A report from SteveL.
I went out on Mother’s Day* to fish (his wife has been nominated for sainthood). It was a rising tide in the late afternoon and it presented an opportunity that I could not resist.
I waded out around 6:00pm and walked straight out over the reef. About half way to the breakers I saw a big oio (bonefish) about 50-yards to my left. I slowly stalked this fish, trying to get a closer shot with my fly rod. I must have made at least a dozen casts but it wasn’t interested. As I stood there looking for the fish, I noticed something floating in the water. As it drifted nearer I saw it was a piece of paper with some kind of emblem on it. It was a $5 dollar bill! To think, in the entire expanse of this huge flat I happened to stand in the pathway of floating money.
Anyway, back to fishing. So I walk another couple of hundred yards into thigh deep water and start blind casting. I figure something was bound to swim my way. Around 6:45pm I got my hookup. It swims off to my right ripping the loose coils of line from my stripping basket. “It’s a good sized fish,” I thought. I must have jinxed the strike on that thought. The last coil was feeding through my fingers when the line went slack….. broke at the knot!
I stood there for a while more casting in vain for another strike until the last bit of sunset faded into twilight.
EQUIPMENT: Steve used a fast action eight weight rod with matching weight-forward floating line and his own shrimp pattern designed around a number 14 circle hook with the barb crimped down.
*I actually did the Mother’s Day thing at lunch with the family.