Desperate for a Bone

By Dave Wilson ©

No local artist I know has painted anglers poling over sand flats that shift between molten glass and sea grass.  No local artist has rendered the desolation of anglers who find no tailing bones but who stare with pink boneless expressions into the unanswerable how of the sun’s heat until they come upon a sardonic oasis:  A flock of black headed vultures, heads buried inside the intestines of a stranded marine creature, a bottlenose dolphin or loggerhead turtle.

Circling buzzards, turning above while hungry others squat on a busted up stone crab trap and grin. This is the vision I conjure up when I consider summer flats fishing one day south of the first day of hurricane season. The fish are there.  We know they are. 

They don’t go away the way the snow birds do because it’s hot.  The heat makes the flesh rot and it’s softer for them to eat.

Bonefish are nothing more than sleek, fast, salt water carp.  They are called bonefish because they are too full of bones too eat; although, I’ve heard they are delicious and I’ve used them for marlin baits and they run well, cutting quickly through the trolled seas.

I want to catch them because they are as fast as anything I’ve ever held to the speed of lust. (More on this rare speed that only young fishermen know in another story)

You can see them tailing during the light hours but only for a few seconds early in the morning, or when it is storming, or sometimes just at dusk.  Some years ago we learned you can catch them after dark.  And sometimes do.

An old friend of mine shows up at the door.  He has been gone making money, playing the money game as if it could save himself or you.

He stands tall with stooped shoulders and sallow eyes with a green tinge beneath them, and he is gaunt but it’s worse than thin. His strength is gone. He’s lost his soul.

I have never seen him look so hungry. The road has worn him down like a spent salmon. I am worried that he might need money.

“What’s eating you?” I ask.

“I need to catch a bonefish?”

“What need?  It is unmanly to admit this need.  Don’t drive into town and tell me you have a need to catch a fish.”

“You asked me what was eating me and I told you straight.  Don’t hide behind your fish sense.  You need it, too!”

“Can you wait till it gets dark?” I ask.

He shakes his emaciated face, no.  His adams apple runs up his neck. The buzzards are in him, too, I think.

“I’ve got to leave for the mid-west later tonight.” he adds.

“Do you want to charter a skiff?” I ask, grinning a little.

“No.  I would feel too vulnerable.  If I caught a fish on a skiff the Captain could tell.  He would only need to act a little “put out and I would give him all my money.  Then I wouldn’t be able to take you out to dinner.”

“Let’s stay away from the skiffs,” I tell him. I like the thought of dinner out.

He waves me off and turns away.

In silence we find a bait shop that has live shrimp and we purchase two dozen shrimp that seem as small as our combined libidos.  We drive to a local park.

“In Key West they are selling cheap T-shirts and strong mind-altering frozen drinks to people trying to remember how to relax.”

“And that makes us no better,” he says.

We don our wading shoes and lather up with sun block.  We do all this in a hurry to get the shrimp to the ocean before they suffocate in the water that seems to be coming to a boil in the pail.

The tide is half full and flooding in; the warm water still cooler than the air.

“My tide clock needs resetting.” I say.

My gaunt friend grunts. The grunt going out of him makes him look thinner.  We wade down the mangrove shoreline looking for tailing fish.  Behind us and to the west we hear thunder.  Off shore a front line seems stalled. The sunlight and humidity are like the beaks of buzzards snapping at our lungs.

“How do you hook these things?” My friend asks.

“Purists’,” I say with disgust.

I call him over and show him how to thread the thin silver # 2 Gamigatzu hook through the anus at the fan of the tail, drawing it out through the soft shrimp meat at the curl of the body, as if you were threading the hook along the soft side of your own curled finger, then turning the point and embedding it back in the flesh so that the hook cannot be seen.

“This is how it’s done,” I tell him.

“How do you know?” He asks.

“I’ve read articles.  And friends of mine, professional fishermen, pro’s; they’ve shown me.”

“Doesn’t seem right.  The shrimp can’t move with the hook in him like that.”

“You don’t do it so that he can move.  You do it so that you can sight cast ahead of feeding bones, far enough ahead of them that you don’t spook them, and then draw the bait across the surface and let it drop down in front of them; under their noses. You don’t have to make a perfect cast every time that way.”

“I guess that makes sense,” he says.

We walk up the mangrove shoreline.  We wade as deep as we can get, looking in with the sun at the shore.  We wade for more than half a mile and then turn back.  Every now and then he casts at nothing… and catches nothing.

As we walk I am thinking about the sun and the incoming tide and the shrimp.  The front that seemed to have been stalled offshore is pushing in at us now, still a long way off but a breeze cools us and builds and I can taste moisture and electricity on the wind.  My friend and I exchange glances.  A weather change is something more than we had before.  The water has come up higher than my waste as we begin to wade back along the same line we waded out.

A hundred yards from the path, still waste deep in water we have not seen a fish. Magnificent Frigate birds drift on the wind above the mangroves and we hear the “kree” of a osprey as if to tell us that he understands.

“You knew better than to think this was gonna be easy,” I say.

“Don’t get discouraged on me,” he says.

“I think we better call it a day.  If you want to make your plane.”

“We have time,” he wines.

“And no fish.” I say.

“Just let me try a few casts.  You never know?” he says.

He casts and waits.  I can see his rod tip bounce.

“There!” I call.

He strikes and reels but the line is empty.

“Let’s try another method out there,” I call to him.

I wade to my friend.  I put a split shot on the line about three inches above the hook, the biggest split shot in the orange plastic, split shot container.  I find the largest shrimp left in the bucket.  I hook him through the horn, just above the brain so that the thin, silver hook shank looks like a part of him.

“There.  Now cast him as far out into the deep as you can.”

Out goes the shrimp.  I turn and head back for the path to the car, shaking my head.

“Hey!  What’s this?”

I turn and look and there he is with his pole bent and the line hauling off the reel.

“Hold the rod as high as you can,” I call.

“What? Now I’m a novice?” he calls back.  He is grinning.

By the time I get to him I can see a five pound bonefish flash silver and speed in front of me.

“I’ll be a son of a gun,” I tell him.

The fish is so hot it takes me a few tries before we can hold him long enough to admire him and release him.  We catch two more bonefish, one smaller and one larger, before the front line bears down upon us.

“Hooking the shrimp so that he kicks to get away from the split shot just above the grass, combined with a falling barometer was what did the trick.” I said.

“Me not giving up is what did it,” said my friend.

To that, I could not say a thing.