Suddenly the bonefish is there and you do not know where he came from.
You have studied the marl bottom, the patches of grass, the sea fans, the small barracuda, the sea urchins, the little sharks and a hundred vague bottom features that might have been bonefish but were not and you have watched well out from the skiff so that there would be room and time to cast. But now the fish is there; no wavering ghost in the shimmering water that always moves from wind or tide, but a big bonefish 30 feet away in a foot of clear depth with the light so perfect you can see the design of his scales and his staring eyes.
You feel huge--like a giant in a giant boat, almost blotting out the sun, and you are sure he sees you and your silly rod, even as you make a floppy cast that causes him to move away at moderate speed or to boil mud and water in a startled flush for the depths. Then you begin to look for another fish.
In these difficult waters bordering the Florida Keys Highway the bonefish can see and feel the speedboats, can watch sunbathers and beachcombers if they wish, and can feel the vibrations of traffic on the bridges. Most of the fish are large, or at least medium-sized, and they have eyed the legs of a thousand waders and almost as many lures.
Farther back from the highway where human traffic is lighter there are flats that see few fishermen and there are less sophisticated fish, more easily moved by boats but more receptive to the fly in some instances, and a fisherman makes those longer trips with anticipation, but after he has seen and caught these slightly easier fish he dreams of shoals of bonefish he has heard of and he knows there are places where bonefish are said to take flies like hungry bluegills. Invariably, he must go and the fish are there as he has imagined.
Perhaps it is somewhere in the Bahamas where the tide runs out between mangrove islands, draining shallows where the gleaming bottom will be bare to the sun when the water is out. And there are the fish, crowding each other so that now and then one of them will lunge irritably on the surface to avoid collision. The skiff is pushed silently by expert hands and the fly goes out, almost at random but aimed where fins and tails are thickest. The strike will not be long in coming, if not on the first cast then on one that comes soon after, and the fish darts off as nearly all bonefish do, the line throwing its little waterspout as the angler lifts his tip and looks for obstructions that may end the contest early. But if the fish escapes there will be another--and another.
At another time the boat is staked at the upcurrent edge of a giant "mud," a milky cloud that spreads constantly in two or three feet of depth, causing the other water to appear especially clear, and a guide releases bits of conch or crab to disappear into the murky section. The fly goes there, and then there is the tentative twitch followed by the lifted rod and a run that may be a little aimless, the fish reluctant to leave the feeding school. And if the boat is used efficiently there may be other fish to come from the same mud.
When his days of this fishing are over the angler goes home, thinking of the fish he has caught, more than he ever caught before, and he is thinking of another trip, perhaps to Central America, where he has heard the bonefish are not only plentiful but very seldom fished. For the moment he wonders if the suspicious residents of the old flat near home can ever again appeal to him.
But he returns to his flat, for it has become a habit, and when he has drifted for a while and then sees a fish he is more excited than ever before. The fish is a long cast away, but this time he is in good position. He is sure it is a bonefish although it appears mainly as a shadow, somehow identified by fractional views of fins and tail, a sort of aquatic abstraction at first. Then he inspects his loose fly line on the boat's deck, an instant's sharp appraisal, and when he looks back to it the bonefish is easily seen, its head tipped down slightly as it rummages in the thousands of things a bonefish finds on the bottom.
The fish's tail waves gently as it snoops along and behind it are a pair of tiny mud clouds, moving slightly in the tide. When the little pink-and-white fly strikes the water some little distance ahead it makes a tiny plop on the surface, but it is a good cast, and the fish's tail makes a quick move that sends the sleek shape toward the fly, unhurried but purposeful. The head goes down and the fly line seems to vibrate in the fisherman's hand, although the first sign of the strike is simply the stopping of the fly, and then there is the suggestion of a tug as the fish turns slightly and the fisherman fights the desire to jerk hard but manages a quick, sure lift of the rod.
When the fish has left there is a great swirl of mud and sand and there is the moment of stark fear that the whipping coils of ropelike fly line will catch on something but they do not, and a hundred yards of line and backing feed from the well-tuned reel in a restrained hum. A learned bonefish has been hooked within sight and sound of a swimming party on a nearby beach, and in this case the caster has no wish for wilderness or gullible victims.
The shoals of easier bonefish are far away and the fisherman wants this fish more than any he has ever hooked.
From The Part I Remember, copyright (c) 1974 by Charles F. Waterman. All Rights Reserved.
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