For over thirteen seasons, ESPN used to air a fantastic
fishing show on Saturday mornings called “The Walker’s Cay
Chronicles.“ Each episode was like a thirty minute movie,
beautifully shot on film and narrated by the host Flip Pallot, a
former banker turned fly fishing guide. Flip made it look so
easy. No matter where he was that episode, in the Bahamas,
Mexico or the Keys, Flip could be counted on to hook a bonefish
or two before the first commercial break. Of course I knew that
a lot of editing went into those TV shows. Who’d want to watch a
guy get skunked when I could see myself do that anytime? But
there were no special effects involved and eventually Flip had
to catch a real fish for the cameras.
The first time I ever saw a tailing bonefish was well over
fifteen years ago in the Florida Keys at Bahia Honda state park,
and I had a $50 fly rod in my hand. When I cast the small crab
pattern and the fish actually ate it, I felt as if I had just
stepped through the looking glass and into an episode of
“Walker’s Cay.” When I cleared the loose fly line from around my
feet and watched the five pound bone streak across the sandy
flat, the click-drag on my Pflueger Medalist reel actually
started playing the show’s theme music. I could even hear Flip’s
poetic narration encouraging me on the entire time I was
fighting the fish.
After fifteen minutes the over-exhausted bone was at my feet. I
could have landed it in a third of the time but I was desperate
not to break the leader on this midsize fish. My first bonefish
and I caught it on a fly rod, exactly like they did it on my
favorite TV show! Since that day I’ve landed a couple hundred
more and every one of them has been with a fly rod. It‘s not
that I‘m a purist about this sport. I’ll throw live crabs or
lures to tarpon and permit all day just to get them to eat, but
bonefish are made for fly rods. I got the first one I ever saw
on a fly and I want the last one to happen the same way.
Just yesterday I got to relive that moment through and angler I
was guiding here on Vieques. Peter, a Manhattan lawyer and trout
angler, hit the weather jackpot for January in the tropics. Our
normal twenty knot wind disappeared and was replaced by a
minimal breeze. The water in Ensenada Honda never looked better.
The only thing we needed were bonefish and for the longest time,
we had none. In all honesty, they’ve been especially scarce this
winter and I was starting to worry that this would be another
empty morning. I’d been skunked on bones five days in a row and
I just wanted to show this guy a fish so he’d believe they
existed down here. After two hours of looking at empty water we
started talking about heading out to the reef for some snapper
fishing with the spinning rods. A few minutes after we agreed on
that plan, our bonefish appeared.
It was a single fish, rooting around a few feet from the
mangroves and perfectly camouflaged against the turtle grass. I
spun the boat to the right so Peter wouldn’t hit me in the
forehead with the fly and had him start casting, knowing that he
still couldn‘t see his target. Unaccustomed the heavier rod, his
first shot was ten feet short but it got our fish’s attention.
We were now less than twenty feet apart and Peter’s second cast
was right on the money. The bone nailed the fly and did a
supersonic 180 through a field of mangrove shoots.
Click to enlarge |
The first thirty seconds of a bonefish hookup are usually pure
chaos. Piles of loose fly line have to come off the deck without
tangling around toes, fingers, or the rod and reel itself. Then
the drag kicks in and the reel handle turns into a backward
spinning blur. Touching the reel at this point results in a
busted knuckle at best and a broken off fish at worst.
Peter survived all of this and experienced the usual bonefish
magic. Two or three runs well into the backing followed by the
brief tug-of-war next to the boat. He posed for the normal Hero
shot with his five pound fish and the fly rod that he caught it
with. He had batted .1000 on bonefish at that point, just like I
did all those years ago in the Keys. That average only lasted
another half hour after we quickly hooked and lost two more
bones, just as my average has dropped a bit over the years. It
really didn’t matter too much, though. He managed to catch one
of a difficult sport’s most difficult species on his first trip
to the flats, and he did it with a fly rod. Vieques delivers
again.
Capt. Gregg McKee,
WildFly Charters
