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Abaco Report

2K views 4 replies 5 participants last post by  mdbones 
#1 ·
The wife and I spent 10 days on Abaco, staying in Treasure Cay. (My way of showing her how "glamorous" bonefishing really is. She suspected my past trips were spent catching tons fish, laying on the beach, being served rum drinks by local native gals and simutaneously being fanned with palm branches. (NOT). The bonefishing game is a rough and tumble adventure. At any rate here's the deal:
FISHING: Fished 4 days with Marty Sawyer out of Cherokee. 1st low tide was 5:30 AM. This worked well for the trip. Adding approx 1 hour a day to low tide time made leaving the dock at the right time easy to calculate and to maximize ambushing the little buggers as they headed in to feed in the mangrove. Had more shots than we could count. Fish were numerous, but often followed then turned away from the fly....frustrating. saw a 10lbr , but alas, no shot. Took a couple of 4lbr's everday, but nothing like my best days on Cherokee (12-20 to the boat). A Puffer absolutely crushed one one of my flys....man ...dont get a finger inside one of their mouths. Try bending a #6
Mustad barb into the body of a fly by hand and you'll see what I am talking about. Strong little devils. We fished about 5 or 6 hours each day, after which the Mangrove was flooded, hence the rest of the day, if we stayed out longer was nothing more that a boat ride ...I opted to come back in and slug down a few cold beers. OBSERVATION: When I began bonefishing I was concerned that I would be on the water 8 HOURS A DAY or I was not getting my moneys worth. I guess that it is possible if you fish a large area and follow the tide in. In more confined areas (Cherokee)....its just a boat ride after the bones make into the mangrove. This may be obvious to the more experience among you reading this, but I took the timing of the tide and the flooding of the mangrove as my number one lessons learned.

LODGING: Stay at the Ocean Harmony House in Treasure Cay, just steps from the #1 beach in the world. 1st class all the way and the guy threw in a golf cart for free.....grocery runs, beer runs, hitting the Coco beach bar and so on.
TRAVEL: Nightmare. 6 hour delay out of Miami....rental cars places closed upon arrival hence resulting in a few very expensive cab rides. Thanks American Airlines.....I will make it a point never to fly AA again. Oh, did I mention that when we finally departed for marsh harbor the cabin filled with smoke from the AC system ? Nice touch. AA, doing what they do best !!!!

All in all , just another bonfish adventure...me thinks I'l be heading to Andros next spring...Glatos club has some great deals both single and double occupancy. Fished the Andros Bonefish Club a few years ago....but never again....expensive and snobish (MY personal opinion).
 
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#3 ·
Those follows, aka 'sophistocated refusals' are becoming common on Andros, too. I think there's some sort of long-term memory setting in, at least wrt commonly-used flies. It makes it more fun for folks willing to experiment, but I see a lot of guide and sport frustration.

JusBones, let me know if I can help with Andros. I spend a lot of time there at the AUTEC base.
 
#5 ·
Mangrove Bonefish

I Have observed the same thing when fishing the back side of Grand Bahama - Once the flood tide is in the Bonefish are deep in the bushes and hard to get shots at. It seems as if the guides were content to pole the shorline which was undoubtedly barren since the fish were eating crabs deep in the Mangroves. I generally accepted that the fish were just not accesible during this stage of the tide.

That all changed when I fished for a couple of Days with Bonefish Joe on HI a couple of years back. The tide came in and the same thing happened - except this time he cranked up the boat and headed for an outside flat on one of the Cay's to the North of Town. We had multiple shots through the first quarter of the falling tide on a small sandy flat that was on the backside of the Cay. He then fired the boat back up and headed back into the Mangroves where we caught multiple fish as the came out of the creeks with the falling tide.


Since then I have found that if I work the guide hard enough I can usually get them to run a couple of miles towards the outside of the mangrove forests during this deadtime. We usually have a higher degree of success looking for isolated high spots that but up to deep water. Once the tide stats to fall we usually head back into the Mangrove flats again and hit them as the move back out of the Mangroves.

Of course it seems like this tactic gets less and less traction as the price of Gas goes up.

Mike
 
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