Wading is the premier way to target bigger bonefish traveling in singles and pairs tight to the shore. The bottom is hard, but you'll need a good pair of wading shoes.

Showed me the bonefishing light is what Reverend Felix Smith did, while introducing me to Andros’ potential. Under the tutelage of this native South Andros, Kemp’s Bay guide my conception of chasing flats ghosts did an about face, escalating from a take it-or-leave it attitude to enlightened convert. In two days I was baptized into the bonefish religion.

On a mid-June morn, the Rev unveiled his plan: Run down Andros’ southeast coast, slip around the tip—where we could hide from a stiff northeasterly breeze—and start searching for massive bonefish schools mudding on Jack Fish flat. As Smith slid between narrow mangrove channels, fishing buddy and wildlife sculptor Paul Baliker and I watched an expansive flats system come into view. Sea-foam green sandy bottom stretched for eternity. Rocky patches studded these shin-deep shallows, relief terrain interrupting current-rippled sands with small coral heads and spider-like outcroppings. “Bonefish paradise” is how Paul summed it up, “without another soul in sight.”

Learning Curves

Easing into a tucked-away bay, Smith shut down and poled the skiff toward shore. Then, he slipped quietly over the gunnel, grabbed a bowline and began walking the skiff along a tidal swash that had cut a groove into the bottom.

“We’re scouting for muds,” the Rev informed us. “Bonefish come onto these flats to spawn in June and gather in huge schools.”

He wasn’t kidding. After spotting a muddy circle 15 yards or so wide, we edged within casting distance and saw bones by the dozens flashing in and out of the moving opaque marl. Paul, a bonefishing vet, unsheathed his 8-weight fly rod, flipped a Crazy Charlie deep into the school, stripped once and got a hit. Not a big bone, but a feisty 2-pounder just the same. He let that fish go, then did it again, again and again. I, on the other hand, had yet to feel a tap on the pink, 1⁄4-ounce skimmer jig that I slowly crawled and hopped across the bottom using spin tackle. Fish parted ways to let my jig pass through.

Baliker’s fourth fish prompted a switch to fly, even though wielding such equipment is not my forté. The bones just weren’t hitting the jig, regardless of presentation. Tying on a pattern called a Bonefish Killer (a variation of the Crazy Charlie), my first cast into the mud found a taker. So did the second, third and fourth. Nothing to this bonefishing I thought. Drop a fly into the school, let it sink to the bottom, take a few 1-inch strips to impart action and strip set on the first slurper. Oh yeah, and remember to get your knuckles clear of fly-reel-handle harm before that first blistering run.

Smith kept us on mud patrol for much of the day, moving around the large island’s southern end. For six hours, we worked Jack Fish, Curley Cut and Water Cay flats, sidestepping stingrays and nurse sharks while firing casts into bonefish schools bursting at the seams with ravenous 11⁄2- to 2-pounders.

The next day Rev announced a strategy change due to a switch in wind direction. Idling off the ramp, Smith nosed his 16-foot skiff into Litttle Creek. We would sight fish singles and pairs instead of muds—a graduation of sorts for me, old hat for Paul. Worming through the creek deep into Andros’ southern core and emerging on its Gulf side, bonefishy habitat stretched everywhere. We whizzed past countless nooks and crannies brimming with mangrove-dotted shores, through narrow coral cuts and over prop-wrecking shallows sheathed by water so clear that they appeared too skinny to run. Smith emerged from the twisting channel into a series of protected flats that faintly resembled waters we worked the day prior except for tighter quarters, more mangrove shoots and countless reef patches.

Pulling into the lee of a wide cove immediately west of where Little Creek dumps into Rock Sound, the skipper instructed us to don wading shoes, fan out and work our way around the cove’s curving circumference. That and not make a sound. Twenty yards up the beach, a silvery glimmer caught my eye and I shot a fly about two feet in front of the wavering glint. No mistaking that charge! A hefty bone struck my fly on the run, blasting off with afterburners firing toward a hump of razor-sharp reef. I tried, but couldn’t turn the hefty fish before it reached the cutoffs, rooster-tailing all the way. At least I got to feel the power of a trophy bone before it parted my line.

Baliker, taking a nearshore track, started racking up releases. Pretty soon he had a dozen 2- to 3-pound Andros flats ghosts to his credit. The preacher’s technique was foolproof: “Spot and ambush bones single-filing it past reef patches speckling the shoreline. Just lead ‘em and feed ’em.”

Fish constantly swam by us as we waded against the outgoing tide toward the back of the cove, offering a shot or two only if you stayed cocked and ready to fire an accurate 30-foot cast at moment’s notice. One lesson I learned quickly was to forget unnecessary false casting. Pick your target and cast pronto with no wasted motion. One fleeting shot was the norm before these alert ghosts of the flats were history.

Later that afternoon, although my tally for the day couldn’t compare to Paul’s at 12 vs. 26, I couldn’t wipe the grin off my face. My first two days of actually catching bonefish was, as Tony the Tiger growls, “Great!” Spotting, intercepting and feeding flies to these silvery flats speedsters had made me a believer.