Date:    Friday, April 30, 1999 3:46 PM 

Fishing: Chapter 1.7    

I recently acquired two books from Amazon.com.   They’re both worth having if you want to synchronize with my efforts to learn how to fish successfully here in Belize.  Bonefishing causes people to wax lyrical.  Here are some lyrics.    

”The sleek silver shadow streaks across the pale sand, slicing a path through the thin water as the bonefish tries to escape toward the open sea.   Fly line spurts out through the rod guides and rips a jagged, turquoise scar across the placid face of the tropical flat.  You raise your rod as high as you can.  Your arms stretch upward to hold the line clear of the coral heads, and you bear down hard on the rod grip.  You think that if you can only tighten your fingers around the cork a littlel more, it will slow the fish.  You squeeze harder, and it is then that you sense the vibrations from the tail pulses of the frenzied fish.  They hammer down through the line into your fingers - they feel like tiny heartbeats in your hand.    

”The fast-swimming fish is a football field away.  It shows no sign of slowing.  It bucks sideways, arcing to the right.  Then it breeches, and you sense that it is coming back around.  But just as you start to think the fish has quit, it turns back out and sprints another fifty yards.  All you can do is hold on and watch the vicious pumping of your rod against the sapphire horizon.  “

From the introduction to _Fly Fishing for Bonefish_, by Dick Brown. (Lyons  Press, 1993.)

”Fly fishing for bonefish is unique.  Whether you wade on sandy bottoms or drift downwind on the deck of a skiff, you become a predator.  Your eyes strain to pierce the water’s surface.  Your hands tremble as you see silver shadows zigzag against the mottled bottom.  Then you connect.  Suddenly, you feel the raw survival instinct of one of the earth’s oldest creatures.   It scorches across the flat, streaking for the safety of deep water.   Nothing else you do in fly fishing will ever come close to what you feel at this moment.”  

THE ULTIMATE QUARRY IN FLY FISHING  

”The bonefish is the nearest thing there is to a perfect game fish for fly fishing.  A voracious predator, it readily (but warily) takes flies.  It accelerates faster and sprints farther than any other fish you take on light tackle.  It fights more doggedly than most fish twice its size.  ”This performance alone would qualify the bonefish as one of the world’s top fly-fishing targes.  But what makes it the ultimate quarry in the sport is that you must see it -- sometimes from eighty feet away - before you can cast to it.  You stalk it like a predator.  You track it down, take your aim, and cast with precision.  You must make no mistakes.  The ruthless, primitive instincts of this skittish creature leave no room for error.”  -- Brown, p1.  

”If fly fishing had not existed already, a bonefisherman would have  invented it.”  

 -- Brown p 3.    

 The other book is _Fishing the Flats_, by Mark Sosin & Lefty Krey. (Lyons, 1983.)  It describes fishing for bonefish, tarpon, permit, and other more  edible species which inhabit the flats.  

”The bright, brutal sun pierces the water’s surface and illuminates the bottom with the intensity of a mammoth searchlight.  You are standing atop the casting platform of a specially designed skiff that will float in a puddle, straining your eyes to scan the panorama of light and shadow that  stretches in every direction. . . ”  

”Most of the light tackle innovations are developed and tested in the shallows, where the fish are incredibly strong and particularly demanding.   Equally significant, everything happens right before your eyes.  You know  when a fish rejects a lure and you can tell in an instant whether the  tackle is up to the task. ...”

It is coming up on the fishing season here.  Until now, the water has been a little too cool in the flats.  It needs to be above 75, and that doesn’t  happen until after Easter.

It has been hard for me to locate a boat to just go LOOK for bonefish.  I believe that if the Lord wants me to fish down here, He will provide me  with a boat, and some companions to fish with.  That hasn’t happened yet, but, since He is a fisherman Himself, I think He understands, and that, in  His good time, He will provide.  I will trust and pray, and wait.  

Sr. ric