Title: Suicidal Bonefish, or, How I Learned to Relax and Love the Bones
Tags: Bonefish Bahamas Saltwater Wind Coral
Blog Entry: "Two bonefish, straight ahead, they're tailing." my guide Charlie says, pointing to a ragged coral outcropping 60 feet away. Two bonefish I'll never catch , I think, plopping my rabbit-hair fly in front of me, preparing to cast. "See them?" Um, no. I do see a lot of blue skies and skin-searing sunshine, though. We take a few more steps, quietly. "See them now?" Oh, yes. Yes. Now I do. Their tails glimmer in the sunlight like tiny transluscent sails, breaking the surface of the water with razor-like precision, in spite of the 20-knot winds howling from our backs. Small breakers slam against the back of my calves in a rhythmic beat. If I weren't wearing pants, it would probably feel good across my sunburned legs, but thankfully I avoided that and merely forgot to put sunscreen on my face. Because, let's be honest, my face is a lot less important than my legs. "Just relax," Charlie says, echoing the motto I claim the Bahamas should adopt as a national mantra. "You can do it, mon. Just relax." Bending at the waist, perched on my tiptoes like a green heron eyeing a minnow, I double-haul my line and somehow manage to place a cast inches away from the taling fish. "That's it!" Charlie whispers. "Good cast, mon. Now, strip." A V-shaped wake chases my fly with each strip, looking more like a lemon shark than a bonefish. After seeing my rabbit hair monstrosity, for reasons beyond my comprehension, the fish chases after it with reckless abandon. In mere inches of water, the breakers shed off its back in its pursuit, and I strip each time Charlie tells me what to do. I'm like an infant learning to walk: I need guidance to catch this fish, as this is my first bonefish trip in the long, exalted history of John. Three strips in, Charlie tells me to stop. I stop. "Strip-set," he says, and I see the fish hovering over the spot where, in a perfect world, I imagine my fly to be. I strip set, and the fish is mine. With normal, non-mentally deranged bonefish, they take off in an instant, shedding backing from your reel in the time it takes to blink an eye. This fish is different. Instead of running toward deeper water, it does what any fish would do: It catapults itself onto land. Yes, you read that correctly. Seconds after I hook this fish, a beautifully silver four-pounder, it rockets toward the coral heads and leaps out of the water toward the shore. Slamming against the sandpaper-tough shards of coral, it flops in an inch of water, thrashing about like a rattlesnake grabbed by the tail. "Holy shit!" I scream, looking at Charlie. "That is very, very strange," he says with a huge smile. "That's wild!" Tom says, his camera snapping away at the scene. "In all my years of bonefishing, I've never seen anything like this." After beaching itself momentarily, the fish flops back into the flat and makes a run down the coast. Twenty yards later, it launches itself into the coral once more, to the astonishment of the three of us. "Wow!" Charlie says. "Let up some slack, in case the line is wrapped around the coral." Winding the reel as fast as I can with my left hand, we splash through the water toward the fish, which is flopping on the coarse blobs in an inch of water, spraying the puddle into the air like a roman candle on New Year's Eve. I run to the fish, take out the fly, and hold it long enough for Tom to document the entire episode on film before letting it go. The three of us are in a frenzy, because the only other time we've seen anything like the bonefish tossing itself on land was when a seal was being chased by an orca on the Discovery Channel. "That's the craziest thing I've ever seen on a flat," Charlie says, his wide, dark lips breaking into a huge smile of white canines and bicuspids. "That was enough to make me want to quit my job, move down here, and do this forever," I say. "Easier said than done," he says back. "But I wouldn't stop you if you did."
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