Bonefish / bonefish leaders

From David Bass. My comments in article text in bold red italics. Some really controvesial stuff, here !

IF YOU GO

• To book a bonefish trip with captain Jorge Valverde, visit lowplacesguideservice.com or call 954-822-0647.

Captain Jorge Valverde is not typical of South Florida bonefish guides. This 14-year veteran from Cooper City guides customers to plenty of bones -- including really big ones -- in Biscayne and Florida Bays, but he does this in unconventional ways.

I have found the same thing in Biscayne Bay. NEVER in water that cold in the Bahamas or the Keys, however. Pop Hill took one on New Years Day in Biscayne Bay with water even colder.

Upper temp. here in the Keys, in my experience, is 92 degrees. (In Sept. I've found flats water at 105 degrees. No bones or permit, then. Only sharks and an occasional tarpon. ) G.

Contrary as this sounds, Capt. Harry Snow Sr. of the Fl. Keys used wire leader for bones many years ago, even as a bite tippet on fly tackle ... because of the many barracuda in those days ! (Another factor is that there were exponentially higher numbers of bonefish, then.) G.

I love these tailers ! Trick is to use a fly which gets right down to bottom so your retrieve "puffs" the sand. G.

''There can be 20 boats out here and I'll never be around another boat,'' Valverde remarked as he poled a flat in south Biscayne Bay recently. 'The only reason I ever realized I did anything weird is because people would ask, `Why are we fishing here?' I have a gut feeling. Bonefish follow their own rules.''

Valverde said the only constant about the species' code of conduct is that it is ever-changing, and guides have to roll with it or else they won't be able to find the fish consistently.

For example, on a recent day of gusty easterly winds, Valverde insisted on poling the flats about 50 yards off the west shoreline in south Biscayne Bay for several hours, despite a falling tide. Schools of bonefish swam by at regular intervals, but were difficult to spot between the mottled bottom and foamy surface.

I managed to catch and release two -- one weighing 8 pounds, the other 7 -- casting live shrimp with 10-pound braided line with 20-pound fluorocarbon leader. I never saw the fish I caught -- just a surface ripple, known to flats anglers as ''nervous water'' -- and tossed the shrimp in the general vicinity. In both cases, I didn't know I had the fish until it had eaten the shrimp and turned away to launch the typical drag-screaming flight for which the species is famous. Valverde netted the fish, inserted tags from the University of Miami/BonefishTarpon Unlimited research program and let them go.

Instead of berating me for my delayed reaction, Valverde said, ``I never set a hook in a bonefish. They set themselves.''

We spotted several more fleeing schools in the same area, but didn't manage to hook any. Valverde said it is unusual to be able to ply the shallows for such an extended period, but the strong easterly wind was keeping the tide from dropping off the flats. He kept his skiff just far enough from the shoreline to maintain the one-to-two-foot depth where the bonefish were pouring through. The water temperature was 71 degrees.

Finally, the tide dropped out of the area; the bonefish disappeared and Valverde decided to relocate south to Cutter Bank. He said the warming water -- not the tidal drop -- drove the fish from the area.

Said Valverde: ``I like water temperatures in the mid-60s. January and February are when we get our biggest fish. Conventional wisdom is it should be above 70. I've caught them as hot as 92, but they're harder to feed and they die easier.''

The guide explained his theory that consistency, rather than degrees of mercury, are what hold bonefish in a particular spot.

''If it's been cold for five or six days, and the average [water] temperature is 63, that's stable. That's what the fish have become accustomed to,'' he said. ``If it suddenly warms up to 68, you won't find them there. It's like, if you were in air-conditioning all day and you walked out into 90 degrees, where would you want to be?''

When I asked him about his unconventional use of wire leader, he explained that he rigs it for novice customers unskilled in catching bonefish so they can cast to the more forgiving -- but razor-toothed -- barracuda that share the flats. He soon found it worked on bonefish.

''I don't use split shots because the sound scares [bonefish],'' he said. ``Wire acts like a split shot. It's on the bottom and not moving.''

''For casting distance, and you can put more pressure. It's better for the fish because the faster you get them in, the less stress on the fish,'' he said. ``Unless you use 12-pound mono, you're going to lose 30 percent of your fish because they will run and look for structure on the bottom to break off on.''

His statement recalled a small bonefish I hooked several years ago on the oceanside flats of Islamorada, which dived to the sandy bottom, desperately trying to saw off the hook in its jaw. And how many anglers can remember bones lost to mangrove roots and trap lines? Those were not random accidents.

Valverde surprised me when he related misgivings about erratically-tailing fish -- especially with a fly-fishing customer.

''When they are having erratic movements -- charging and darting -- they're feeding on something buried in the dirt,'' he said. ``They're feeding on something you can't mimic. That happens a lot in the summer.''

Valverde prefers to see languid tailers swimming along with their tails and dorsal fins barely breaking the surface. And his approach to the flats is on the up-current side, where he said he sees more fish. His friend and frequent fishing companion, Mike Dmytriw, confirmed this.

''We had just gotten to a flat and we saw another guide leaving,'' Dmytriw said. ``Two minutes later, we had a wall of bonefish coming toward us.''

For large bonefish, I prefer and 8 wt. outfit with a clear intermediate tip line. For most fishing, I use a 10' to 14' tapered leader the butt section of which is soft 50lb. mono. I taper to 20 lb. and put a small loop in the end. To this I attach by loop-to-loop technique my class tippet. (10 to 12 lb. test). This fluorocarbon class tippet is about 24 - 30" long and is fastened to the hook with a Lefty Kreh non-slip loop.

For small Bahamian or Central American bones, I prefer a 4 wt. outfit with a much lighter leader assembly of the same general design. My class tippet is typically 4 lb. to 6 lb. nylon mono.