Please accept that I’m not drawing any X‘s on the map. I fish where I fish after lots of boots-on-the ground exploration, and I’m not giving away any hard-earned secrets. Several of the islands are now home to good flats guides, and that’s where the visiting angler with limited time should begin. The following observations aren’t specific to any location, but are broadly applicable to most of them.
The weather can turn against you at any time. If you can’t handle some wind, you probably don’t belong on the flats with a fly rod, but strong Hawaiian trades can overwhelm anyone’s casting. Good light is essential when spotting fish in deep water, but it isn’t always there. Runoff from heavy rains can compromise water clarity. On some trips I’ve fished every day for two weeks in a row, while on others I’ve never set foot on the flats. It helps if you have something else to do in Hawaii, which is why I take my bow.
I’ve always preferred to stalk bones on foot rather than from the bow of a skiff, and Hawaii’s ocean flats offer plenty of room to wade on hard sand. But the big fish have a devilish predilection for coral channels, which means dealing with sharp, unstable footing. Everyone loves the sight of bonefish tailing in skinny water, and while some Hawaiian flats offer such opportunities, they are the exception. Plan to spend a lot of time scanning deep water for glimpses of fish. A good flats boat will help, hence my recommendation that most visitors hire a guide.
A lot of time can pass between fish, and anglers intent on fast action should look elsewhere: Christmas Island lies just 1,500 miles to the south. And reaching and spotting Hawaiian bones is only part of the challenge. For reasons difficult to understand, given the lack of angling pressure, the big bones can be surprisingly picky. The ratio of outright refusals to good presentations is higher here than anywhere else I’ve fished, which can be maddening when the bone that refuses your fly after following it for a dozen feet weighs 15 pounds or more. While I can’t dismiss the possibility that I’m doing something wrong, I’ve experimented with countless patterns, employed every trick I’ve learned in four decades on the flats, and concluded that, in Hawaii, refusals just come with the turf.
That first wild moment of contact defines both the magnitude of the challenge and the rationale for being there in the first place. Nothing runs like a big Hawaiian bonefish. Unfortunately, big bonefish are like big whitetails, and seldom stray far from their security cover. This means it’s usually only a matter of time—often measured in seconds—until line meets coral, and that’s the end of that.
Lest I stand accused of painting with too broad a brush, there are times and places in Hawaii when few of these factors apply. If you’ve fished there, and recall a wild day of tailing bonefish on an unobstructed sand flat, congratulations. I fish where I do because I’m stubborn, and because I’ve encountered more really big bonefish there than any other place I know. But I also recall that Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.
IT WAS THE MIDDLE OF MARCH, and Lori, Doug, and I had found the fish. Reaching them still required a certain amount of determination: a seven-mile round-trip slog, according to Lori’s pedometer, beginning in a sea of black organic mud laced with mangrove roots, followed by
long push through waist-deep water, and ending with a precarious scramble atop rotten coral heads to gain enough elevation so we could spot fish in the channel. As I said, if it were easy . . .
