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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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