If there is one species that will send anglers around the globe with their fly rods in search of a single hook-up, it’s the bonefish. This is the species that started saltwater fly fishing as we know it, and down here in Vieques we have an abundance of them.
For a lot of different reasons, they’re a mysterious animal to most anglers who never venture to the ocean. They don’t grow huge like tarpon. The world record bone was a freakish nineteen-pounder caught off South Africa, but an average example will weight in around five pounds. They’re not good to eat. The name bonefish describes the consistency of their meat appropriately. They also don’t jump like sailfish or crash any bait or lure like dorado, and on top of everything else, they often spook if the angler blinks too loud. But they inhabit the most beautiful shallow waters in the world’s warmest climates and when hooked, the bonefish has few rivals for sheer speed. Landing a big bonefish on a fly rod quite simply takes skill.
In the early part of the last century, many anglers thought bonefish couldn’t be consistently caught on fly and with the gear available, few tried. Fortunately, there were handful of anglers who had mastered the fresh water species like trout and salmon and were looking to invent a new sport.
It happened in the Florida Keys sometime in the late 1940’s, depending on who you talk to, when there were just over a dozen flats guides working the entire island chain. Outdoor writer Joe Brooks cast a freshwater trout streamer with a bamboo rod at a tailing bonefish and got it to eat, something which surprised most of the locals at the time, and the sport was born. Now, sixty years later, there are several hundred guides prowling the Keys full time, hosting tens of thousands of visiting anglers all looking for that tailing bonefish. The rods are made of materials found on the Space Shuttles and the flies are so realistic that many crustaceans will attempt to mate with them. Shallow water fly fishing for a variety of species is now a multi-million dollar per year industry, and the sport often goes by the name of the fish that started it all; “bonefishing.”
While this revolution was taking hold of the Keys and the Bahamas, the bonefish down here in Vieques were left blissfully unaware. Unlike their northern cousins, our bonefish had air cover. While they were busy prowling the flats, digging up crabs and grass shrimp, a half century of U.S. Navy fighter jets roared overhead on their way to the bombing range past the big bay called Ensenada Honda at the eastern tip of Vieques. The local fishermen where kept out from under these flight paths for decades, and the tailing bonefish where never exposed to the tourists until a few years ago when the military left the island. What we have now is one of the last undiscovered bonefishing grounds in all of the Caribbean.
I was marveling at this simple fact a few days ago, while drifting along a pristine flat just a mile down the hill from the old range’s observation post known as OP-1. The post itself was the site of a tragic fatal accident in 1999 involving an off-course jet and a civilian guard named David Sanes, now a famous incident in the history of Vieques and the beginning of the end of the military presence on the island. The bowl shaped valley on the other side of the hill is still dotted with the hulks of armored vehicles that served as live fire targets since World War Two. Up until 2003, a common sight overhead might have been an F-18 Hornet loaded with 500lb bombs and screaming in at near sonic speeds to blast one of the old tanks at the bottom of the range. The jets have been gone for three years, but the dive bombing continues over the flats, now carried on by the local pelicans, terns, and frigate birds pointing anglers like me to the fish we seek to hook with our skinny graphite rods.
For several days last week, with OP-1 clearly visible behind us, my anglers made cast after cast to numerous bonefish, jacks, and snapper, all cruising the shoreline in less than two feet of water. On the bow one perfect morning I had a long time customer and friend from my Key West years. Alex Baydin first heard of Vieques two years ago when I told him I bought a house and was moving here permanently. Fortunately, he and his wife are adventurous, seasoned travelers and Vieques was right up their alley. The bonefish Alex landed that day weren’t world records, but the day-ending nine-pounder was his personal best. Most remarkable was the fact that for an entire morning, we were the only two humans in a three mile long bay, casting flies to big bonefish every ten minutes or so. Here at the start of the 21st century, with TV shows, magazines, and thousands of websites devoted to the sport, Vieques is one of the few places left where someone can go bonefishing with a fly rod and be the only one on the whole island doing it that day.
Capt. Gregg McKee, WildFly Charters
For a lot of different reasons, they’re a mysterious animal to most anglers who never venture to the ocean. They don’t grow huge like tarpon. The world record bone was a freakish nineteen-pounder caught off South Africa, but an average example will weight in around five pounds. They’re not good to eat. The name bonefish describes the consistency of their meat appropriately. They also don’t jump like sailfish or crash any bait or lure like dorado, and on top of everything else, they often spook if the angler blinks too loud. But they inhabit the most beautiful shallow waters in the world’s warmest climates and when hooked, the bonefish has few rivals for sheer speed. Landing a big bonefish on a fly rod quite simply takes skill.
In the early part of the last century, many anglers thought bonefish couldn’t be consistently caught on fly and with the gear available, few tried. Fortunately, there were handful of anglers who had mastered the fresh water species like trout and salmon and were looking to invent a new sport.
It happened in the Florida Keys sometime in the late 1940’s, depending on who you talk to, when there were just over a dozen flats guides working the entire island chain. Outdoor writer Joe Brooks cast a freshwater trout streamer with a bamboo rod at a tailing bonefish and got it to eat, something which surprised most of the locals at the time, and the sport was born. Now, sixty years later, there are several hundred guides prowling the Keys full time, hosting tens of thousands of visiting anglers all looking for that tailing bonefish. The rods are made of materials found on the Space Shuttles and the flies are so realistic that many crustaceans will attempt to mate with them. Shallow water fly fishing for a variety of species is now a multi-million dollar per year industry, and the sport often goes by the name of the fish that started it all; “bonefishing.”
While this revolution was taking hold of the Keys and the Bahamas, the bonefish down here in Vieques were left blissfully unaware. Unlike their northern cousins, our bonefish had air cover. While they were busy prowling the flats, digging up crabs and grass shrimp, a half century of U.S. Navy fighter jets roared overhead on their way to the bombing range past the big bay called Ensenada Honda at the eastern tip of Vieques. The local fishermen where kept out from under these flight paths for decades, and the tailing bonefish where never exposed to the tourists until a few years ago when the military left the island. What we have now is one of the last undiscovered bonefishing grounds in all of the Caribbean.
I was marveling at this simple fact a few days ago, while drifting along a pristine flat just a mile down the hill from the old range’s observation post known as OP-1. The post itself was the site of a tragic fatal accident in 1999 involving an off-course jet and a civilian guard named David Sanes, now a famous incident in the history of Vieques and the beginning of the end of the military presence on the island. The bowl shaped valley on the other side of the hill is still dotted with the hulks of armored vehicles that served as live fire targets since World War Two. Up until 2003, a common sight overhead might have been an F-18 Hornet loaded with 500lb bombs and screaming in at near sonic speeds to blast one of the old tanks at the bottom of the range. The jets have been gone for three years, but the dive bombing continues over the flats, now carried on by the local pelicans, terns, and frigate birds pointing anglers like me to the fish we seek to hook with our skinny graphite rods.
For several days last week, with OP-1 clearly visible behind us, my anglers made cast after cast to numerous bonefish, jacks, and snapper, all cruising the shoreline in less than two feet of water. On the bow one perfect morning I had a long time customer and friend from my Key West years. Alex Baydin first heard of Vieques two years ago when I told him I bought a house and was moving here permanently. Fortunately, he and his wife are adventurous, seasoned travelers and Vieques was right up their alley. The bonefish Alex landed that day weren’t world records, but the day-ending nine-pounder was his personal best. Most remarkable was the fact that for an entire morning, we were the only two humans in a three mile long bay, casting flies to big bonefish every ten minutes or so. Here at the start of the 21st century, with TV shows, magazines, and thousands of websites devoted to the sport, Vieques is one of the few places left where someone can go bonefishing with a fly rod and be the only one on the whole island doing it that day.
Capt. Gregg McKee, WildFly Charters
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