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Blue Fins and All… (Pt. III)

Jan 1st, 2012
by WindKnot.
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December 28, 2000

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.

*

Read Part I

Read Part II

Posted in: Old Scratch.
Tagged: · · · · ·

Christmas Eve

Dec 26th, 2011
by WindKnot.
5 comments

DIY Bonefish, Cayman Style

December 24, 2011

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.

Posted in: Fresh Mud.
Tagged: · · · · · · ·

Interesting…

Dec 16th, 2011
by WindKnot.
2 comments

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.

____________________

* Not familiar, check it out here.

Posted in: Randomness.
Tagged: · · · ·

The Traveler

Dec 10th, 2011
by WindKnot.
2 comments

Dec. 7, 2011: South of Chicago. 0214 hrs.

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 that 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.

Posted in: Fresh Mud.
Tagged: · · · ·

Fridays Are Fun, Seriously.

Dec 2nd, 2011
by WindKnot.
No comments yet

Some say that underneath his luxurious tan is a coat of glittering scales,
and that he’s carefully trained himself to breath above water.

Others say he still doesn’t understand blinking.

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, I prefer 6-weight, 14-ft leaders, and tailing bones.

Stay salty my friends.

____________________

* Not familiar, check it out here.

Posted in: Randomness.
Tagged: · · · ·

What’s a “tumblr”?

Nov 25th, 2011
by WindKnot.
No comments yet

The man was silent for some time. Then he said that he had eaten such a taco and that it tasted of bootblack and horsefeed. That if this taco was under God’s dominion then surely all other great evils must be as well. And then the man took the halfeaten and greaseblackened taco from his coatpocket and thrust it at the priest like a broken sword. Eat it, he said. Eat it or be damned. More here…

Truly good stuff here from some guy named Carmac McCarthy, whom I probably should know and about whom a swift query of the interwebs would no doubt provide illucidation†. But I’d rather relish the mystery of a man leaves words on/in/upon a place called “tumblr”, a “place” somewhere out there in the ether for the lucky few to find and cherish, words that provide solace, and wisdom, and a the sudden smile of enlightenment.

On this day of Thanks and Giving, as you sit down to your free-range tofurkey, your sugar-free pumkin pie (topped with soy-foam,) and your organic mulled cider, think of those huddled masses joining the queue at the local drive-through. Be thankful. Enjoy.

† In point of fact this isn’t written by the “real” Cormac McCarthy at all, but by some dude titled EDW Lynch—which is probably a pseudonym—and is a social experiment to answer the burning question: What if Cormac McCarthy was on Yelp (whatever that is). The blurring of reality and fiction here is a little dizzying, but I’m sure we’re all pretty much used to that by now. As for who EDW Lynch is, Google him yourself.

Posted in: Randomness.
Tagged: · ·

IOC*: Day I Retire the 7-Weight

Nov 23rd, 2011
by WindKnot.
No comments yet

Bluefin Trevally: 11.5 lbs.

Short Tide, Big fish.

Barjack the Angler
Lost Fish Flat
Indian Ocean
April 2, 2011

Up at oh-six-hundred, eat chow and grab the bike. I’m getting smarter, though. Since the person that has duty goes to the office at 8am in the truck I ask for a ride and down the road we go. When I get to the flat there’s no water; low tide was at oh-seven-forty-something. I hope the tide won’t stay low then the flood in—I have tide times but no graphs. Luckily that doesn’t happen. The water rises slowly and suddenly bonefish are all over. There are no big fellas today, but I get a few then miss the next two. I examine my fly to see the hook tip pinned back. Huh. I’ve been burning through crab flies and neglecting the vise so I’m low on flies. I’m immediately struck by inspiration: the fun part is feeding them, right? For the next half hour giggling like a little kid as I feed bone after bone only to slowly pull it out of their mouth, watch them get pissed off and keep trying to eat it. Finally the tide was  right so I tied on a legit crab fly went in search of permit, and… nothing, zip, nada, zilch! WTF!? Last weekend schools were all over the place and now nothing?

I’m frustrated but then I spot tails. In a school of coral munchers are half-dozen white forked tails—the fish I have been chasing all week.

Okay I don’t remember what I’ve mentioned so far about these fish, so I’ll rewind. On Tuesday I was fishing on the ocean right outside my place after work and there were these big white forked-tailed fish that have two black dots on their backs. Chased them for three days and hooked four! Yes Davin, I hooked another one on Thursday on my last Usual! These fish are insanely strong and come in on the low water, all four put me well into the backing and ended the experiences with a coral enema.

So fast forward to today, there a few but they are mixed in with parrotfish, bad news because parrots are really hard to sneak up on and if the fly line or leader lands anywhere near them they spook. I have no idea how much time passed as I was walking and watching them tail but finally the forked-tail got to the head of the school. I make the cast, lead the fish and let the current drift the fly into them. When I think it’s there I pick up the slack, give one small twitch and a fish turns, tips, eats! It takes off for the Persian Gulf and… number five broken off.

Curse, retie, about to find another forked tail when a big bluefin trevally swims up. I cast, he eats, we fight each other and as I’m about to land him the line breaks. At this point I am close to a melt down. I’ve got to land something. I think screw it, I’m going with 20-lb tippet now. By the time that’s done there are no fish anywhere and the tide is getting high—once the breakers top the reef and make it to the shore it’s game over.

Suddenly another trevally glides up all big and blue, I toss the crab fly to him he eats and I miss. Padded room. I pick up, drop, and he eats again! Ok, stick ‘im, stick ‘im, stick ‘im! Moments later I’m deep into the backing I can see my line and backing zigzagging through the water all the way into the waves crashing on the reef. If the trevally gets out there and dives it’s goodbye fly line. I’m out of options so I point the rod at him, clamp down on the reel, and walk slowly backwards.

A million thoughts flash through my head, not the least of which is the realization that a 7-weight is just silly—given the tiny margin for error with this powerful ocean-going fish and only a few yards to the reef. I also realize that anything less than 20-lb tippet is BS and a waste of time. From now on it will be nothing but 9 and 12 weights, heavy flouro, and 3x-strong hooks. Somewhere in there I actually turn the fish and get him pointed back toward shore. This could actually happen! Shutup; don’t jinx it. The fish makes another run but this time merely parallels the reef edge. This is good. Wait! That rock is out of the water… I’m running, plunging through thigh-deep water. Oh, please. I throw the fish some slack and he slows to a stop. I’m now chest deep trying to roll cast my line off the rock and through sheer desperation that works. The line is free again, I come tight and turn its head to the beach and walk it in.

11.5 pounds of bluefin trevally lolls in the wash as I remove my hook. I love my 7-wt, but I think it just got retirement papers as far as oceanside is concerned.

Rigging my 9-weight,
Barjack the Angler

 

*IOC = Indian Ocean Chronicles

Posted in: Fresh Mud.
Tagged: · · · · · · ·

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