All the other stuff — 2 comments
17
Sep 11

Overheard on the drive home

Dinner was more or less a disaster.  Her shoes came off at some point and she proceeded to run around the outside eating area.  She hardly touched her food and didn’t have more than 2 or 3 sips of her $5 chocolate shake.  A FIVE DOLLAR CHOCOLATE SHAKE.  Then, the meltdown fully expanded into writhing on the bench, whines, cries and finally me picking her up, putting her over my shoulder and carrying her off to the car.  Yeah… that was dinner with friend Colin and his daughter over in Santa Cruz tonight.

I explained the things she had lost for that little episode.  Books, songs, bath time… straight to bed when we got home.

We drove past a reservoir and she piped up “Look! Bonefish! Tarpon!”

“Dad, when I’m 5 I get to go with you to the Ba- Hamas wiff you and I get to catch bonefish wiff you and I get to have my own rod and everything.”

 

Yeah… almost made me forget the bad parts of the evening. Silly girl.

Love that girl

Tactics — 5 comments
16
Sep 11

Thoughts on Stripping

If I’ve screwed up in bonefishing, and I have… plenty… I probably have done the most damage with my stripping.  I can get a little too in my head, over thinking the problem and coming up with some modified strip that just scares the hell out of the fish and leaves that fantastic V of a bonefish that has just had enough of your $h*t.

Glad to see a story from Deneki about stripping.

photo credit - Andrew Bennett

 

Fish Tails — Leave a comment
15
Sep 11

Kids and Fishing via FFISW

Thanks to reader Mark for finding this one. Nice little story.

 

I’ve been a reader for many years and I just came back from a family vacation in Nassau, in the Bahamas. I’ve been fly-fishing for bones there for years but this time I got to take my son, Jacob, for his first bonefish charter, and luckily for us, he was able to land his first, despite heavy winds. I’m very proud of my 7-year-old, and we can’t wait to do it again.

Flies — 2 comments
14
Sep 11

Vince’s Cat Whiskers

From Reader Vince.

This is the fly I that fooled my first Florida bone fish. While shopping at a Orvis Outlet Store, I spied a package of #8 MOE hooks. The price was ridiculous so it found its way on to a pile of fly tying items stacked near the cash register. Orvis had already eliminated the messy epoxy stage of creating a MOE fly, great.

My cats have been supplying me with their cast off whiskers for some time and now they provided the shrimpy looking antennae for this pattern. I added a couple of strands of crystal flash and then palmered the yellow synthetic material I swiped from my wife’s sewing basket. A one minute bone fish fly.

Plantation Key, Florida, in the very early AM our tarpon guide went to our condo window to check the wind conditions. To his great surprise there was a large school of very big bonefish working the dead coral reef directly below his vantage point. Over the next few days they returned every morning. On the one day we couldn’t get out to pursue tarpon I rigged a nine weight and tied on this little fly. There was a small sandy spot that the bones returned to several times every 20 or so minutes. On a hunch I cast the fly to this spot and waited. Sure enough a bone drifted over and started to nudge around this patch. Two little strips later I was fast to a 6 pounder and my first Florida bone fish.

Gear — Leave a comment
13
Sep 11

Louis Cahill’s Camera – Deneki

A great number of the wonderful shots that show up over at Deneki come from Louis Cahill.  He has shared his camera rig and if you like snapping the pics, you should probably check that out.

We’ve also posted a whole lot of great photos from Louis Cahill, our friend and photography ninja.   We know that quite a few of you like taking pictures, so we thought we’d change it up a bit and asked Louis for his expert rig of the photography kind.

Fish Tails — Leave a comment
12
Sep 11

Hooked on fishing, and family. Nice story

Nice piece from the Daytona Beach News Journal.

In May I took a trip to the Bahamas to do a little bonefishing with my father and brother.

While throwing a fly at these “ghosts of the flats” as they swam nervously through the gin-clear water, I thought how similar and different that environment was to fishing my local waters of the Indian River and Mosquito Lagoon.

 

Flies — 2 comments
10
Sep 11

Eric’s Gotchas

From reader Eric…

My first trip was in May and I and caught a dozen on plain old Gotchas on Acklins. I threw my whole box of popular flies into schools or cruising big ones with multiple refusals. I tied them all so they will always be my favorite.  Here’s a photo of my first few efforts and my first bonefish… (day 1 of 6) -and saw it by myself!  I’ve only been fly fishing for three years and had a few months of tying and I feel like I’ve hit the big time!  I really enjoy your brain dumps.
Eric English MD
Aka fishbaydoc

simple and effective.

Flies — 1 comment
09
Sep 11

Your fly, your story

Hey… I had a neat idea…

Here it is.

Send me a picture of your favorite bonefishing fly and a paragraph about why… could be something you like about the fly or a memory created by it or… whatever.

I think we could get some interesting stories that way, and life is all about stories, really.

The reverse with a little hot bunny tail.

This is one of my favorites.  It is my favorite because I really played with the materials to get this.  I took lots of different bits of advice, a little bit of experience and came up with this… and it worked.  It was the real joy of fly tying meeting the joy of learning, meeting the joy of bonefishing.

All the other stuff — 2 comments
09
Sep 11

Reason #4 – New Zealand Rock Snot Whirling and more

I’ve been without internet for a couple days… I’ll be back live tomorrow, but… in the meantime… Reason #4 that bonefishing is better than trout fishing.  😉

—

The angler emerged from the car with the sound of the river playing like his personal theme music.  Eagerly he grabbed his rod, already strung up from fishing earlier in the day and headed off toward new water, fabled water and with is first step into those cool, clear, storied waters… he totally screwed up the entire ecosystem for generations to come… maybe forever. On this prick’s wet wading boots were a cocktail of invasive organisms potent enough to bring low the mightiest of rivers… Rock Snot, New Zealand Mud Snails and Whirling Disease.

There goes the neighborhood and with it another reason why the salt is best.

Reason #4 Invasives Suck.

Uff da, as my dad would say.

 

PS – if you don’t get that this is tongue in cheek… it is.

Gear / Tactics — 2 comments
07
Sep 11

Ed Maurer reviews Dick Brown’s new Bonefish Fly Patters

The revised and updated Bonefish Fly Patterns is more of an analytical treatise on not only bonefish flies, but the prey bonefish feed upon, and the types and features required of an effective fly and how and where to fish it. Brown goes into a full analysis of what bones eat broken down into the percentages of prey they eat in the Bahamas and Florida. It’s almost like a diet book in the way each food source is listed by type and percentage eaten, but also by what prey bonefish seem to prefer regardless of availability.

Sounds pretty good, eh? Ed Maurer publishes the online journal Florida Fly Fishing Magazine (Click here to see the full review), so he has some room to speak with authority on the subject.  Of course, I’ve interviewed Dick and he actually send me a copy of the book, which I’ll review as well, once I clear things off the table a bit and make some time to give it the attention I need to give it.

Check out the link above and check out Dick’s new book. If you like bonefish and want to know more about fly selection, this is a must have.

 

 

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