At least they were there yesterday, when I broke off two, Doug broke off five, and Lori patiently handled the camera waiting for someone to land one of the damn things. Which never happened. I countered Doug’s superior number of hookups by claiming the fish I’d broken off were bigger than his. This was pure speculation on my part, but it was hard to believe the pair I’d lost could be smaller than any bonefish in the world.
Today was another story. Paradoxically, balancing on the coral is harder on the legs than wading on the sand, and after a fishless hour I felt ready to go exploring. But I’d promised to hold my ground until the tide turned, even though the wind was likely pushing out water faster than the moon could pull it in. A few minutes later, my self-discipline was rewarded by a fish.
I shouted a heads-up to Lori, who had traded camera for fly rod on the far side of the channel.
The fish, moving quickly, was headed in my direction, and I barely had time to appreciate its size as I worked out a loop of line. The chop disguised the splash of the heavy fly, and the fish turned on it at once. A quick strip-set left me attached to a raw force of nature.
And this time, not without hope. While the fish predictably headed for the sea, a long, broad sand channel lay between my perch and the reef, and the streaking fish stayed right in the middle of the fairway. But a hundred yards away a lone coral head stood in the middle of the channel, and as my backing sizzled past it, the pulsations changed timbre in subtly ominous ways. I was still attached to the fish, but the line had passed under the coral.
My legs churned against the water in a mad dash, fingers torquing the drag past red line, and then the connection went dead and I was standing at the edge of the sea, rejected, dejected. As Hank Williams once sang, “You win again.”
“Did you get a look at that fish when it went past?” I asked Lori as I bent down to free my line from the coral.
“I sure did.”
“Was it as big as I think it was?”
“Bigger.”
There you have it. At least I salvaged my fly line.
| L |
Later that week, a friend dropped by for dinner and to debrief us about our efforts on the flats. After listening to a wine bottle’s worth of vignettes, he asked the obvious. And I gave him the straight answer: none.
“All that work without landing a single fish?” he said. “I need more gratification than that.”
Good point. We all need gratification. But later, I realized there had to be some reward hidden among all those failed hopes and torn leaders, because we were girding our loins for another seven-mile slog the following morning. Perhaps the reward could be somewhere within Einstein’s definition of madness.
A Pineapple Express is the meteorological term for a savage blast of extreme weather generated by fluctuations in the jet stream above the Hawaiian Islands. Forget technical descriptions of isobars and winds aloft, and think of these storms as displays of nature’s power. Metaphorically, they have much in common with hooking a 15-pound bonefish on a fly rod in adverse terrain—or with a certain white whale that once prowled the ocean not far away. The point is not to conquer these phenomena—as someone learned with that whale—but to recognize them as what they are: reminders that we humans aren’t nearly so omnipotent as we think.
And that it also helps to be a little crazy.
For people who divide their time between homes in Montana and Alaska, Don Thomas and his wife, Lori, have spent a surprising amount of time on tropical flats. Don says he likes doing—or trying to do—things the hard way, and knows he’s fortunate to have a wife and a circle of friends who share these values.
>If You Go
While Hawaii’s flats hold bonefish year-round, the weather is usually best for fly rodders in summer and early fall. This may not be when most of us most need a change to warm weather, but it has the advantage of off-season prices on everything from airlines flights to hotel accommodations.
A number of places around the islands offer flats fishing considerably less difficult and more predictable than the location I’ve described. No matter how much flats experience you’ve had elsewhere, the fishing here is so different that most anglers will do best with a guide. Consider Rob Arita (www.bonefishkauai.com) or Terry Duffield (www.coachduffhawaii.com).
