Downey Fly Fishers - "The Fishingest Club Around" How to Capitalize on Bonefish Attitude while Sight Fishing
Submitted by Zino Nakasugi
I don't know if you can call it an "attitude", but bonefish are constantly aware of their environment and in skinny water, that awareness is magnified. They know they are vulnerable in shallow water but they come up on the in-coming tide to exploit food sources not available to them at low tide. I was fishing with my friend Oliver Owens (www.bonefish808.com) this past August and witnessed how an angler can observe a sighted bonefish and present the fly at the right moment. We were fishing on Oahu's windward side on an in-coming tide at a corner slot that the bones (o'io) use to get on and off this beach. Oliver was to my right moving stealthily along when he blurted out an expletive…. froze with his head cocked to his right. He apparently noticed a bonefish too late that made its escape to his right. Any movement by Oliver would have caused that fish to shoot out of there like a slippery bar of soap! Oliver used his peripheral vision and waited for the fish to change gears -- from "fright mode" to "I just beat this dumb human mode". The fish did just that and in time for Oliver to make a cast at that precise moment. He shot his cast back handed and it landed just in back and to the right side of the bonefish. The bonefish couldn't resist an easy meal and turned and ate Oliver's Orange Stripper fly. This area has a lot of coral heads and I got a firsthand look at how Oliver placed pressure and relieved pressure on this fish by using rod angles and short strokes to keep the fish from cutting the line on those razor sharp coral heads. He finally landed a beautiful 8 pound bone, and as I took this picture, a bus tour group started to applaud from the shore not even fifty yards away!
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