Posted by: travadmin on Apr 06, 2004 – 08:09 PM
realestate George Town, Exuma, The Bahamas: In the early morning, with the sun still low, I could see from the porch of my cabin a half-dozen sailboats lying at anchor. The boats rocked atop water hued aquamarine, opal, indigo and azure, and the low-lying keys, or islands, behind which the boats sought shelter were green.
Waiting for the higher incoming tide, I made coffee and organized the flies I would use that day. The days were warm, and as the morning progressed the sun threw itself through the cabin windows in long bright shafts. While I ate breakfast, I sharpened my fly hooks, imbedded them in Styrofoam panels and placed the panels in a small pack I wore around my waist. Then I retied my leaders, and at 9 a.m., with the last few hours of incoming tide ahead of me, I walked out the door.
The flat I fished was about a mile away. The old road I walked was pitted in the manner of roads found in war zones. In a week I never saw anyone on the road. But it connected my side of the island to the other side, where, at low tide, a long flat emptied itself nearly completely of water, revealing mostly sand.
Overlooking the flat was a house rented by a retired man, an American.
Like me, the man had come for bonefish. I had been told by one of the locals not to trespass on the property. So each day, wearing shorts and sandals and a long-sleeved shirt to protect myself against the sun, I skirted it as I climbed down from the road to the water.
One day the man saw me and said he didn’t care if I walked on the property.
“I’m just here fishing,” he said.
Because I didn’t have a boat to cross the channel that separated the island from the flat, I carried my fly rod high overhead as I waded into the deep water. The point was to keep my reel out of the saltwater.
I had left my sandals on shore, and the sand felt good against my feet. What felt even better, as I came up onto the flat and opened a few loops of fly line, was the prospect of seeing, with the incoming tide, the stingrays, the sharks, the barracudas.
And the bonefish.
When I first fished this island about 20 years ago, drug interdiction seemed to be a pretty big thing.
I was fishing with a friend, Dick Hanousek, and at night, after long days passed beneath the hot sun, paper-thin clouds drifting above, I walked to the town docks and bought grouper or dolphin or conch from local commercial fishermen.
We had rented a small apartment, and the apartment had a kitchen where I prepared the fish, also salads, and we made tall drinks filled with ice. Then we walked into town to a bar whose small aggregations seemed almost evenly divided among fishermen, drug runners and U.S. drug enforcement agents. In the dark of the evening, each group seemed to give the other a pass, and conversation was easy.
Today, Exuma, one of an archipelago of about 700 Bahamas islands, is different. Gone is the radar-filled dirigible the drug enforcement agents flew over the island, scanning for low-flying planes and fast-running boats.
Gone also are the scimitar-like Cigarette boats tied to the town docks, each powered by four huge outboards.
Some of the boats belonged to the drug runners, some to the drug agents. The boats came and went and Dick and I imagined duels between the two on the high seas, outboards screaming.
What has remained from that time long ago are the bonefish. Wherever there are flats in the Caribbean, with rare exception, bonefish are present. And Exuma has plenty of flats, some accessible by foot, others reached only by boat.
With small hummocks of mangroves a few hundred yards behind me, and the now-watery flat stretching as far as I could see in three directions, I started walking.
And fishing.
It takes some experience to spot bonefish in time to make a proper cast. Almost translucent, the fish usually presents itself as a ghostlike shadow or, when schooled, a collection of shadows.
Intolerant of any angler error that manifests itself as motion or sound, and wary always of being attacked on the flats by sharks, the bonefish, distilled, is paranoia with fins.
I walked an hour before spotting my first fish.
In that time, I had seen lemon sharks bend and coil their skeletonless shapes through the clear water. But no black tips or, more ominously, bull sharks. Surely in the far distance, on the edge of the flat, where shallow water changed to deep, hammerheads wielded their death watch. But not in water this shallow, where now, in the near distance, a great egret walked delicately, beak tipped downward.
I false cast once, hauled the line as I brought the rod forward and took my shot. The fly, a pink Gotcha, size 8, rolled over at the end of my 10-foot leader and sank into water maybe 20 inches deep.
Like most bonefish flies, this was an imitation of a shrimp, which, along with crabs, mussels, worms and clams, form the bulk of the bonefish’s diet.
The wind had blown all week, and it was coming from behind me, strong, raising a frothy chop on the water’s surface. Still I could see the fish, and as I stripped the fly slowly toward me, I could see also the fish was not following the fly.
As in stalking deer, when seeking bonefish, surprise is your only true ally. Absent success initially, second and third shots are possible, but chances of success are negligible.
Better, with bonefish, that the first spotting and the first cast be done properly, and a connection be made then. That way the angler needn’t worry about reducing the whole affair to a crapshoot, shaming the fish, but more so himself.
By 1 o’clock, high tide covered the flat.
I had hooked no fish.
Wading back through the channel, I pulled on my sandals and walked to the cabin, where I had a small boat tied up.
Needing to kill some time before the next fishing tide, I motored over to Stocking Island, just offshore of which hundreds of Americans passed the winter in their boats.
At midafternoon each day, many of the boaters ride their dinghies to shore, where they play volleyball and drink beer.
“Forget orange or red,” one boater told me, assessing the island’s laid-back atmosphere.
“On our worst day, our alert status is a faint shade of pink.”
On my last day, Drexel Rolle, a guide, knocked early on my door.
The fishermen who were staying nearby had canceled their trip, Drexel said.
“Do you want to fish with me?” he asked.
I said I did. I had fished all week on my own, wading, and this would be a welcome change.
Soon we were skimming across new flats in Drexel’s skiff, the sun still low in the distance.
We had run a half-hour when, in water barely deep enough to float his boat, Drexel tipped up his outboard and began to slide us quietly across a vast flat, rhythmically propelling the craft with a long pole.
From the boat, I could see bonefish better than I could while wading.
Standing on the boat’s console, Drexel could see the fish better still.
I missed my first shot and my second, casting too wide both times, not wanting to spook the fish.
Still I felt good. I had a 9-weight fly rod in my hand, the clear sky was brightening, and as far as I could see there was only shallow water.
“There!” Drexel said. “Eleven o’clock.”
Scanning the water just left of the bow, I soon saw the targets, a dozen or so shadows, their sides occasionally flashing, bearing down on us at a distance of maybe 60 feet.
Already my line was airborne, computations on just where to drop the fly well underway.
Not far in the distance, near Stocking Island, some American boaters were just waking up to another peerless day.
In George Town, shopkeepers were swinging open their doors to the morning’s first customers.
Far removed from these, on that cast, I hooked a bonefish, my reel singing as the fish peeled off line in a death run to the horizon.
Sometimes hooked bonefish can’t be saved.
Nearby sharks smell fear and peril and quickly close the distance.
The fight for all of us that early morning — the bonefish, a lemon shark and me — ended in a boil of water near the boat.
“Sharks gotta eat, too,” Drexel said.
We moved on across the flat, looking for shadows.
Note: Dennis Anderson, Star Tribune