Fishing for Bonefish

Fact: Bonefish and I have something in common, we both like calm seas.

Greg, our fishing guide , said we will never catch bone fish today the sea is too rough. We are not particular, Clare and I will be happy to catch anything. Our guide now had a mission.  

A  90 hp, sixteen foot flat boat spirited us wildly across the Tongue of the Ocean to vast areas of mangroves at the edge of a blue hole.

A fifty pound casting net was thrown effortlessly and expertly over the sea and came back with at least 75 small lively silvery bait fish and put into a hold.  Greg added large steel hooks and jumping slippery bait to each of our lines and said here cast it.

 OK, now cast it again, right into that patch of darkness. Get the slack out of your line and keep the pole down.  You have to leave the line in the water or you won’t catch any fish. We must be fast learners or we just had a superb guide, because within ten minutes we both caught our first three pound mutton snapper. 

Whoops!   What is that? Clare is struggling to hang on to her bending rod. Yikes! A three foot long and narrow fish is flying across the boat.  Clare has fallen onto the deck but still holding on to the line. Greg grabs for the pole just as the barracuda bites off the line and disappears into the deep. Even the guide was having a good time. A never to be forgotten experience.

We went on to catch at least fifteen more snapper and one little gluttonous grouper who had a crab in its mouth while trying to eat our live bait.  He was the only one we had to throw back, too small.

We are officially spoiled, this is the way to fish!

Word Press has completely change their program and their tech support, The Happiness engineer is not making me very happy right now. I cannot caption these photos. So. They are mostly of Clare, me and our guide and of course just some of the fish we caught.