This comes via Adam Marton, who I actually met in person down at El Pescador while on my honeymoon. Adam, he loves bonefish and tarpon and he loves Belize as well.
This is an opportunity coming up in August at El Pescador. Dr. Jerry Ault and Stu Apt will be there. I’d love to go too, but that is not in the cards. This sounds pretty awesome, I have to say.
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I’m spending a few days with my dad and one of the things my dad and I do together is fish. So, we fished today.
After dropping my daughter off in San Jose for school, I hit the road, stopping in Redding for a half day of fishing with my dad and guide/friend Andrew Harris of Confluence Outfitters.
A nice fish.
The day was, to put it mildly, very nice.
We caught fish. We caught a lot of fish and many of those fish were big. I caught a 23″, 22″, and several 20″ fish, in addition to a few in the high teens. My dad caught some very nice fish as well.
It is just a very nice thing to have a good day on the water with my dad. I think we both needed that.
Fish on!
I have not been to Bikini, but this was an interesting look at the island.
There aren’t a lot of reasons to visit Bimini, but there are good reasons, such as world-class fishing, be it the deep sea variety or the pursuit of bonefish skirting around the shallow flats just off the coast. Bimini hosts a handful of fishing tournaments each year that pack the islands. There also are diving, snorkeling and the simple joy of visiting a warm-weather island 50 miles east of Miami that is hospitable to visitors while remaining true to itself.
The islands, not the knot.
Eric Estrada put together this video featuring many of the people he’s fished with over the past year. In the video are a few of the gang from our Florida trip last June.
I didn’t get to fish with Eric myself, but he was there every day we were there and he is plenty dedicated to the fish, the fishery and his art. He was very willing to share it all with us, and for that, I’m thankful.
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My name, Bjorn, is a tough one for a lot of people. It is pronounced “bee-orn.” The “j” throws a lot of people. I’ve had that name since birth, however, so I’m used to it.On the recent trip to Long Island the name produced a new funny twist.
Head guide, Dwayne, had trouble with my name, as many do. Dwayne pronounced my name “Born” and I answered to it. You can’t be picky when you are named Bjorn.
In order to remember my name, Dwayne latched on to the Bourne movies, associating my name with Jason Bourne.
On the boat, when fish were spotted and Dwayne wanted to get my attention, the association with the movie character proved too strong and he’d simply call me “Jason.”
He knew it wasn’t right, but he couldn’t stop himself.
“Jason… Bourne… Jason, bonefish, there!”
Soon, even Dwayne’s brother Elvis was calling me Jason.
So, in March of 2014, a character from fiction visited Long Island in the Bahamas in search of bonefish. There were no car chases or explosions, save those by barracuda.
Normally, I’d be doing some sort of measurement to dispute the weight, but I don’t think I need to here. Meeko, guide out of Deep Water Cay, put this fish at 14.6 pounds and it certainly looks it. That is a beast.
Big, big bonefish.
This is why I kind of have a crush on Grand Bahama. There is no overnighting anywhere, no flight out of Nassau and a day burned in transit.
You are very unlikely to find a fish bigger than this anywhere. You’d be fortunate to cast to a fish this big in your whole life. Congrats to Jim Easterling of Houston, who landed the Beast of Deep Water Cay.
I can say I saw some of the tarpon of Long Island. I cannot say I caught one.
There is basically one, deep cut which holds the tarpon. There used to be a lot more of them around, but the last big hurricane cut through some of the canals and the baby tarpon vanished. The deep cut holds what few adults are still found there.
They come up and roll and then head back down deep. The bend where they are found is a confusion of currents and boils and deep water. I saw a spinner shark glide beneath the skiff, but I only saw the tarpon roll at a distance of 50′ or more.
Dutifully, I pounded out some casts to the general vicinity of the rolls, but the fish were probably 10 feet below the fly and I doubt they ever saw it.
I did get to cast the new Sage Motive rod in an 11 weight lent to me just for this trip. The rod cast very well and even the guide was impressed with the line I was able to lay out with this purpose built tool. The rod is fast, as you’d expect. If you’ve cast other big, fast action saltwater rods, you know the experience. I liked the rod and felt comfortable with it. I’m sure it would have handled a big tarpon well. Alas, I’ll have to make that speculation and not report from experience.
I never got a boil on the fly. I never saw a 5 foot shape loom up behind the fly. I can’t say I got close to catching one.
Still, I enjoy just seeing them. My knees got weak at the sight of them. My pulse sped up, my hands began to shake. I felt fortunate just to have a shot.
I did get to fish the Motive a little bit more, casting for sharks, cudas and trolling for jacks. I did get a fish on it, which was a nice bonus.
I might not bring an 11 on my next Long Island trip. Instead, I might revert back to my Redington Predator 10 wt., which I had along as well and which dealt with the jacks and cudas just fine, even throwing a big popper into the wind.
I sure would have liked to hook into one of those nice Long Island tarpon, but they are so few it might be better just to let them hang out and play with the locals.
Not a sound. – PS, do you see the school of bonefish?
On the trip to Long Island to fish with Bonefish Paradise at Greenwich Creek Lodge we got lucky when it came to the weather. There were no whitecaps on the water (which I learned are formed when relative wind speeds reach 14 mph). We might have seen a few minutes of 12 mph wind, but we had many more minutes of dead, flat calm.
It turns out dead calm can make for really tough fishing.
One of the mornings Elvis, Tandy (who was called “Candy” for most of the day) and I went far out on the Ocean-Side flats to a little rock way out all on its own. Once the motor was off and we were out of the boat I experiences near sensory-deprivation level quiet. There just were no sounds, save for the occasional shad or bonefish tailing.
It was spooky quiet.
When there is such an absence of sound every sound that is generated seems like an explosion. Each step sounded like a careless water buffalo walking through a rice paddy. And, as it turned out, every cast with the textured line on the Orvis H2 sounded like a million zippers being zipped all at once.
For the first time I saw bonefish, 50 and 60 feet away, visibly spook at the sound of a false cast. I saw them spook at the sound of a single strip of the fly. I’ve heard this criticism of textured lines before, but I had not experienced it myself. Now, I have.
It was simply too quiet. Too still. The weather too good.
When there is a light wind the fish can’t see you as well. They can’t hear you as well. They don’t bolt at the slightest provocation because those slight offenses are masked and obscured and forgiven by the wind.
So, I will no longer wish for windless days… although, if I can dial it up, I’d say a nice 8 mph wind might just be perfect.
The gang.
We were very lucky with the weather. That’s the thing that stands out the most. The week before our trip was windy, rainy and difficult. Today, the day we leave, the wind is back up, whitecaps out on the flat in front of us and lots of clouds in the sky. Our week featured almost no wind and very few clouds. Perfect bonefishing weather.
We had some good fishing and some tough fishing and some fishing in-between. Usually, there was one boat each day that did pretty well and one boat struggled. Success and humility were sprinkled pretty evenly around the group.
We did a lot of walking. We probably fished off the skiffs 10% of the time, although if you needed to fish out of the boat, they can certainly do that, so you shouldn’t let that keep you from coming down.
The group was a good one and we gelled pretty well. Everyone got to fish together and we each fished with all of the guides.
Rods:
Flies:
Species:
Greenwich Creek Lodge:
Overall:
We had a great week and it went by too quickly. Some of us will certainly come back, others will probably explore other places. I recommend Greenwich Creek Lodge to anyone who loves the technical side of bonefishing. Skinny water, beautiful setting, good people. The price is certainly right.
Today was just about perfect. The weather was outstanding. The company was great and the fishing was wonderful.We started out the day heading far out on the ocean side. There is a small rock way out there and it serves as a magnet for fish. There are sharks, barracuda and a huge number of bones. I managed to catch a bonefish out of a huge group only to sacrifice that fish to the Cuda God. I caught another bonefish out of the group and managed to pull it out of the big school fast enough that the cudas and sharks didn’t see it. I have no pictures of that fish. Pictures were not a priority.
It was a nerve-wracking experience to revive a bonefish in my hands while constantly looking over my shoulder at the lemon sharks 20 feet away.
Next we went back on the inside flats and I got to watch Tandy, my fishing partner for the day, catch a nice 4 pound bonefish which interrupted his lunch rather rudely.
When I got on deck it didn’t take long for there to be options to cast at. The fish kept coming in and retreating, testing for weaknesses (it seemed). Then, one good cast and the lead fish in a line-up of fish aggressively chased down the fly and ate. It immediately tore off 200 feet of fly line and backing and was a heavy weight moving fast. When I got the fish in it was 26″ to the fork, so over 7 pounds. That’s just about my personal best, although I think tied with a fish I got last year in Grand Bahama.
I was pretty much happy after that. I didn’t land another fish and it didn’t matter.
Long Island has been a lot of fun with a good group of guys. Tomorrow we head home and I know I’ll be thinking often of the good time I had here at Greenwich Creek Lodge.
