Aloha friends and thanks for checking in at the O’Grady Fly
Fishing Adventures. The last several days have been some of the most humbling
days fly fishing that I can ever remember. I have come to realize that even
though I think that I am a pretty darn good trout fisherman, it has absolutely
no correlation as to my bonefish abilities. I was warned before coming to
Hawaii that these bones are like no other in the world and even though I
believed that, I didn’t think I would spend nine days shaking my head. Cat and
I are here with Cody and Kim and a few other friends that have all fished this
area before and even they are finding themselves shaking their heads. The first
few days I would tell Cody that today is the day, the next few days, were today
may be the day and the last few I was thinking about learning how to surf. Now
partially to our “un-credit” we have been battling awful cloud cover and the
plague all week.
I started telling Cat that we are fishing on the Jeromy Wade schedule,
he always spends weeks looking for a particular fish and the morning of his last
day he catches the fish he was after. This morning we headed to a different
flat that we had only fished once so far and we could not have been rewarded
more. In the first ten minutes on the flat I saw more tails than I have seen in
the last week. I got some good shots off but the fish that I didn’t blow up,
just didn’t seem all that interested. My first few shots were a little embarrassing
with panicked casts and then I found a spot that seemed like a Bone highway. I got a
few what I thought were pretty good shots and then I saw my fish moving across,
I casted and watched as the fish continued to near my fly. I gave it a little
twitch and watched the fish move over and stick his face in the mud. My hands
were shaking and as I slow stripped I felt the line come tight. Tip stayed down
and the magic exploded. My best way to describe the first run would be like lassoing
a speeding dump truck while on roller skates. Before I even had a chance to screw
it up I could see my backing flying out of my reel. I quickly chased him to the
coral reef and just as I reached it, I could feel that he had wrapped me in the
coral. I moved closer to the drop off and was able to reach out and jar it
loose. The fish made a short second run and then raised the white flag. I
looked around and there was no one to take a pic of my first bone ever. I
snapped a few pics but made my mistake of not taking my lanyard off my neck so
the pics are a little lame. Fish was right around two feet and around four or
five pounds, the pics don’t do it justice.
Last night, Cat and I were laughing about trying to find a
bone fish stocker spot but they just don’t exist. The flu has run through our
group over the last week and hopefully Cat will be back at it again tomorrow. I
feel like I’m playing with house money now and hopefully I can enjoy the rest
of the fishing without the pressure. Heck, even if we never bumped a fish,
Hawaii is incredible. As always, Connell, Cat, Winston, Jeremy Wade and the
Drift Fly Shop want to say maholo for reading....
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