SaltWaterFlyFishingGuideBlog
Ok, so here’s another gratuitous, lazy-@$$ video post. It’s time. Tight video. Amazing fish. And no, I do not want to go out and buy an Orvis reel now… not even a little bit.
Wonder what kind of rods they were “blowing up”? Just askin’.
Mirage Reel from SHALLOW WATER EXPEDITIONS on Vimeo.
(Promo for the Mirage reel shot and edited for Orvis.)
Yesterday we flew out of Miami, the old D concourse where American Eagle buses passengers to miniature aircraft bound for points south and east—the Bahamas, Turks and Caicos, Key West and more, places a fly rod is pretty much required. We were treated to our first view of north Andros as we descended to Nassau, standard port of entry to the Bahamas. To get to Andros we’d have to clear Customs and Immigration in Nassau, collect our bags, and check in for the puddle-jumper over to Andros, back the way we came. The domestic terminal is in a whole different building, so you have to walk, dragging your gear through the Bahamian sun and the throngs of porters and taxi-drivers to find the poorly marked, poorly ventilated domestic flight terminal. Estimated connection time: 2 hours… about 3 hours too long.
Flight time to from Nassau to Fresh Creek, Andros: 5 minutes. Perfect.
What wasn’t perfect was the weather. Andros was under the same weather system as the Florida Keys we’d just left. Upon arrival we rigged rods and checked leaders while Charlie mixed drinks and regaled us with stories of monster bones, massive schools, and, well, everything we’d dreamed of for months. We went to bed early dreaming of giant bonefish and worrying about the weather, both with good cause.
*
Day II. Dawn is clear, but windy: 10-12 knots already. Breakfast is a hurried, tasteless affair and then we’re on the dock handing our rods down to Charlie in the damp skiff, a incongruous figure in his camo fleece and socked feet that make dry foot-shaped marks on the dew-beaded deck. I step aboard, cast off the bow-line, and fight back that feeling of unreality I always get in a new place as we pole slowly across the low tide bay.
Despite the less-than-perfect conditions with Charlie on the platform we start catching fish—at first we cast at anything, and nothing was what you’d call small: all over 4 pounds except 1 dink I catch casting into a school of much bigger fish. Then Dad gets a 7 pounder and all of a sudden Charlie’s serious—or as serious as he gets. We began poling deeper edges along nameless keys, searching the blue water for ghostly shapes, big shapes.
And then it happens. Charlie spots a few smaller fish at about 12 o’clock off the bow; they’re deep and I can’t see them so I hold my cast. Good thing. Suddenly a school of bigger fish rise out of the deep channel on our right. I don’t know how I got the fly out there but I drop it when Charlie says and start stripping. Immediately I feel the line come tight, but I set too violently and pull the hook. The fish grabs it again and again I pull the hook. I’m practically frantic by this time, but still the fish isn’t done. Suddenly I’m cold, I can feel my heartbeat slowing, peripheral sounds drop away and I hear my own thoughts: “Davin, slow down.” The fish grabs again and at this third time of asking I strip looong and slooow, just faster than the fish. The subtle feel of the bite shifts by surprising degrees to an immense weight and suddenly fly line is jumping everywhere. I remember nothing about that fight, but I end my day with a legitimate 10 pound monster. Not bad for day one.
Back at the lodge we dine on fresh hog snapper while I tie a half-dozen more big Clousers on the strongest hooks I can find.
Some say he must return the sea every fortnight, to molt,
and that his mating rituals, even by fish standards, are bizarre.
Others say that, strangely, he speaks only in binary when he’s drunk .
All we know is, he’s the most interesting guide in the world.
*
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* Not familiar, check it out here.
Since I had only been out practicing my cast I had no more flies on me. I carefully waded back to shore and, once on the beach, bolted for my car. I scrabbled through the first flybox I found, tied on a new fly (taking at least five times as long as I should have) and dashed back to the flat. The school was still there. I promptly hooked another, which immediately spit the hook. Another cast and I broke off again: steady, now, this won’t do at all. I hadn’t brought any more flies with me so wade back to shore, dash to car, cut off bloody eight-pound tippet, tie on ten-pound, new fly on, dash back.
The school had moved somewhat, drifting further out with the last of the tide, but they were still within range. When the line came tight this time I calmly cleared the loose fly line and let the drag do the rest. The first run stopped just into my backing and then the fish changed directions, swimming back toward me. I reeled like mad and stumbled backward, trying to keep a tight line. Soon I saw my leader crawl toward my rod tip, but I still couldn’t see the fish. I couldn’t believe how well camouflaged it was. Desperately I searched the water in front of me and suddenly there it was, all lit up and banded. Each scale was distinct, as if it was freshly cut from glass and platinum, reflecting the coral and grass of the bottom. The fins were a surprise; they were edged in the most unexpected, startling blue: my first bonefish.
I had been laughing with glee but upon seeing the fish I was struck by its somber demeanor. Other types of fish look clownish, aggressive, or cow-like, but not this. I’m sure it was simply anthropomorphism on my part, but it’s down-turned mouth and direct gaze seemed slightly disapproving to me, like a professor handing a favorite student a D-minus. I was struck too by the same notion as many other first time bonefishers: that the fish seemed somehow to have shrunk upon capture. Surely such a little creature could not have fought so hard, could not have taken me into my backing. I held it gently and quickly removed the barbless hook, marveling again at the sky-blue fins.
A second later my first bonefish slipped easily from my hand and, not ten feet from me, it completely disappeared, electric-blue fins and all.
*
Head east, past the cruise ships, tourist traps, and taxis, past the miles of coastline, muddied by the winds of the last fortnight. Small bays open unexpectedly around corners glimmering blue through vignettes of seagrape groves, crowned by black and white reefs. Spindrift mists the windscreen, blurring details. The horizon seems impossibly far off.
Each flat is a washout: muddy sloshing waves. Like seeing an old friend drunk and angry, you recognize nothing. Drive on. Eventually you’ll run out of land and find yourself on the edge, the uttermost east with nothing but water between you and the Continent where this merciless wind was born. The past few days have been an exercise in futility, and always the sound of the wind, searching, feeling, testing. You hear words in it, half-caught mocking phrases. You suspect you might be going slightly mad.
Standing on that edge you find a surprise: the water here is clear. For the first time in days you actually see the grassy banks, sandy spits, and blue holes that comprise the marine terrain your putative quarry inhabits. Your spirits rise as you string your rod, test knots, tighten various straps and begin to walk. Almost immediately there are signs: a boil and a push in a familiar place. The tide feels right.
A constant sea crests the reef to the windward, and, robbed of it’s ocean-going energy, it crosses the bay to surge almost lanquidly against the shore. A wave breaks, retreats, and there they are: two translucent blue-grey dorsals knifing toward deeper water. Bonefish.
Your first cast is on target but the current sweeps the fly toward the fish. They spook instantly. You recast to intercept their half-guessed retreating shapes, more out of habit than hope. The result is expected: nothing.
Almost immediately you spot another shape cruising the foamline of a retreating wave. A big single. The cast is almost reflexive, dropping the fly two feet ahead and slightly left. The fish reacts immediately. You strip and feel resistance: fish on! It glides forward, shaking it’s head as if puzzled; the fly—a laughably simple thing—is clearly visible on the starboard side of its face as you keep stripping line, trying frantically to keep tight. Big fish. Twenty-eight inches? Twenty-nine?
The fish sees you and vanishes in an impossible burst of acceleration. Line is dancing everywhere and you suffer that habitual momentary panic where you’re certain you’re standing on it. You look down, but no, it’s clear. You sense rather than see the knot form, feel it slip through your fingers and slap against the first guide of your rod with an oddly metallic sound, like a machete buried with force into a coconut. The rod buckles and in a desperate defiant gesture you lunge forward, throwing slack in the line. The fish slows. You reach up, grab the ball of line, and give it one futile shake before it’s jerked from your trembling fingers. The rod bends, straightens. The fish is gone.
It takes five minutes to clear the tangle. You tie on another fly and keep walking, catching a few schoolies before the tide is gone and you have to admit that you must leave now if you’re to get any Christmas shopping done. Before reeling in you stand on that first flat once more, hoping. The fishing was good today, especially considering the dismal results of the last week. You even got a five-pounder there at the end, but that fish, that first fish keeps coming back to ruin it all. Thirty inches?
The sun is low. Your shadow stretches out, straining for the horizon even as you turn away. You put the wind at your back and head for home. It’s Christmas Eve.
Some say he’s seen “A River Runs Through It” an astonishing 0.3 times.
Others say he doesn’t know what silverware is for.
All we know is, he’s the most interesting guide in the world.
*
I don’t always get to fish myself, but when I do, it’s tails up, noses down, fish on.
Stay salty my friends.
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* Not familiar, check it out here.
Dark waves of asphalt rose and fell like deep ocean swells, passing easily beneath. The traveler’s eyes stared out blankly over wine-dark waters and a rushing, moonless night. The trees—and they were indeed trees, scattered carelessly over the landscape and leaning, drunkenly, like tombstone in a ghost-town graveyard—were clouds to him, star-crowned and formless on the edge of the world.
The odometer ground away the miles, like a heartbeat, marking precisely each passing minute, each hour that divided the indifferent seasons which pass into years, each sinking like Atlantis into that immutable past from which he came. Where he was bound was simply away. Away from the past, from that other life, those other lives—from that hard shouldered harbor town rife with ghosts of pirates and sailors, wreckers and fishermen, all lost to the sea, away from the empty mud flats alive with silver dreams, away from the hot taste of salt in the corner of his mouth and the color of her eyes, blue and gray as a windswept dawn.
Still he rose and fell, in a trance of half-remembered, half-tasted beer and cheap rum, like the sharp tang of gunpowder and blood, and all around him bodies pulsing, grinding to a primal beat, sweat dripping on the asphalt and steaming. He blinked and the town was silent again—sea-air and bottles in the sandy gutters—at rest, as if God had finally stopped the carnival.
And inside the wheelhouse the traveler wrung out the miles, knuckles white on the wheel, eyes fixed on the edge of the world. And all around him the ghosts they crowded, whispering.
The ranting, musing, and general pontificating of Davin Ebanks, a sometimes marginally self-employed bonefish guide who hails from the euphemistically titled “Grand” Cayman Island, of the former British West Indies.
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