Bucket List Bonefish Adventure in the Bahamas Outdoors

Catching a Bonefish The Bucket List Adventure

David Yellen Guide Jason Franklin, left, and writer Jon Gluck begin a Bahamian bonefishing bucket list adventure. I was barely half an hour into a three-day fishing-adventure-slash-dream trip off Grand Bahama island, and my guide, Jason Franklin, had already spied our prey. He had cut the engine of his skiff and was poling us, gondola style, across a secluded lagoon. The early-morning light was a soft, buttery yellow; the water, sapphire blue. There wasn’t a hotel, cruise ship or other sign of humanity in sight. The few tiny, unnamed islands we could see had nothing but mangroves lining their white-sand shores. Robinson Crusoe would have felt right at home. I turned and spotted the telltale wake. My heart thumped, and my hands began to shake. A fisherman can go for long, maddening hours combing vast swaths of ocean without spotting, let alone landing, a bonefish. There’s a reason the elusive, devilishly camouflaged species is also known as the Gray Ghost of the Flats. I tried to cast my fly in front of my target to lead him, but after a long winter back home in New York City, I was rusty. My line landed on his back, and he took off. My blunder was potentially catastrophic: It was anyone’s guess how many more chances we’d have. Just two minutes later, however, Franklin said, “Tails, 50 feet, 3 o’clock. Three of them.” To a fisherman, the only thing sweeter than the sight of a bonefish is the sight of a tailing bonefish. As the fish eat — pinning shrimp and crabs to the ocean floor — their tails can poke above the surface, providing a seductive target. This time, Franklin suggested I hop out of the boat and wade quietly toward the fish, to edge close without the boat’s scaring them off. I cast again, and what appeared to be the largest of the pack went for my fly. But I was too slow to set the hook, and I missed him. Strike two. David Yellen "The only thing sweeter than the sight of a bonefish is the sight of a tailing bonefish," says Jon Gluck. A minute later, Franklin pointed out a school of four more bonefish moving straight across our bow. I cast again, and this time, boom, I hooked one. The fish took off across the lagoon at cartoon speed, a signature “rooster tail” trailing behind him. In an instant he was 50 yards away; a moment later, 100. After five minutes or so, just when I had managed to reel him alongside the boat, he sped away again. Finally, after one last tussle, I landed him, removed the hook from his mouth and released him into the clear water. “Not a bad morning,” Franklin said. “Not a bad day,” I replied. As bucket list adventures go, you’d be hard-pressed to top bonefishing in the Bahamas. Pioneered in the early 20th century by traditional anglers looking for a novel thrill, bonefishing isn’t about dropping a worm in a pond and hoping for the best. It’s more like hunting, with all of that sport’s heart-pounding, Hemingwayesque romance, only more genteel. (Bonefishermen generally adhere to a catch-and-release policy; it’s just as well, since the fish are indeed too bony for most people’s taste.) David Yellen With its endless supply of bonesfish inhabited, shallow-water flats, the Bahamas is considered the bonefishing capital of the world. Hemingway himself was an accomplished bonefisherman, as were baseball legend Ted Williams and the western writer Zane Grey. Poling in a small skiff or wading on foot, you stalk your prey across shallow ocean flats; once you spot a fish, you try to cast your fly (or, in this case, an imitation crab or shrimp) to it in a way that looks natural. Found in some of the world’s most stunning locales, the Albula vulpes has an exotic, tropical beauty. Though the fish aren’t especially large (3- to 5-pounders are the norm, with trophies topping 10 pounds), the lightning speed they exhibit when they run, and the tenacious fight they put up, make them one of the world’s most sought-after sport fish. And not just by men: According to an outdoor-sports polling group, more than a quarter of American anglers are women. Bahamas fishing guides say that 15 to 25 percent of their bonefishing clients are women; many couples fish together. Bonefishing’s wide appeal makes sense: You’re in a beautiful setting, your adrenaline is pumping, and the focus required has a way of erasing all your other cares. Or, as Franklin put it, “It’s bloody Zen, isn’t it?” With a practically endless supply of the kind of shallow-water flats that bonefish like to inhabit, the Bahamas are widely recognized as the bonefishing capital of the world, and Grand Bahama, the northernmost island in the chain, is known for its abundance of large specimens. On my trip, I fished with an outfitter, H2O Bonefishing, known for its topflight guides and ready access to prime water. I had caught bonefish before, in Belize and elsewhere in the Bahamas, but they were of unremarkable size. For years I’d been dreaming of landing a trophy, something truly special. Grand Bahama, I’d come to learn, was the ideal place to do that — the land of giants. If the first morning was a blessing, the next day and a half were a curse. It was as if a switch had been turned off. We poled and poled and poled some more but failed to catch, or even see, much of anything. My guide on the second day, a veteran local angler named Kevin Reid, led us to one seemingly promising spot after another, to no avail. The issue seemed to be that the tides were unusually high, pushing the fish off the flats and into water too deep for us to see them. For a while we ran across sea turtles; barracuda; lemon, nurse and blacktip sharks; and stingrays — though after a time even they disappeared. “It’s like a desert out here,” Reid said. As it happens, I had undergone a root canal procedure back home just before I left. I told Reid that this hurt worse. My third day was actually a half-day — I had to be off the water by 11 o’clock to make my flight home — and it, too, started off without a fish in sight. Around 10 a.m., I decided something had to be done. Photo by David Yellen Jason Franklin, left, and Jon Gluck adhere to a catch-and-release policy, like many bonefishermen. “Anyone know a good fish dance?” I asked. “We need to change our juju.” David Yellen, the photographer for this story, who was accompanying Reid and me on the boat, is an avid deep-sea fisherman. He told us he always seems to catch fish after he makes a phone call. “What are you waiting for?” I inquired. He called his father, chatted with him for a minute, then hung up. Feel free to disbelieve me if you like, but not two minutes later, we saw a tailing bonefish, the first fish we’d spotted in what felt like forever. When I waded out, though, I missed him. And when another tail popped up a moment later, I whiffed that fish, too. I hopped back into the boat. With just 20 minutes left before we needed to go, Reid began poling in the direction of the boat ramp. The mood was grim. No one spoke. You would have thought we were headed to a burial at sea. I was just about to put away my rod when Reid said in a hushed voice, “Bonefish at 12 o’clock, coming right at you.” It was clear this would be my last shot, and the clock was ticking, yet I somehow managed to keep calm. I spotted the fish, cast to him and set the hook. A few minutes and a whoop or two later, I had him in hand. He wasn’t the monster I’d hoped for, but he was pushing 3 pounds — the best fish of the trip. Plus, I’d broken a daylong drought and ended my outing on a high note, with just minutes to spare. Call it a piscine buzzer beater. On the way back to the boat ramp, amid the easy chatter that’s a sure sign people on a boat have caught fish, a thought occurred to me. I am a grown man who had just spent the better part of three days and no small amount of money standing on the bow of a tiny skiff in nearly 100-degree heat chasing a notoriously difficult-to-find species of fish across a wide expanse of ocean in an attempt to catch maybe a handful or two of them, only to throw them back, becoming alternately despondent and elated in the process. By all rights, I should have felt ridiculous. Instead, I looked at Reid, gave him a fist bump and asked: “What’s the best time of year to come back?” Jon Gluck, executive director of talent, development and special projects at Hearst, has written and edited for Vogue, New York and Men’s Journal, among other publications. He also teaches journalism at New York University.

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