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

Dr. Mike Larkin once sent me a bonefish tongue. It was awesome. The guy has forgot more about bonefish than I’m likely to ever know. So, I invite you to listen to this episode of the Tom Roland Podcast, where he talks about, well, bonefish.

Back in the pre-COVID world I got to fish Christmas Island. On the last day, on the last flat, I had a beast of a GT pushing water toward me. I made a cast, the fish followed. In my mind I was thinking “This is perfect! This is how you write it up! Victory at the death!”

The fish pulled up short, probably seeing me standing there, and just swam off. The script I was writing in my head of the last cast of the trip just didn’t play out the way I was hoping. There was a “wait, that’s not how that’s supposed to end!” thought in my head. The last cast in the low light on the last flat with the big opportunity in front of me… the script says that’s the one you are supposed to pull off… that’s what makes the story.

Fast forward a bit to yesterday. Here I am coaching U9 competitive soccer and we are playing our last game of the season. My son is on the team and he’s playing left mid. The clock is ticking down. A player on our team wins the ball back in the far corner and puts a lovely ball right in front of my son who slots a shot past the keeper. The last kick of the game. The last kick of the season.

One of my first thoughts was of that flat on Christmas Island and my last shot at a GT in the dying minutes of the trip, the last cast I’d get, and how I didn’t make it happen… but here, my son, a few thousand miles away and in a totally different context… well… he took the shot and scored.

A weird parallel maybe. Two things that are not at all the same, but that’s where my mind went, maybe realizing just a taste of how totally satisfying it is to see your kid do better than you.

Over the years I have pursued bonefish I came to realize a few things about handling bonefish.

1. A LOT of people, including my former self, have done it wrong. Just because a guide isn’t yelling at you for doing it wrong doesn’t mean they aren’t letting you do it wrong.
2. These aren’t trout. When you put that fish back into the water you are are putting them back into a “Only the fit survive” kind of environment. It isn’t the air exposure or handling that kills them, it is the cuda or shark waiting for the weakened/dazed fish (from air exposure or handling) to wander across their path.
3. Even when you do it right the fish can STILL be killed. That makes it important to do it right all the time.

Here’s a page on the BTT website that tells you exactly how you can best increase the fish’s chance of survival.

Drugs er bad… right? Well then, why are so many bonefish doing drugs? SERIOUS QUESTION (kind of)!

BTT recently released a story about trace amounts of chemical-life-enhancers found in bonefish in Florida. Seems wastewater carries enough of it to tip the flag on the assays used to check for pharmaceuticals in these fish.

Old friend and man whose hair I envy, Matt Smythe, recently wrote about that story here in Free Range American.

We just don’t seem to have a good grip on the many, many impacts we have on the world around us.

I’ve written about this story before, but here it again. A good film about a good people and a good person in Ansil Saunders. Good on ya SIMMS and COSTA.

Driving North felt like descending into hell.

As I got close to Redding, 3 hours north of the Bay Area, I was met with a wall of ash. There was a fire, a new fire in months of never-ending fires, and it was close. More forests and homes burning up.

So much has burned this year. 2.4 million acres up in smoke. It was so thick. I wore my N95 in the car and it still smelled like a campout.

Once past this latest fire I emerged just beyond Shasta Lake and into areas which had already burned by other fires in the past couple years. Miles of burned-out forests, no canopy, no undergrowth, just the slightly reddish earth and the charred skeletons of trees.

It is apocalyptic and I wouldn’t have been surprised to see the characters from “The Road” walking along the shoulder of I-5.

Arriving in my little home-town the smoke was background level and the forests the clung to the canyon walls were still thick and dark green. A stop at Ted Fey’s Fly Shop and a quick stop off at my dad’s now former home and I set off for the river.

In September you don’t need waders and I stepped into the waters to find them cool. I had been expecting the worst after my drive up and was almost surprised to find the waters so frigid and trout friendly.

It was just so nice.

This summer started off rough up here. June had temps over 100 every day, all month. That didn’t happen when I grew up here. Temps like that were reserved for late August and early September, but not June. June can still be cool. June can still be cold in the early mornings. June can be cold at night. June has runoff swollen rivers that are both a little high and very cold.

This year there wasn’t much snowpack to come down, so the river was not high at all when I saw it in May, and no where near as cold as it should have been. I feared for the summer months.

Now, in the waning days of September, I could see the river had made it though the unprecedented heat. It survived.

I hiked up the tracks to the Falls, which are always beautiful. They are worth the hike all by themselves. They are also about as far as most people get. I started fishing upstream from there.

Over the next four hours or so I enjoyed some of the best fishing I’ve had in ages. It was a throwback to how this river fished for me 15 years ago. I caught fish and then more and then more. I saw a mink. I landed a very nice fish at or above 18″ which is a really nice fish for this river. I didn’t see another soul above the Falls. I had the place to myself to enjoy, to reconnect with, the play in.

It was odd, how I felt on the drive up, how it all felt like it was all being lost, and how I felt standing in that bit of paradise, having it all to myself. It was hard to hold both things in my head at the same time.

I hope this little bit of perfection survives the next few decades… the droughts and the fires that are likely to keep ravaging California and the West as we struggle to come to grips with what exactly we are losing. I want to hold onto this a bit longer.

Read this story from Patagonia… worth your time.

Dorian was a monster and it did so much damage. Some folks (including Justin Lewis with BTT) are working to make things better. It’s a big job. They could use your help.

You can buy a mangrove and I did just that. You should consider it.

I live on an island. It is a nice place. We have great neighbors and live in a great neighborhood. I love it here, deeply.

At the tail end of April it will be 61 here as a high and there are large swaths of the summer the high will be 68. We’ll get a week of 100+ heat at some point, but, it isn’t the tropics.

While this island, sitting on the east side of the San Francisco Bay, is worlds away from the Bahamas, we do have a palm tree we can see from our back yard and if you look at it real hard and actively exclude everything else from your vision, you can almost transport yourself to the Caribbean.

I just got my coffee and looked out the kitchen window to see if there was much wind out and saw the palm, calm and still. If I were fishing for bones today, I’d be comforted by that sight. I can remember other mornings on other islands where the sound of the wind through the palms was the first thing I heard when I woke and I would know from that sound that the day would be tough.

I can’t turn that part of my brain off. I don’t want to turn that part of my brain off.

I love this palm… this little bit of island mentality, or island memory.

I don’t know Wil Flack. Let’s be honest, I’m very likely not awesome enough to know Wil Flack. Dude is super fishy and we all aspire to that title and few will earn it.

Wil Flack knows permit. Guy lives down in Belize, runs the Tres Pescados Fly Shop in San Pedro and is pretty much associated with catching permit.

I’ve caught one, small permit and the few chances I’ve had to cast at them generally end up with me thinking WAY too much about what I’m doing, which is usually a surefire way to screw something up.

So, in order for you and I to learn something from Mr. Flack, here are some videos of him talking about how to move the fly for permit. I never get this right. Maybe these will help.

Ready?