20
Dec 12

Just to confuse you… don’t move the fly.

After reading my “Plan A” post yesterday, Scott Heywood shared his Plan A, which, as it turns out, is kind of the opposite of mine. I am always up for hearing advice or ideas contrary to my own. Here’s what he had to share:

STEP ONE:
Get the pointy thing in front of the fish. To do this, hit the fish almost on the nose. Yea, yea, I know… this will spook fish and it will sometimes. But, most of the time, IF YOU DON”T MOVE THE FLY, the fish will come back and eat the fly.  Get the fish to see your fly, then don’t move it. This is the technique most successful anglers use with permit so it is not a big stretch to use it with bonefish… especially big or wary bonefish.

STEP TWO:
If you don’t hit the bonefish on the snout (and more often than not, I do not), strip the fly in one long strip and if the fish sees the fly THEN DON”T MOVE THE FLY. Only move the fly if the fish appears to have not seen the fly or if it shows interest then veers off. React to the behavior of the fish and not just blindly retrieve.
If you are an angler who uses the “conventional” bonefish retrieve (quick strip, pause, quick strip etc.), I think you should try this Plan A. It does really work especially on spooky or wary big fish. If you notice your conventional presentation of predicting the path of the fish, casting well ahead and letting the fly sink, then stripping quickly when the fish gets to you fly is not working or is spooking fish, try this!  “Cast far away, strip and you’ll spook ‘em, hit ‘em on the head and they’ll eat.”

Here is the same technique from a guide’s perspective. This comes from Sidney Thomas. Sidney is the sensational head guide at Water Cay Lodge on Grand Bahama Island.

 So I tell them to rest that fly, watch the fish not the line. When those fins stick straight out and they are looking for what made that splash, bump it just a bit. No shrimp or worm has ever outrun a big bonefish… they hide. Bump and watch. Wait … the fish will find it and eat it. Wading or on the boat it can be hard for guests to see the fish tip down and eat, but I see it every time. I tell them to make a looooooong clean strip. I don’t say he ate it or hit ‘em like lots of guides do. The looooong strip is calm and easy and most times that fish has eaten the fly and is moving away. When guests make the long strip the line comes tight, the bonefish feels it and the guest… well… that’s why they came to Water Cay.

For more info see

Bonefish Lessons from Water Cay


19
Dec 12

Now what?

I remember my first trips very well. They weren’t that long ago, really, so it isn’t like my first steelhead trips, but still, they stand out very clearly. One of the feelings I recall is the feeling of dread when I finally had a fish in sight. I felt very unsure about what action I should give to the fly. To complicate things I had a friend tell me about some fish he had seen in Los Roques where he needed to not move the fly at all. With that in the back of my head I would wonder if I should leave the fly alone or if I should strip it in and if so, how fast and how long the strips should be?  That sort of argument going on in your head as you try to fool a bonefish is very nearly a game ender for the whole enterprise.

Down in Belize in 2010 I got to fish with my friend Shane. Shane has seen a lot of water and cast at a lot of fish. He has over 365 days of bonefishing, which I find pretty damn impressive since he is pretty much fully employed as a trout fly fishing guide, guide service manager or lodge host (AK, not the salt). Nor is he a Floridian or independently wealthy (or dependently wealthy… which you never really hear about, those poor guys). Watching him fish and talking to him a bit about what he was a great shortcut to better fishing. Here is some of his advice, combined with some thoughts from Captain Perry (anyone know where he’s guiding out of in Grand Bahama these days?).

1. When you cast you should give one long slow strip to start things off. That makes sure you clear your slack and gives some movement to your fly. Movement catches the eye of a bonefish and that first strip could get you your fish. If the fish doesn’t see your fly, it will almost never eat it.

2. You need to strip at a speed which will keep your fly off the bottom. If you are fishing above turtle grass, you need to keep it off the grass. Otherwise, you just need to be above the sand. That isn’t too fast and it isn’t too slow.

Beyond that, there are times you leave it, times you give a jerky retrieve, times you do other stuff I haven’t had to do yet. I am not yet proficient enough to know when to give a bonefish a fly that I’m not stripping. I’m going to need to do more of this to figure that out, but it is good to have a game plan going when I have a fish to cast at.

If you have a Plan A, you can divert. If you have no Plan A, you are basically screwed. Not making a decision is, in fact, making a decision. It is making a decision to have crappy fishing.

Shane, doing what he does (and doing it better than me).

Shane, doing what he does (and doing it better than me).


30
Oct 12

Muscle Memory

Many, many moons ago I was a guide for a single season up in Northern California at Clearwater House on Hat Creek (now Clearwater Lodge on the Pit River). As part of that experience there were fly fishing schools we put on occasionally and I clearly recall the then owner, Dick Galland, talking about casting and muscle memory. He said it take 60 hours of doing something before it is firmly established in your muscle memory at which point the action becomes second nature, easier. Another figure you may have heard is that it takes 10,000 hours of doing something to become expert at it.

I don’t stand a chance of being expert by that yardstick. “Good…” now “good” seems a decent target to hit.

The trick is that muscle memory does not judge if you are casting well or poorly, so just as muscle memory can help you cast with more ease, it may not actually improve your cast, ya know, unless you are casting correctly.

When you repeat mistakes again and again, you build a muscle memory with those mistakes. That makes those mistakes even harder to overcome later.

There is a flow, a feel to the saltwater cast, the double haul, that looks effortless if the rod is in the right hands. We’ve all see those casters who have an ease and grace to their cast. They spend a tenth the amount of energy and get twice the results. They’ve been doing that for a long time, their bodies do it automatically. The action has been cached in the very fiber of their beings, recalled without thought.

If you only cast when you have a fish in front of you, the odds of you ever achieving proficiency are almost nil. To be able to pull out the big cast when you need it I would wager the angler who has to actually think about the cast is the one who will fail more times than not. It is the angler who can tap into the body’s internal memory banks, who can automate the cast based on hundreds and thousands of such casts in the past who will hit the target, and by hitting the target will get the grab, feel the tug, hear the reel scream, cradle the hefty fish and watch it disappear back into watery oblivion.

So, go practice. Practice without fish in front of you. Get to a casting pond or an empty field. Cast and cast and cast and try to have those casts be as well constructed as possible. Get an instructor. Get a friend who casts better than you do. Record your casting and play it back and see what you actually look like. Correct, amend, improve. Cast in the wind. Cast over your off shoulder. Lay out your back cast. Cast and cast some more.

The guide will say Bonefish, 70′, 1:00 and you will spring into action without thinking and everything will lay out perfectly because you’ve done this a thousand times before.

Me, casting.

 

 

 


29
Oct 12

Deneki’s Top Ten

Deneki Outdoors is a pretty impressive machine, even more so for being a relatively small organization. Andrew, the owner, puts out a stream of content from his blog and it is largely original and largely awesome.

Here are Deneki’s top ten bonefishing links.

Awesome.

 

PS – Great job SF Giants!


12
Oct 12

3 ways to catch more bonefish, from Deneki

More wisdom from Deneki… this time it is 3 Ways to Catch More Bonefish.

What is tip #2?

Hint… I’m doing it right.

Photo by Cameron Miller down at Andros South.


16
Aug 12

Feed marks a la Deneki

A great post over at Deneki about bonefish feed marks. We’ve all seen them.  Nothing makes you anticipate a fish like the sign that a fish has been there.

I remember being on a flat in Kauai wondering if there were, in fact, any bonefish where I was fishing.  I had gone a day and a half without seeing any and while I knew they used to be there, I wasn’t so sure they were there anymore.  Then I saw the feedmark. Good news. Soon thereafter I saw a bonefish (for a few, fleeting seconds before it shot out into the Pacific at speed).

One, old feed mark.

 

 


14
Aug 12

Be Ready

If you are new to bonefishing, or flats fishing in general, I have some advice for you that could dramatically increase your conversion rate.

The guide says “cast, 50 feet, 10:00.”

You cast.

Then… you wait for the guide to give further instructions.

Don’t wait. There are two things you need to do right away after the cast and you should probably do those things automatically.

1. Clear the slack from the line. – After you cast you might have some slack line on the water. All that line is going to have to be converted into a straight line before any “strip” is going to move your fly. If the guide says “Strip” and you are stripping the slack line, the fly isn’t moving and if the guide has said strip because he wants a strip, like, right NOW, well, you won’t be able to deliver on that.  So, after the cast, before the guide tells you to do anything, make sure you strip in the slack line so that your first strip on the fly line actually moves the fly.

2. Rod tip pointed at the fly and touching the water. Be it fishing still water for trout or a flat for bones, there is nothing gained by having your rod tip 2 feet above the water.  That line sagging from your rod tip is like a shock absorber depriving you of critical information about what is happening at the fly end of things. Don’t let that happen. Rod tip on or in the water and there is no slack.  If you do Step #1 and the fish eats on the first strip, you’ll be on that fish.

I don’t give a lot of tactical advice because I’m still pretty green in the pursuit of bonefish. I love them more than I get to fish for them, but that also means I need every cast, every eat to be as effective as possible.

 

Always be looking yourself, too.

I have seen, too many times, someone cast when the guide says cast, but then not really clean things up or get ready.  The guide isn’t watching you at this point, he’s watching the fish (you should be too, if you can see them) and when he says “STRIP!” he is expecting things to happen right then, not three or four strips later.  You have a small window to get things right and the door on opportunity can slam closed pretty fast.

Again… I’m not an expert and I don’t mean to sound like one. I just want every trip to be successful, be it one of mine or one of yours.

 

 

 


10
Aug 12

Best Tides

A piece you may be interested in at the Fly Paper Blog about the best tides for bonefishing.

In the ocean, the moon is at the controls. Pockmarks and all, the moon is the king. His subjects range from the smallest invertebrates to the largest fish and all the creatures in between.  

 

That’s some skinny water.

I am guessing that it is my overall low number of bonefishing days that has lead me to believe that there are plenty of flats where the tide may determine where the fish are going to be, but not really IF they are going to be there.  There do seem to be some flats where the fish are there all day, just in different places… up along the shore at high tide, further out on the flat at low tide.  There are certainly some places where the fish can’t feed at low or high tide.  I seldom have the option, when on my own, of going for the “right” tide, I have to go fishing when I get a chance to go fishing, tides be damned. I think Scott agrees, saying:

I am often asked what is the best tide profile to choose for a bonefish trip. The simple answer is, “The best tides happen when you can go.” 

I know a little bit about tides, but I could certainly be armed with more information. There is some good stuff in the article that aims to give that sort of info.  Read it.

 

 

 


06
Jul 12

You can’t blind cast for bonefish

Everyone knows that.  You don’t blind cast for bonefish.  It sullies the sport, the fish and the fisherman.  It is totally unacceptable.

Except when it works.

Or if there isn’t another option.

Then, the redeeming hand of the almighty fishing gods reaches out and with one long exhale says “Shhhhhhhhhh. I won’t tell if you won’t.”

I’ve never caught a bonefish blind casting.  I’ve especially not blind cast for that one fish on Grand Bahama the last time I was there, or the other one on my first trip to Grand Bahama.

I totally never tried blind casting for bonefish on Kauai last time when I didn’t see bones for 2.5 days and only managed three legit shots in 3 days of fishing.

I’m sure you’ve never blind cast for bones either… right?

Maybe… possibly blind cast caught.


14
Jun 12

Torrie and Big Bonefish

A pretty interesting article over at Deneki with advice from guide Torrie Bevans on casting to big bonefish.  Lead the fish, right?  Well, Torrie has some pretty interesting thoughts.

I have yet to catch a really big bonefish.  I’ve hooked a couple really nice ones and I’ve cast to a few, but I have little experience when it comes to actually converting the deal.

I’m still waiting and looking.

Belize isn’t likely to be that for me.  They have bones there, sure, and I hope to catch a few, but they don’t have a lot of double digit fish. Actually, they have a ton of double digit fish but they are tarpon and permit.  The bones are smaller and more plentiful.

Next time I see one of the big bruisers I’m going to have Torrie’s words bouncing around my head.