The Somethinsfishy blog has a great story about a trip to the Seychelles, which is just one of those places you want to go if you are a saltwater fly fishing angler.
Before I hit the daily breakdown, it is worth noting that the long trek half way around the world is well worth it. The bonefishing here is by far the most impressive on earth, but it is the diversity of species and stunning beauty of the place that makes it so incredible.
Check out the story
My wife made that comment last night on the phone… “You have bonefish taste and a trout budget.”
So true.
I still love trout. They are here, which is one considerable Plus they have over bonefish. Made it out again today for a couple hours on my home water (The Upper Sacramento) in a place I’ve fished at least 100 times, probably more. Temps were cooler and so was the fishing. Managed 2 fish in 2 hours, both small. Did see a golden stone on the water and a great, big massive gray drake, but no noses. All fish were caught on a 4 wt. and the reel was never in any danger of being tested.
The leaves have mostly fallen, the river is empty. Love it.
As I was out there not catching fish and watching my own breath I did think about how when I am getting my arse kicked some place tropical I seldom lose feeling in my toes.
I’m still hoping to get to Belize this summer with my dad, but we have to see how the tax man treats us and a variety of other, mostly financial, factors end up shaking out.
At my one-time local fly shop (I moved), the Ted Fay Fly Shop, I ran into Guide Fred Gordon who spent a couple weeks in Abaco just after I went to Grand Bahama. Even in the heart of California trout country, I still see constant reminders of bonefish… see, I have bonefish on the brain.
Today I got out fishing… no, not bonefishing, but fishing none the less. I am up visiting my folks and that meant that when my daughter went down to take a nap I had grandparents to supervise and a trout stream about 2 minutes away.
The Upper Sacramento is my home water. I grew up in this town, even if I didn’t fish it much as a kid (we were steelhead fisherman more oriented toward the Klamath). Still, I’ve put more hours on this river than any other and that means I still know where to find fish, even in the winter.
A nice looking Upper Sac bow
I got 2 hours… my first 2 hours of 2010 in California… of course, I had 5 days in Grand Bahama already, so, I can’t feel too sorry for myself.
Three fish landed, #16 Bead Head PT was the fly of choice. Saw some #22’s and some #10’s in the air (mostly #22’s). The stones haven’t started to move and the larger bugs, I assume March Browns, weren’t bringing up any noses.
This is still the world I know best. I didn’t second guess my fly selection or my location or my rod/reel/line. I knew it all. That just underscores how much I have to learn about bonefish… how they act, what they eat, when and where to find them.
I may never get to know bonefish or any one location as well as I know this water and these trout. I can try though.
This blog has always been about the arc of discovery, the journey to learn more about bonefish and the places and people that relate to them. I quickly discovered the Flatswalker blog and read about the author’s experiences as he learned the bonefish game in his native Grand Caymans. Davin Ebanks writes Flatswalker and has a guide service in Grand Cayman called Fish Bones.
I put some questions to Davin about bonefishing and Grand Cayman and this is Part I of that interview.
Davin with a happy client in Grand Cayman
Q. Grand Cayman got hit pretty hard by Hurricane Ivan back in 2004. Were you there at the time? Has the Island recovered?
A. Grand Cayman got hit the hardest of our three islands, but I was (luckily) not there at the time. I’d left a week prior on personal business to Jacksonville, FLA and at that time the storm was predicted to hit Haiti or Cuba, not Cayman. They were wrong. I was in contact with family as early as the next night, but was unable to get back home for about a month! There was such a limit on basic supplies (like water, food, sleeping space, etc.) that it just didn’t make sense to add to the burden. There wasn’t even power available to start making repairs or cleanup for about 2-3 weeks. So, I stayed in Florida and went fishing for a month.
When I got back I was very relieved to see that though there were thousands of fish killed by the storm surge, bonefish were not among them. More importantly, the flats were almost exactly the same as I’d left them – same holes, same drop-offs, a few more rocks and random debris but that’s about it. Given the state of the shoreline (which looked like someone had used it for bombing practice and then sprayed it with a few thousand tons of Agent Orange for good measure), I couldn’t believe something as soft as turtle grass could survive. But it did.
Luckily, the island has mostly recovered since then. In fact, there are only a few places where you can even see signs of the devastation. There are a few houses still derelict and some dead mangrove stumps along the coast, that’s about it. The biggest change is in the inhabitants’ hurricane readiness. We watch the Weather Chanel like hawks and board up our windows pretty much as soon as a major storm leaves the coast of Africa… and we leave them boarded up till mid-December when Hurricane Season is good and over.
Q. What about Grand Cayman sets it apart from its Caribbean neighbors?
A. Well, to start with we don’t have very many neighbors, unlike the eastern Caribbean islands. There’s Cuba and Jamaica, that’s about it. Also, even though we’ve just celebrated our quincentennial, we’ve been only sparsely inhabited for most of that time. That means that unlike Jamaica (to pick a random country) our water’s have not been fished into a marine desert. (That’s not to say there’s no fish in Jamaica, but in those areas where there’s access the subsistence lifestyle of the citizens means almost anything edible has been fished and fished heavily.) Also, there’s a distinct lack of crime in Cayman. There are the occasion petty thefts, but by and large you can explore the shoreline with impunity.
However, I’d say the biggest difference is the ease of access to our flats. Being a mountain peak more or less isolated in the Caribbean basin, our flats are almost all Oceanside flats… which are firm and wadeable. We certainly don’t have the expansive flats of the Bahamas, but the common site of tailing bonefish begins to make up for that. (And I mean hard-core, third of their bodies out the water, face in the grass, tailing.) It would take too long to go into it here, but bonefish over hard-packed sand just don’t tail that consistently, not like they do over softer grassy bottoms. (e.g. The Florida Keys, Belize Oceanside, etcetera.) Casting to tailing fish in shallow water is pretty much the premier experience of the sport.
Q. What does a good day of fishing look like for you as a guide?
A. Ok, from a guide’s point of view, or simply the fishing? I guess I’ll just answer that as myself: for me a good day begins not with the most experienced client in the world, or even a great caster, but someone who will listen and (more importantly) keep fishing. Then all you really need is fish that are biting. You can deal with the weather, weird tides, cloudy skies, and all the rest, but if you have someone who just wants to catch a pile of fish, or fish that simply aren’t biting, the day is pretty much shot. I mean, we all want to catch fish, right? But, the thing about fly fishing is that it’s about the experience of fishing. I need my guests to be right there in the moment, not worried about catching fish, thinking about all the fish they caught that one time in the Abacos, or wishing the wind would blow lighter. Given a client who’s simply there to have a good time fishing, we’ll have a good day… and probably catch fish too.
If you wanted to break the thing down to basic numbers, the best day I can remember was at least 13 bonefish, a snook, and a couple baby tarpon jumped. As for the absolute best day all round: that was guiding my good buddy to his first permit on fly. Priceless.
Permit... a bonus
Q. Do you have a favorite fly?
A. Easy. The Usual. Hands down… if you’re not familiar, I’m not surprised. It’s a fly I developed specifically for smart fish on shallow, grassy flats. Check out the recipe here: http://www.fish-bones.com/flies.html#usual. It lands quietly, sinks fast, and has a lot of presence and life in the water.
The Usual
Q. Do you think the fly is really the secret or is it the confidence you have in the fly that makes it work?
A. You know, both. I think they feed each other. I had some confidence before this fly, but after a few fantastic days with it, now I simply believe. To be fair, though, I changed the way I was fishing when I began using that fly. That often happens; looking at the way a fly moves underwater can lead you to fish it differently than others, and the results can go either way. This time it was as close to magic as I’ve seen.
Check in tomorrow for Part II of my interview with Davin Ebanks, author of Flatswalker.com and owner of Fish Bones guide service/fly shop in Grand Cayman.
On my trip to the Bahamas I picked up a copy of Esquire for those hours of plane and airport reading. One story, talking about the Olympics, mentioned the ancient Greek word “arete.”
“arete” — a nearly untranslatable word meaning spontaneous excellence or vitality, a human being human perfectly. (Esquire, February 2010)
That concept bounced around my head for a bit. There are those moments when you are “in the zone.” It could be in a pick-up basketball game, in a product development meeting, on the river or on the flat, but you know it when it happens… when it all comes together.
I think the line between arete and waving a stick around like an idiot is most easy to see in an activity like bonefishing. The arete comes into play when you are at the right place at the right time because you knew it would be… when you see the fish coming from far away because you knew it would be coming from that direction on this tide… when you make a single cast to put the fly in the spot the fish is going to want to see it… when you impart the action the fish would want to see and when you set the hook at the moment and in the way that sets the hook when it needed to be set.
When it all comes together, it is a human being human perfectly.
Now, I’m still green in the world of bonefishing, but I know the feeling. I’ve felt it while tight-line nymphing my favorite pocket-water rivers in Northern California. There are times when I set the hook without knowing why, when I can’t recall seeing or feeling anything, but I just knew there was a fish.
This fish had a bit of that feeling.
That may be a bit of that arete, but being out on the flats of Grand Bahama on the wrong tide, with the wrong fly, making the wrong cast, imparting the wrong action and making the wrong hookset… I would like very much to feel that arete feeling on a flat somewhere with the singing song of a screaming reel.
Doing it wrong.
Another massive bone caught with Coach Duff in Hawaii. This time, the lucky angler was Richard from Seattle. Not only did Richard escape the gray and dreary North West in January, he stuck a 10.8 pound bonefish while in beautiful Hawaii.
Nice…
Richard from Seattle with a 10.8 pound bonefish
Looking for stories on Christmas Island, where a friend will be fishing in three weeks, I came across this little story about Christmas Island on, of all places, the ESPN.com site. Worth a read to wet your Christmas appetite. Story by Bill Becher.
Bill Becher photo
Do what I do… live mostly vicariously through the fishing of others (although I’m on my way back from the Bahamas riiiiiiiight now). (written a few days ago)
Another vid of bonefishing for Bones in the Bahamas with a houndfish for good measure.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qo0_IvC3QBg&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x006699&color2=0x54abd6
