way, it is not uncommon for bonefish to suddenly add pounds when brought to hand. A four pound fish becomes a seven pound fish. A five pounder is suddenly nine.

Who doesn’t prefer an 8 pounder over a 4 pounder?

The bad thing, though, is when Mr. Angler shows the pictures of his 8 pound bonefish to his buddies. His friends who have been bonefishing before know what an 8 pounder looks like and they also know Mr. Angler didn’t catch an 8 pounder.

The lie doesn’t do anyone any favors. The guide might profit in the short term, but a client who knows he was lied to might not rebook. The angler might feel good about himself for a while, until he sees what a really big bonefish looks like and then has to admit to himself that his big fish really wasn’t a big fish.

Bonefish are awesome. We don’t need to do this. We don’t need a fish to add 50% of its weight to be a good fish. A four pound bonefish is a terrific fish. A four pounder will put you in your backing in a matter of seconds and will look lovely, held just under the water, with a broad and strong back, green and silver.

I’ll illustrate bonefish inflation with one of the first bonefish I ever caught. Now, I wasn’t really handling the fish well, but i didn’t know better, so, please forgive me that. This isn’t a particularly egregious example, but it is my own, so I don’t have to call anyone out to make my point.

This was my biggest of the trip. A nice fish, poorly handled.

The guide wanted me to be happy. He called the fish 7 pounds. It isn’t, and I’ll prove it.

Not 7.

If we use my knuckles as a scale we can figure out how long it was and from there we can put that into one of the calculators available for us to estimate fish weight (I’m using the table in Dick Brow’s Fly Fishing for Bonefish (a fine book, by the way). The fish, nose to fork is about 6.3 knuckle lengths. If my knuckles are about 3.5 inches across, that means the fish is about 22.05″. That translates to 5 pounds, 12 ounces. I may have been a little conservative, so it might have been slightly longer, pushing it to 6 pounds. This wasn’t too bad, in terms of inflation, but I think there are plenty of guides who would have called it 8… or more.

Be happy with the fish you get. Don’t make them into something else.

All the other stuff / Fish Tails — 3 Comments
01
Nov 13

Thoughts from Flatswalker

Flatswalker wrote a great little bit about casting, about the cast being the heart and soul of fly fishing and about how casting is not about strength, but about finesse.

Of course, I now realize that it was exactly my own effort that defeated me. Casting is about finesse and control, not strength, and certainly not anger.

I pretty much agree with all of that. I think about how little energy it takes a casting master to lay out their line and then contrast that with the effort less accomplished anglers put into their casting strokes and you can see a clear distinction.

Davin, in FL

However, I have a different view about where the heart and soul of our quiet sport can be found.

For me, it is the fly that sets us apart. When we catch a fish we have fooled it with the fly… something that is, on its own, scentless and lifeless. It might be easier to attach a shrimp to a hook, or a crab, the actual food these fish are seeking. It might be easier to put some scent on the fly to light up the olfactory senses of our target species. But we don’t do those things. We throw bits of metal with feather and fur and we inject life into them.

It’s like robbing a bank with a picture of a gun drawn on a post-it-note. It is artistry, both in the fly and in the presentation of the fly.

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24
Oct 13

Reflect

Here’s an idea to chew on.

Just doing something doesn’t really mean you learn anything from the doing. Research points to “focused reflection” being key to learning from anything you do. It is too easy to experience something and let it fade from your thoughts, leaving nothing behind.

If you take some time after your day on the water, after you land or lose that big fish, to talk through it, to think about the how and the why or the why not, you will stand a chance to actually grow in some way from that experience.

Fishing trips seem particularly well suited for this. What do we do when we get off the water but sit around and tell stories?

I like the coming together of the theory and the practice.

Shooting the shit… and learning.

PS… if you want to fish Ragged with me March 15-22, you can. Let’s do it.

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22
Oct 13

The Shark Girl Chronicles

My daughter is off school the next two days and that could only mean one thing… we were going to go fish the pier.

Love this girl

As always, I’m amazed at her stamina out there. We got there just shy of 10:00 AM and left just a bit after 3:00 PM. We didn’t touch a fish until about 2:00 PM. That’s a whole lot of waiting.

Today was interesting in that we got there as the tide was coming in and we found the end of the pier full of rods and fishermen. We took a corner I knew wasn’t in prime position and we waited. While we wanted the guys down in the far corner, where I wanted to be, crushed. They had a fish on about every 15 minutes. We were doing nothing but watching one guy catch fish after fish after fish. It was humbling.

When the tide turned, hours later, we immediately hooked up and then hooked up again 2 minutes later, and then 5 minutes after that and then we missed a few fish in the next 20 minutes.

Amazing how much the tide can influence the fishing even when you are only measuring spots 60 feet apart.

A day well spent, even if no flies were used in the creation of these memories.

All the other stuff / Fish Tails — 1 Comment
19
Oct 13

Kryptonite Reservoir

Twice I managed to head to this reservoir and catch the elusive carp. The last one was to hand at least two years ago. Since then, I’ve been back here six or seven times and I have only hooked one. Today I wasn’t even lucky enough to hook one. i did catch some tiny bass though.

All I got.

I know the spot isn’t ideal. The clarity is most often measured in inches… usually under six. I don’t know of many other options. Maybe there are other spots I could try, maybe there aren’t. The SF Bay Area is not a fish-drenched destination. We mostly travel to our fish, we don’t find too many in our back yard.

This reservoir is kicking my butt so badly. It’s making me wonder how I ever pulled a fish out of here. I know it wasn’t a fluke, because I repeated the performance. Since then though, it has had my number. Yesterday was no different.

I saw a few breaching carp, large fish, jumping out of the water and crashing back in a display I’ve seen often here. You just have to be lucky. If one breaches in range and you get a fly to the ring within 5 seconds, you have a shot. Otherwise, the fish disappears as soon as it enters the murk and you can’t find it, cast to it or catch it.

Maybe next time I’ll just go somewhere else… anywhere else. This clearly isn’t working.

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04
Sep 13

Congrats to Derek for his Grand Slam

Awesome work, man. Awesome.

Derek Rust, guide out of the Keys, gets his Grand Slam.

#Skinnywaterculture.

Derek Bone Derek Permit Derek tarpon

Fish Tails / Locations — 4 Comments
02
Sep 13

From the Archives – First Day of Bonefishing for Mrs. BOTB

(Originally posted September 20, 2012)

She’s a sport. This was our honeymoon, after all. It was also her second day of fly fishing ever. That’s jumping into the deep end, pretty much. Still, I figured if it was going to happen, it stood a good chance of happening here, out of El Pescador in Belize.

I would routinely say that what I wanted, out of the day on the water, was to share with her what it was that I loved, out there on the flats. It is an obscure concept if you’ve never been out there and maybe the selling of it is a bit challenging. “Hey, let’s stand on a boat for a few hours, looking for fish that are really hard to see, in the sun without shade. Oh, and you can’t have a beer until you land a fish (OK, that’s really more my rule).”

She was kitted out for success. She came walking up for breakfast like she belonged.

Ready for action

We got out on the water and headed up to the park. It is a nice ride up there and the day wasn’t too hot while we were running. Soon after we paid our fee at the park we went in search for baby tarpon. This wasn’t maybe the best first stop. First, it wasn’t going to be something that would put her up on the deck and secondly, back in the mangroves it was stiflingly hot.

I was also having a case of the sucks. I couldn’t seal the deal on the baby poons. I swept the rod on the first fish. I cast on the head of the second. I cast behind the third. The fourth wasn’t interested. All the time it was really, really hot. She suffered through it all though without a complaint, which just goes to show what a trooper she is.

We went out into a slightly bigger lagoon, a place with a bit of a breeze, and I managed to blow one last fish. On this fish I made a good cast, got the take, set the beejeezus out of things and managed to just break the fish off. That was surprising because this same set-up had landed my 85 pounder in Cuba. Same knots, same spools of material. Go figure.

Me, casting.

We then left to find some bones and the Mrs. got up on deck. Cesar, our guide set about helping out with her cast. This was her second day fishing, period. It is a tough place to start. Cesar got her up and running and put in into position to catch fish. There is a lot to remember though, and it was tough for her to carry it all in her mind. There is so much we carry in muscle memory and when you have to pick it all up and have to keep it in the front of your mind, well, things are going to get dropped, and plenty of things got dropped. She was unfazed though, mostly because of her awesomeness.

Mrs. BOTB actually hooked two bonefish, which I thought was simply wonderful. She got to feel the fish a bit, but put too much slack into things and both bones managed to get off. She did, however, manage to get a little snapper, so was not blanked on the day and got to enjoy a Belikin.

Earning the beer.

The day ended with Cesar and I out on foot chasing down several schools of bones. That was a fun time.

Another one in the books.

She got to see what I love out there and she understands me a bit better because of it. That was the goal, so, mission accomplished. She may need a few more days of trout fishing before we head back to the flats, which I’m happy to provide for her.

She’s game, which is just simply wonderful.

Bonefish on the Brain Bonefish and all that relates (maybe a bit about tarpon too).