My first experience with Bonefishing

[Bill Kiene semi-retired]

In the 1970s I had a small fly shop here in Sacramento, The Fly Hutch, which was the first fly fishing only shop in town. We had not been fishing for Bonefish but had read a great deal about it in magazines and books.

I had a customer, Greg Joy, come in from Placerville and he was going to Belize on a scuba diving trip with a group of divers.

He was interested in catching a Bonefish which he had read about in the fishing magazines.

I wrote a letter to Lefty Kreh asking him fro some advise here. Lefty sent me a reply with 3 Bonefish flies in the envelope. Joe Shirshac tied up some of these flies for us.

Greg built up a 9' #9 weight 2 piece fiberglass fly rod from a Lamiglas blank we got him and put on a large Pflueger Medalist fly reel with a WF9F line.

On returning from the trip Greg reported to us that there was a local fisherman on the island who knew about the habits of the Bonefish. The local fisherman took him to an area that was shallow when the tide was coming in and there were lots of Bonefish.

He said that the flies he had with him did not work that well but they did see that there were red crabs on those flats. Greg took pieces of a red bandanna and tied them around the flies and that worked like magic.

It was my first experience with outfitting someone for Bonefish and it worked out....cool.

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[Pete]

Great story Bill - thanks for sharing. I would love to have those flies that Joe tied up in a shadow box hanging on the wall.