About

Yup, that's me mostly failing to catch bonefish in Raotan, Honduras... pretty sweet.

The Saltwater Water Fly Fishing Guide Blog

Here are the rantings, musing, and general pontificating of me—Davin Ebanks (a.k.a. Windknot): a sometimes marginally self-employed fly fishing bonefish guide who hails from the tiny rock euphemistically titled “Grand” Cayman Island, of the former British West Indies1. A glass-sculptor by trade, by inclination I pursue bonefish, tarpon, and permit (and, frankly, any other finny quarry) wherever they can be found with a fly rod… as time and finances warrant. (Which, as you’d imagine, is not nearly enough in either case.)

The Words

Most of these words are divided into two main categories: Fresh Mud and Old Scratch. The former (Fresh Mud) are (mostly) fresh (i.e. current) entries regarding the not-too-distant past. They may be journal-style entries of recent flats fly fishing nonsense, trips I’ve taken (which may or may not have included fly fishing, but almost certainly included thinking about fly fishing), or just general thoughts on the state of fly fishing as a sport (apropos of nothing much).

The Old Scratch are entries from my old fly fishing journals kept during the rather extended novice period of my fly fishing journey through the present. Mostly. By and large. Think of it as time-travel, with commentary. The entries do extend into the recent past, so there’s a transition (and hopefully a transformation) there. I learned to fly fish in salt water, on the bonefish flats and backcountry tarpon canals of my home. I certainly haven’t kept a consistent journal, but when I read through the older writing I see a younger me trying to come to grips with, among other things, how in the world do you catch a bonefish when you can’t catch bonefish. As I am transcribing them to this blog, I am  moved, on occasion, to annotate some of these entries. These typically take the form of footnotes, but not all of them were added during transcription. In fact, I actually had footnotes in my original journal as a way of inserting information or thoughts that I didn’t feel fit into the body of the journal proper, as it were. In the few cases where it’s not obvious which notes are which, I highly doubt it matters. In fact, feel free to complete ignore them as they are not at all essential to the main story.

Due to the nature of blogs in general these entries will come with two dates—one of the date the entry was published on this blog, and the other denoting the date the original journal entry was written. And it gets more complicated: many of those entries were dated twice on the initial entry to begin with—the first the date it was written and the second the date the events in question happened. However, as it happens I wasn’t exactly consistent with that and some are merely dated once. It is beyond my power now to recall which type of dates these are. It seems fitting now that such writings should be translated to a medium that is itself fuzzy about time and place.

The Remainder

Randomness is just what it sounds like: random, often humorous items (including The Most Interesting Guide in the World) sometimes only tangentally related to fly fishing (in the sense that all of Life is related). While my main focus is on bonefish, tarpon and permit fly fishing, that’s only because it’s what I know. I’m still interested in the other stuff so you’ll occasionally find videos, props to other cool blogs, etc. There’s no order here, so no worries.

Here you’ll also find posts by the other Contributors to this blog, edited by yours truly. Good stuff.

No Fish Porn Here

What you won’t find here are long scrolls filled with pics of dripping fish and frozen, I’m-awesome-n-fly-fishing-is-extreme grinning anglers. If that’s what you want you should look elsewhere. The photographs that often head my words are meant to be evocative rather than illustrative in nature. Yes, I shot most of them on my various travels (except those in the Indian Ocean Chronicles) but I’m not an actual photographer. Writing’s hard enough.

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1 Really, we are no longer part of the British West Indies. This is actually seen as a condescending term, recalling the bad-old-days of colonialism. I’ve always thought it added a little class and distinction to what’s otherwise just a little rock with palm trees. But, you know, whatever.