Bonefishing Basics
9/22/2006 1:55:50 AM by Mark Sosin
Learn the right way to deal with bonefish and the tricks that only time will teach from an expert whose experience will inspire you to be the best fisherman you can.
Photos courtesy of Mark Sosin
Bonefish show with a suddenness. An instant before, the flats seem void of life except perhaps for a ray mudding in the soft marl or a small shark cruising without a predetermined pattern. The bright sun glaring off the water makes everything look as if it were moving. Off in the distance, there is an indistinct shading on the bottom. Your eyes strain to put order and form into the panorama of light and shadow that stretches in every direction. Concentration turns into tension as the blurred blotches sharpen into focus and take on the shape of bonefish.
This is the moment. The first cast must be perfect. Excuses loom as a luxury and second chances don’t come very often. Timing is critical. You have to drop the bait, lure, or fly in the right place. Practice casts prior to this instant no longer count. Miss the mark and it’s all over. And, to compound matters, the fish are closing faster than you thought.
Right now, the best advice anyone can give you is to play within your game. Don’t reach out with a cast that exceeds your comfort range. You increase the odds for missing and a quick recovery for a second try can be frustrating. Try to choose the precise moment when the fish are on a steady course and you can reach them easily and accurately. That tilts the scale in your favor. Remember that bonefish tend to feed into the current or across it. They also follow the push of the tide up on a flat and drop off as the tide falls. Use all this to your advantage and try to make the cast up current of the fish. If you’re using bait, that can be essential. The current will enable them to smell the shrimp or crab and home in on it.
Presentation ranks higher on the list of priorities than the tackle you use. These are wary animals that will spook at the first misstep. When one fish panics, the whole school goes with it. The shallower the water, the more cautious bonefish become. Stealth in approaching them is the key. You don’t want them to know you are there. When fish are particularly spooky, experienced anglers make a cast well in front of the fish and let their offering sit on the bottom. They mentally approximate where the bait or artificial is lying and watch the fish approach. If they are using a fly or lure, they start the retrieve just as the fish reach the spot and make it appear that the imitation is trying to escape. With a natural bait, just let it sit there and a fish should pick it up.
Look at your quarry and you’ll notice an inferior mouth, hard nose, and eyes set high on the head. Based on its physical characteristics, a bonefish does most of its feeding on the bottom, using its hard nose to root around in the mud, sand, or marl to ferret out tasty morsels. Bonefish have incredible eyes, keen hearing, and an acute sense of smell. It’s not unusual to see a bonefish turn toward a bait or fly that splats gently on the surface at the end of the cast.
Whether you prefer spinning or fly, a rod waving in the air can send a school of bonefish scurrying into deeper water and the next flat. When you are casting, it makes sense to keep the rod low and parallel to the water. A little practice at home will make this technique seem quite comfortable and you should be able to achieve accuracy quickly. Casting is a game of inches. You can’t make a good presentation out of a bad one by hoping the fish will change course and find your offering. If you miss, recover as quickly as you can and try to get off a second cast. Be aggressive. Seconds count. You have to get the fly, lure, or bait close enough to the fish so that it is seen, but not so close that the fish spooks. Nobody can tell you the perfect distance on a given cast, but you’ll know instantly when you are too close. Feeding fish and particularly those that are tailing tend to be a tad more tolerant of close presentations.
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Two things are often overlooked. Even in ankle-deep water, bonefish search for their prey on the bottom. In a current, a small split shot sinker just above the bait will help to get it down quickly. Weighted flies sink faster than unweighted ones. And, if you are bouncing a bucktail, make sure it hops along the bottom. A short, floating, plastic worm with a bullet weight or split shot ranks as an excellent artificial. The sinker holds the bottom and the worm tail floats, making it appear as if a worm is trying to get back in its hole. This often triggers a strike. Bonefish prefer to tail down on their prey and that’s why it is so important to keep your bait or artificial on the bottom. Remember, too, that small, natural critters move in short darts. When you retrieve a fly or lure, work it in very short movements so it appears like the real thing.
No predator expects to be attacked by its prey. It must sense that your tasty tidbit is moving away in an effort to escape if it is an artificial. A shrimp or crab can just remain on the bottom and a bonefish should find it and pick it up. Anglers and fish tend to view the same scene differently. When a bonefish is moving from right to left or left to right, the text book advises that you cast a few feet in front of the fish and a couple of feet beyond it. If you start retrieving at the point where the fly or lure lands, you will spook your quarry. To the fish, it looks as if something is trying to attack it. Instead, retrieve the lure quickly until it is directly in front of and in the path of the fish. As the fish approaches, start the retrieve with short, quick, pulsating movements that make it appear as if the bonefish flushed something and it is trying to escape. That’s the trigger mechanism that brings the strike.
Fly fishermen often encounter another problem. They make the cast toward the fish, but the wind blows a belly in the flyline and leader so that the fly lands left or right of the fish. As the angler starts the retrieve, the fly actually tracks toward the bonefish before it starts moving away and that is more than enough to spook the gray ghost.
Frequently, the school is coming directly toward you. As described earlier, the easiest technique is to cast short and in front of the fish. Wait for the lead fish to reach your lure. Then, start the retrieve. Leave a natural bait right where it is and one of the bonefish should pick it up. If you’re fishing shrimp, break the tail off so that more scent enters the water. With a live crab, break off a few legs or crush the edge of the carapace so that additional scent escapes.
The other consideration centers on color. Think in terms of dark and light. I prefer to start with brown or even tan. If the fish refuse the darker color after a couple of presentations, my next choice is white, yellow, or pink. If you’re using a light color and it is refused, switch to something dark. Make sure, however, that the fish definitely sees your artificial and refuses it before you decide the color is wrong.
When a bonefish takes a bait or lure and starts moving off, wait a second and then simply lift the rod. Line should be peeling off the reel as the bonefish streaks for the next county. You don’t have to swing the rod through a 90 degree arc and strike the fish with enough force to overturn the boat. For the fly fisherman, it is slightly different. When you feel the strike, tug sharply with your stripping hand without moving the rod. If the fish is on, lift the rod and worry about clearing the slack line. If you don’t have the fish, continue the retrieve. Sometimes, the fish will come back a second time.
Although a few anglers opt for revolving spool reels, spinning is the more common tackle for bonefish. Putting the right outfit together starts with the line. Ten pound test proves to be an excellent choice. Some anglers drop down to 8-pound and even 6-pound to make it more sporting, but there is no practical point in doing so. Standard bonefish rods are seven-feet long with a fairly soft tip for casting a shrimp, but plenty of backbone to battle the fish. A handful of aficionados have custom rods built from flyrod blanks that are eight to nine feet long for longer casts with a shrimp or light lure.
Whatever line size you select, the reel should hold 250 yards of it and boast a smooth drag designed for line of that breaking strength. Many of us use a 12-pound or 20-pound test fluorocarbon abrasion leader about 18 inches long just in case the bonefish rubs the line on the bottom.
Some fly fishermen think it is sporting to pursue bonefish with a 4-weight or 5-weight outfit. You can certainly handle one on that tackle, but a 9-weight rod makes a lot more sense. Pull out a flyrod and you can almost bet that the wind will be blowing or at least there will be a breeze. Pushing a 9-weight is much easier than struggling with a lighter flyrod. When you strip out line for the cast, make a few practice presentations and carefully measure the distance with which you are most comfortable. Put the rest of the slack line back on the reel and leave it there. That eliminates the temptation of trying to outcast your typical presentation.
A floating, weight forward flyline ranks as the perfect choice. It gives you the ability to pickup and make another cast without an aerial roll cast or stripping in most of the line. In deeper water, you may need an intermediate or sinking flyline, but that’s the exception. A standard 9 or 10-foot leader stepped down three or four times in a simple taper will do the job. Some experts use a 12-foot to 15-foot leader, claiming more strikes, but the long leaders are much more difficult to cast and turn over. Tippet strength of 10-pound test is ideal, but you always have the option of going lighter if that is your preference.
Flyreels should hold a minimum of 200 to 225 yards of 20-pound test braided backing plus a full flyline. Most serious anglers prefer direct drive reels (the handle turns backward when line is pulled off the spool) over anti-reverse models. The advantage of direct drive is that every time you crank the handle, you gain line. If you are right-handed, you should reel with your right hand. A growing number of misinformed fly fishermen think it is better to cast with the primary hand and reel with the secondary hand. In most cases, they can’t reel as fast or as long without tiring when they crank with their secondary hand. If you still have doubts, take an empty reel and crank on 200 yards of braided backing using your secondary hand. Be sure to reel as fast as you can without stopping until all 200 yards are on the reel. That should convince you to reel with your primary hand.
Bonefish earn their coveted reputation by becoming masters of the long, sizzling run, barely showing as fast moving blurs across shallow, turquoise flats. Listening to the music of an overtaxed drag on a reel and watching line melt toward the horizon become memorable facets of the total experience. No matter what type of tackle you select, don’t try to stop a bonefish on its initial run or even subsequent bids for freedom. Point the rod at the fish and let it go. Of course, on some flats with obstructions, you have to hold the rod high as the fish covers territory. When the bonefish stops, you can start working it back toward you.
When you stalk bonefish while wading or from the bow of a flats skiff being poled across the shallows, you have picked up the gauntlet for one of angling’s most demanding and addicting challenges. It’s a one-on-one sport where you rely on polarized sunglasses to spot your quarry and can’t blame failure on anyone else. There are no shortcuts to success, but every day on the flats adds to your storehouse of knowledge and experience. When you think about it, the rewards of watching a bonefish streak across skinny water tethered to your line make you forget all the frustrations and encourage you to come back again and again. You can’t ask for any more than that.