Further information ...
	Home NWFF blog clay's blog archives

03/28/13

bonefishing hawaii:

analogies to live by... or mock.

there are very few things in life that will keep me off the water for long.  girls (you know who you are) did it in parts of high school and college.  leukemia did a pretty good job for a number of months in 2005.  then there are things that keep me away by choice.  college football, almost any university of oregon sports, and the ncaa basketball tournament.  the ducks being in the ncaa tournament... forget about it.  so i spent last week glued to the t.v. and the ipad and often the t.v. and the ipad at the same time.  two play in games on tuesday and wednesday followed by a four day,  twelve hours a day, basketball bender.  if there is a heaven...

i finally rejoined the world on monday when i had to be in the shop and got back on the water on tuesday.  there was yet another storm front on the way.  i was hoping to get that elusive bite before the storm which, much like the forecasted storm itself, never really materialized.  i fished craig’s larry kenny 8’ 9” 7wt. fiberglass rod that was built by john rivera of the fly rod company.  larry kenny is one of the "known guys" of the the fly rod world especially when it comes to bamboo and glass.  the rod was a nice flats camo tan with sea weed green, old schoolish wraps.  pretty swank.  i was excited to give it a chuck.

winds were light variables from the south east, south, and (dreaded) south west.  there were some fish around but not many at least where i was.  certainly not the feed before the storm i was hoping for.  i made a few half hearted shots at fish that were in what i call the first stage of spook.  the first stage of spook is a good thing to be able to recognize when sight fishing.  many think that if a bone doesn’t speed up or make some kind change in its behavior it is not spooked, but bones have a “first stage” of spook where they know something may be not quite right.  the signs of this stage are subtle.  in fact i can’t even say what they are... you just kind of know.  i do find myself telling a lot of people this analogy when trying to explain it.  imagine that you are sitting down eating a burger in a fast food joint and this really sketchy guy walks in looking like he’s going to rob the place or something.  do you immediately scream and go crashing through the window to escape?  no.  do you get up out of your seat and start slowly walking toward the door?  maybe, but probably not (at least not yet).  most of the time, you’ll just stay where you are and decide what to do as the situation unfolds.  the one thing i guarantee you won’t do, however,  is keep eating your burger.  now here is a critical point.  if the guy pulls out a gun and starts shooting (like flies raining from the sky for a first stage spook bone), you probably would take out that window or at least display some very different behavior than just a moment ago.  if the guy walks up to the counter and you see the person at the counter light up and greet him like he’s a regular customer you quickly return to your burger and life goes on.  i think it is the same thing when you encounter bones on the flat.  except it is the bone eating the burger and you are the sketchy guy.

anyway after a somewhat long period of nothing (sometimes like that) i spotted a fish slowly cruising up the shallow edge of a deep pocket.  i laid out a whisper of a cast, that a glass rod does so beautifully by the way, to the right of the fish.  the fly landed in the depression and began its decent.  the fish casually turned and dropped into the depression.  i couldn’t see it to clearly, but i saw the fish move to the fly and hover over it.  it’s gotta have it.  i strip set and felt the hook meet bone jaw.  tasting the steel, the fish half rolled and flashed its silver side at me like someone giving me the finger.  the bone then flared its gills once in an attempt to spit out the foreign object lodged in its mouth and took off.

critical point number two.  most anglers will clear their line, get the fish on the reel, and let the battle begin.  not me.  i make the fish fight for every inch of line in my basket in an effort to get the upper hand before the fish even gets on the reel.  bones are fast and strong and once the fish hits its top running speed, there is little you can do except wait for it to stop.  i try to never let the fish get to that top speed by slowing it down from the moment it is hooked.  when you just clear the line and get the fish on the reel, it is like trying to stop a car with a rope by just feeding out the rope until the car hits sixty mph. then trying to control it from there.  tough to stop a car (or bone) like that.  take that same rope and keep it locked down and just inching out from the get go making the car spin its tires and the car will have a tough time getting to sixty mph. if it can even reach it at all before the motor burns out.  fighting bones this way, i rarely even get into my backing.  this is using (often times) fiberglass rods and click pawl reels.  even big fish don’t take out more than thirty yards of backing before stopping.  some say that takes away all the fun of catching bonefish.  if you are one of those people that’s fine, just let’em run for the horizon.  i’m not one to tell other people how to fish... just sharing how i like to fish.  i have to say though, over the years, fighting bones like this has allowed me to increase the number of fish i land and has allowed me to pull fish out of some really sketchy places.  it has also greatly reduced the number of fly lines that get “reefed”.  at close to a hundred dollars a pop, that (to me) is something worth thinking about.  it always amuses me to watch someone hooked up to a bonefish that has torn out a hundred or so yards of line before stopping.  try and watch this if you can.  usually there is the big run in the beginning followed by a lot of reeling with little bend in the rod.  most of the tension coming from fly line and all that backing and very little from the fish itself.  if you think about it, it’s more like spooling a reel with backing than fighting a fish.  we spool backing by hand in the shop all the time.  it is not that much fun.

anyway that’s two of my bazillion analogies to give you some insight on how i go about doing what i do, but what do i know.  do with it as you will.  just keep in mind that i’m just as full of sh_t as the next guy.  sweet sixteen games are on soon... i’ll see you on the water.

larry kenny and abel switch.  bent.  enough to stop a car... well at least a bonefish.

like this fat head.

uo sports, ncaa football, march madness, sometimes girls... also good times.

clay.