THE MACABI CLUB

EVERY FLY ANGLER WHO LOVES BONEFISH MUST ALSO HAVE LOVE FOR THE BAHAMAS. 

Bonefish is the beloved ghost of the flats known for blowing up fly reels, they require you to pay attention to your backing knots, and if you pay attention they show their tails in shallow water.  The Bahamas, the beloved country with endless white sand flats, native guides who can throw 90-foot fly lines in the wind, good vibes, and conch fritters are undeniably connected.  One love is not possible without its counterpart, Bonefish and The Bahamas are connected and therefore anglers who chase them put it on their list of “Places to Fish Before You Die”.  

I got the invite to fish the Bahamas from Florida native, Barrett Rhymes, who has been learning and fishing the Bahamas as long as he can remember.  Barrett has put in his time wading flats and researching maps looking for new spots and I was not going to pass up the opportunity to get to experience The Bahamas or its Bonefish.  

Barrett eventually convinced me and my other best buddy Bradley to book the flights from Idaho to the Bahamas for 3 full days of fly fishing, diving and more. 

We threw all our luggage onto the boat and reached into the cheap red cooler full of iced down “Sands,” a local Bahamian Beer. After more than 14 hours of travel from Idaho by car and plane, a cold beer in the Caribbean couldn't have tasted any better. 

We drove the boat across the bay to the small island town where our rental home and golf cart were. Immediately, we sat on the back patio after taking it all in and rigged up all our Fly Project setups. We brought two 8 weight Squatch’s, a 7wt Squatch and the new 8wt Western fly rods, all nine feet long. We paired them up with 200-250 yards of Rasta Top Shelf backing and the Ballistic Pro Performance - Tropics fly line. The setups were so dialed, we just needed to hit the flats and get out casting them. 

We woke up early on the first full day to get out and fish the outgoing tide. On the 20-minute ride out, we got to enjoy a bunch of dolphins swimming and mating with each other in gin-clear water all around the boat. Just one of many reasons outside of fishing that made us want to visit the Bahamas. 

Bonefish particularly like moving water, and there needs to be a certain level of water on the flat for them to rush onto it from the deeper channeled water. So, we took the rental boat as shallow as we could after riding in on a deep channel that cut to the back bays. We threw our wading shoes on, picked a simple, small shrimp fly and got after it. We walked along shorelines seeking shallow water and searching for schools or tailing fish, but the tide was just a bit too high by the late morning. Thriving on these flats were sea turtles, stingrays, tiger sharks, lemon sharks, mutton snapper, and boxfish, just to name a few. These flats were hands down the most beautiful flats I have ever fished. 

Barrett found a school of smaller bones in a little bit deeper water. He waited patiently for them to push into the back of the cove and stepped into the water. The school charged him and he made a short, quick cast right in front of them. A few strips in, and it got tight for the first Bonefish of the trip. A small one, but it was a confidence booster, and an awesome sight to see. 

We were just around the corner from the boat, Barrett sped ahead of us and we heard some distinct yelling, “8-10lb school of bones tailing in this grass… come here NOW!”

We began jogging up to him and sure enough, this fishy dude was already doubled over on his 8-weight Western. When I got to him, I got a glimpse of this bone and it remains to be the biggest Bonefish I’ve seen in person. Barrett put the fish to hand, and a small shrimp pattern called the Fly Project Bone Collector was down the hatch, stuck right in the corner. 

“When it comes to the bigger Bonefish, they tend to be much harder to feed just like any older fish that has a bit more knowledge. But I really like the reward of fooling the larger ones, you’ve got to cast with plenty of lead, and match your retrieval to their food just right,” Barrett said.

WE PUT THE BIG BONE BACK AND EXCHANGED HIGH FIVES, “THAT WAS A STUD!” I SAID.

On Day Two, we planned for the afternoon incoming tide fishing session. Bradley and I quickly began to learn that saltwater fishing is such a different game than pounding the water in the northwest from sunrise to sunset. Saltwater fishing is a game of windows, and so can trout fishing, but there are many factors to having successful flats fishing sessions. One is having good light to be able to see the fish, and another is the fluctuation of tide. We picked our battles and fished hard during our windows we knew would be productive. 

Brad pushed down the flat and my feet couldn’t take the random shells and rocks under the sand as I was barefoot. On my walk back towards the boat, a school of about 5-6 bonefish rolled up on me. I stood in one place watching the fish just happily feed on the sand. 

I sprinted back on the beach, and then back to the boat, grabbed a GoPro, my 8wt and ran right back to the school of bones where I last saw them. They rolled over the top of the rocky edge onto the inside of the flat when I left. So I went between these two downed trees in the white sand, probably placed there from Hurricane Dorian in 2019, they provided great structure. After only a few steps into the water, I saw gray shadows coming my way and said out loud, “There they are!” 

I laid a cast in front of them and let my white and pink Bahama Mama sink down slowly until they were practically on top of it. I began retrieving with soft bumps, by the look of the end of my fly line to where I estimated my fly was, I was all up inside this school of fish. I started seeing them really show signs of excitement by their movements. I saw the lead fish dip its head down and move off to the right fast, it had sucked in my fly and I screamed in joy as I raised my rod tip once the line got tight. Typical me, I dropped the fish moments later mid-scream on the first fast run the bone made. I still am so upset I lost that fish, it was a very respectable 4-5lb fish.

I pushed deeper into the sand past the two trees and saw a giant Mutton snapper swim around yet another downed tree in the sand. As I prepared to cast at the Mutton, I saw a smaller, shiny fish with a black tail. The flats queen, the devil, showed up on me in the Bahamas right behind the Mutton on this downed tree. Not just one Permit, a school of about 8 dinner plate Permit were lapping this same pattern on the outside of this tree. I continued to move my positioning to present my fly to these fish just inside the tree. I was getting promising follows, they were tailing my fly in the sand, but I just couldn’t come tight. I yelled for Bradley to come over and try a different fly, but he had the same results. I made two more fly changes. Typically on white sand, one would want to fish a white crab or shrimp, a little bit of pink is even good too Barrett said. Usually, if there isn’t any grass, orange is not the move. In my scenario, I threw every perfect white and pink shrimp in the fly box in my pocket. So I just said, “screw it, I am throwing this orange shrimp with lead eyes.”

I hopped my fly on the bottom this time, trying to mix up my retrieve based on the 6-8 follows and about 20 shots I’ve laid on this same school of permit. I put a cast deep into the tree down, almost snagging it and just let it sink to the bottom, waiting for the Permit to come back around on the same lap they’d been making the past 10 minutes. The school was all up and within the tree, but I saw a few black tails come out around my fly. I made a few bumps and slides keeping the fly low, after 3 or 4 strips I felt a small thud, kept my rod low and strip set into my first permit on fly. The fish made a few short-lived runs and then, it decided to make it as hard as it could on Brad and I toward the end of the fight. Weaving through every branch in this tree and even Bradley’s legs, twice. Somehow, there were no aggressive barnacles on these branches and I yelled at Brad, “he’s too deep to pull out, you’ve got to go find that tail and grab him!”

Brad dove into the water where he saw silver flashing everywhere in the tree, reached deep feeling for a forked tail and came up with my Permit. It was so exciting to have two best friends land a Permit on fly together in such a unique, unexpected location. I got to be there for Bradley's first Permit in Mexico as well in 2021.

WE WERE ON CLOUD 9!

Day three would be another early wake-up and outgoing tide session. We drove a new deep channel into some flats in the back deep into the mangroves. The tide was high in the morning, we were about nipple-deep where we parked the boat. Bradley and I walked south down the flat and Barrett stuck around by the boat. 

Only about an hour into our wade, Barrett calls, “Joe get back over to the boat, the tide is going out this water is all wadable now and I just broke off a 10lber…..”

I screamed to Bradley,

“YO BRAD! LET’S WORK OUR WAY BACK, BARRETT IS INTO FISH!”

I looked back down at my drone and began bringing it back, until I heard Bradley yell, “Joe, Joe!”

I look off in the distance and see his rod high in the air, he’s hobbling backward trying to keep the best tension he can. I began to laugh and bring the drone over his way.

“I was struggling the whole first two days knowing what to look for, these bonefish can be hard to see! I randomly thought to look backward and a school of three fish were messing around in my mud track behind me, I roll-casted my shrimp in the midst of these bones and the smallest in the school took the fly on the drop. I was so close to them, I just trout set!”

Bradley worked this bone in after a few hard and fast runs, he’d have his first Bahamian Bone to hand by 10:30 AM. 

We continued to work back to Barrett, receiving another phone call. 

“You guys getting close? I just picked a fish off a school of like one hundred fish on the white sand.”

This was when Bradley and I looked at each other and just equally agreed that Barrett is a fish magnet on the flats. “He reeks of Bonefish,” Bradley said.

Barrett picked off 3 Bonefish before we got back to the boat and just to the flat he was wading, adjacent to the deep channel we drove into. We could see the massive milky water line the giant school of fish were creating in that deep water channel. It dropped from 1 to 2 feet to 8 to 10 feet, just an ideal spot for fish to come up on and feed real quick. Once again, Barrett’s location timed the window just right. He had an epic 45 minutes of bonefishing on the outgoing tide.

Our boat was way stuck in the sand by now. Bradley and I couldn’t believe it because it truthfully was chest-high just a few hours earlier. This goes to show the power tide has to move water in and out of zones. We all three pushed the boat as hard as we could on the count of three for multiple efforts, losing hope we’d be stuck for the next 6 hours. Somehow, the water deepened a tad bit to get the boat back a float as we continued to push the back of the boat, we were completely out of breath.