Fishing has tested us the last three days. We had the poacher incident shorten a day. We had the tropical storm that ate up a complete morning. And the last three days have just plain been tough for most of us. A bonefish fix for everyone in the group was in order. I mean like a day where everyone sees their backing four or maybe five times from a silvery torpedo.
The morning started with good news to head us in the right direction of our goal. While the arrival of the Coast Guard didn’t end up with hauling off illegal fishermen, having them around did give us the comfort to fish more of St. Brandon’s Atoll. While we are still being cautious until the poachers are located, we were given a ten mile radius from the lodge over the two miles we had the last two days. The only other condition was that we always had one of our own boats in sight so we as a group were never too far from each other.
We played that part safe. In fact, all four boats went to the legendary flat, Boneyard. This extensive flat goes for miles and when the tide is right, its home to some gigantic bonefish. Off we went, me with Morgan and guide Juan, under clear skies with a light wind. As you can see, Juan was in the chili suit. Yesterday he forgot to have his radio on all day.
Boneyard is truly massive. There is plenty of room for eight guys to fish. We all took a line about 100 yds apart from each other. I walked alone as usual. Juan and Morgan were nearby. Let’s just say, this Yellow Dog Flyfishing group had things covered.
We truly did have things covered. No fish on Boneyard wasn’t at least going to be spooked. I was thrilled to see that in the first 15 minutes, at least two of my guys were hooked up.
Morgan made one of the early catches. There’s no doubt Juan was happy. He was able to get out of the costume.
So if two fish were caught in the first 15 minutes, you guessed it, everyone had at least one hefty St. Brandon’s bonefish to hand in the first hour. Most of us had more than that. Here’s Morgan releasing his third of the first hour!
We had a solid four hours of this incredible bonefishing before the tide got too high. Never for more than about 15 minutes did I go without at least having a cast at a bonefish. While not all of them ate or stuck around to see what hit them on the head on a few of my bad casts, most sucked up my Merkin crab fly like it was nothing. Here’s one of two doubles Morgan and I shared.
The boats paired up for the afternoon session. Two of us headed over to Pauly’s and others to some of the smaller island sand spits. During lunch I spotted a bonefish feeding in the island surf waves. A pretty cool spot to cast to one.
Once again with Morgan, putting my lunch down was a worthy move. I snuck up on this fish that was literally rolling up and down with the surf and launched my crab. He pounced on it like he hadn’t had his favorite meal in a year. This fish took off like you can’t believe and made four backing deep runs. At last, Juan was able to place him in the net.
Today was the slumpbuster day all of us needed. Just few good hard fish pulls put a smile on every angler’s face. We had way more than a few. We estimated that as a group we caught over 40 bonefish on Boneyard this morning. For me, it may have been the best bonefishing session of all time. Yeah, I’ve pulled bones from schools in a mud on every cast. My opinion, that’s boring. Today we caught a lot but we earned each and every one of them. And they were huge! We had at least a dozen fish WEIGHED over 8lbs. Unreal!
The big news of the day however is that Dave Moeller got his 10lber. Catching a 10lb bonefish on a fly is one of the ultimate achievements in the sport of fly fishing. You hear about 10lb bonefish but I can assure you, few of these were actually weighed and were likely smaller. We weigh every big bonefish here at St. Brandon’s Atoll. Congratulations Dave!