The cast is laid in front, presenting the fly in position to be pulled away as if escaping. When all is right, the fish is spotted at distance. The beauty of this is the most difficult of fish to see-must be seen to be caught. The real excitement is the never-ending surprise as the sun, the sand, the eye, and the mind suddenly conspire to give you a glimpse of the ghost. The practiced eye eventually begins to discern the fish as it moves slowly in its quest and scanning the bottom it’s easy to be looking at a fish and not seeing it. The mirror silver of the bonefish perfectly reflects the colors that surround it. Walking in water that laps at your knees, you search for movement and shadows. The water moves on and off the flats with the tide and the fish move with it in search of the billions of tiny crustaceans that inhabit the flats. You are as much the predator as the lemon shark that glides effortlessly across the sandy ridges, then explodes in a cloud of sand when startled. To wade is to become part and parcel of the fish’s universe.
Though fishing the flats from the bow of a flats boat is a good day in anyone’s life, to wade a flat is a day long remembered when days on boats run together. There is great incentive for those who love the sudden stretch of a fly line, but it’s finding ourselves in a world so beautiful as to defy description and so teeming with life that the wondrous becomes commonplace. Even stripers can be caught in the Northeast wading on sand flats.
Every angler should at some time in their lives spend a day wading a flat in search of bonefish, redfish or other flats species.
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