The past few weeks have been a mix of fishing on foot, from a boat or from the SUP boards. I’ve had a bit of success with each, but nothing has happened that has compelled me to write about it, until this week.

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Ed picked me up early to fish the falling tide, but it was too cloudy to see fish, and it didn’t seem that there were many fish to be seen, anyway. We puttered around to kill time, waiting for the water level to bottom out in hopes that the rising tide would change our luck.

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Once we began to see bonefish cruising the edges, waiting for the water to rise enough to allow them onto the flat, we anchored the boat and started wading, looking for the first, hungry fish, to make their way out of the deep.

It was still mostly cloudy, with only a few passing patches of sun. The few fish I saw were tailing in the middle of the flat. Now, these tailers are typically big, solo fish. They are a tempting target but they tend to be very educated and very, very spooky in the shallow water. I can sometimes get them to follow a fly, but they almost never bite.

I was on one side of the flat, and Ed was on the far side, when I heard a splash somewhere between us. Ed had hooked one of the big tailers. It was streaking across the shallows, straight towards me. As it neared, I saw the tail pop out of the water. It was huge! The fish came within a rod’s length of me before turning and swimming back at an angle. I don’t know precisely where Ed and I were standing, but I figure that first blazing run was about 800 ft!

Finally, with a little assist from me in untangling his line from some weeds, Ed brought the fish to hand. He has caught so many bonefish that he typically has little patience for photographs but my insistence, together with the weight of 10+ pounds of bonefish in his hands, wore down his resistance to the camera.

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In other, less exciting news, I have been fishing with a new 7 weight rod from G. Loomis, and a new reel from Cheeky fishing. The rod is a pleasure to cast. Cheeky shipped me backing which was way too puny for Hawaii bonefish, but once Sean at the fly shop put on some proper saltwater backing, the reel has performed quite well.

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