We hear it all the time and it’s always worth repeating: you’ll enjoy your next bonefishing trip about 100% more (particularly the first few days) if you spend some time working on your casting before you go. Here’s casting wizard Tim Rajeff with a few tips on making sure you get out of the blocks quickly on your next salty adventure…

Black Fly Lodge, Abaco, Bahamas. This is what permit fishing is all about. Right out of the textbook…

Ladies and gents, it quite simply does not get better than this. Can’t tell you a whole lot about this video, other than the fact that it’s shot in the Bahamas and is 30 seconds long. What we do know is that it features one of the sweetest moments available in any angler’s life – a big school of bones bearing down on you on a remote flat. I can feel myself blowing the cast from the comfort of my own office…

The problem with running a site like Fishipedia is that you’re constantly bombarded with reminders of all the places you want to fish and haven’t got around to yet. One such location that keeps cropping up is Matlacha, Florida.

Regulars visitors to the blog will know that we have a resident columnist (Gregg McKee of Wildfly Charters) who drops in every month or so with a report from Matlacha and the Pine Island area, and his tales of redfish, speckled trout and top-drawer tarpon action are usually enough to have us checking (once again) when the next flight to Miami leaves.

Then we stumbled across this video from the folks at Salty Shores the other day and it all started again. Seriously, this sounds like our kind of place:

A few months ago, I received a very kind invitation from the Auvergne Tourism Office in France to fly out and sample some of the fly-fishing in their remote volcanic streams and lakes. They pretty much had me at “wild trout”,  but the words “volcanic” and “untouched” were all I needed to confirm that, yes, I was very much interested. Well, the months have rolled by and there’s now just two weeks before I head off. Excited would be an understatement.

I don’t mind admitting that, prior to the invitation, my knowledge of the area was pretty much non-existent. I know there are some exquisite – if very difficult – trout rivers in Brittany, Normandy and the Loire. I’m aware of the monster catfish that lurk in the country’s rivers and the leviathan carp of lakes like Cassien that have bewitched and befuddled generations of anglers. More recently I’ve become obsessed with the prospect of chasing bass off the coast of Brittany (a pursuit in which the French truly excel). But as far as the Auvergne region went, I had nothing to offer.

But the more I looked into it, the more surprising that seemed. After all, this oft-overlooked region in the centre of France has just about everything going for it. Just do a Google images search and you’ll see what I mean. Traditional French hamlets, long-extinct forest-clad volcanoes, sweeping valleys lined with winding streams and rivers, and lakes that seldom see walkers, let alone fishermen – and of course, the promise of those wild fish.

I wondered how the French had managed to keep this place a secret for so long, and how fortunate I was to have been offered the opportunity to see what what it had to offer. So as you can imagine, I’m just a little bit excited about the prospect of getting out there.

You can expect regular blog updates while I’m there and a full report on my return. In the meantime, I’ll be watching the clock until my flight takes off…

Rory Batho

Kabooooooom! This kind of fish comes along once in a blue moon – and even then, you tend to think that whatever can go wrong, will go wrong.

Fortunately the planets aligned for Captain Joe Gonzalez and Peter Miller when this 12lb bonefish hoved into view. Just look at the shoulders on that girl:

Captain Greg Rahe, guide and owner of Club Grand Slam on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, on what happens at his lodge when the permit won’t play ball…

Time for Plan B!

What do permit anglers do when the weather gets ugly and the permit fishing is off? They head to the backcountry and wail on snook and tarpon. It started on day one, with high winds and dark skies, and then took on a life of its own. The first group had so much fun, they came back to the lodge with stories of bush whacking in the mangroves, and everybody wanted to get into the action. It seemed that every new group, upon hearing stories of a fabled 100lb snook, wanted to spend a day or two or the whole week exploring the backcountry.

Ascension Bay is known best for its wading flats and big schools of bonefish and permit. However, ringing the bay are approximately 200 square miles of hidden mangrove passageways and large green rooms full of snook and tarpon. These areas rarely see anglers, and we have spent the last six years intently mapping them with GPS and Google Earth.

April was a tremendous month here in Punta Allen, and Ascension Bay. Our final tally was 357 bonefish to 8lbs, 47 tarpon to 60lbs, 34 snook to 40lbs, 8 permit to 25lbs. Four Grand slams… yee haa!  And a whole lotta anglers imbibing Lupita’s margaritas in the late afternoon.

Captain Greg Rahe is the co-owner of Club Grand Slam in Punta Allen, on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. Click here to find out more about the lodge

Looking at the picture above, at first glance you could be forgiven for thinking it was the Bahamas or the Keys. It’s actually Lake Michigan. And that broken line of dark shapes just to to the left of the angler? Carp.

That’s right – May to August is prime time for sight-fishing the “golden bonefish” on the Great Lakes. And if you still haven’t worked out why people can’t get enough of these freshwater bruisers, might we point you in the direction of this video: 

Not sure exactly why, but videos featuring redfish seem to consistently be up there among the best ones around. Perhaps reds are more obliging than, say, bonefish. Perhaps it’s that they’re a little more aggressive and can sometimes be agitated into feeding. Whatever it is, we’re always happy to see a new one, and this doesn’t disappoint…

I was recently fortunate enough to travel to Nassau for business and, after some strategic date juggling, managed to sneak a couple of days’ fishing onto the back end of the trip. Work out of the way, I headed to Swain’s Cay Lodge on Mangrove Cay, located between the Middle and South Bights of Andros Island, a 20-minute flight from Nassau. Catching the 7am flight had me in the lodge in time for breakfast.

Swain’s Cay has a bonefish flat right off the beach from the lodge so I elected to fish without a guide on my first day. I checked the tide table the lodge had left on my bed and relaxed until just after low tide which was about midday. Rigged up and ready to fish I strolled out to the flat an hour after the low, cutting in towards the Cay until I reached the flat and then waded parallel to shore until I reached the deeper water. From here I aimed diagonally to shore, towards the yellow house. It wasn’t long before I saw my first bonefish, a school of about 10 big fish, but they were moving quickly and I barely got a cast in the air before they vanished. A reminder of how frustrating these fish can be! The afternoon gave me a couple of shots at some very big, dark-coloured oceanic bonefish but I couldn’t get a take. Anyway, I was nicely warmed up for my guided days!

Swain’s Cay Lodge was pretty much full when I was there so by late afternoon anglers who had been out with the guides returned to the lodge with tales of fish caught, fish lost and general fishy adventures. A good crowd, the beers flowed and the conversation was joyous. Not too many beers for me though, I was gonna catch some bonefish tomorrow…

The next day I went out with Alvin Greene, who I’d fished with many times before. Alvin is an excellent independent guide, one of the best there is, and we headed West through the Middle Bight. Our first stop produced a couple of shots, but still no takes. Same with the second spot. Not to worry, it was still early, surely this wasn’t going to be a bad day? Alvin then took us further West, to the North shore of the Middle Bight, just before you head out of the Bight, to a creek mouth. Jackpot! This is where the fish were, in droves.

First cast, we were in. And we didn’t stop, with constant action for about three hours. There were so many fish around that Alvin called over one of the other Swain’s boats who we could see in the distance so they could join in the fun. In all I landed 16 bonefish, average size about 4lb-5lb, lost a couple to sharks (sorry bonefish) and lost about 10 more to mangrove roots, snapped leaders, bad luck etc. It was one of those rare moments when you’re actually not sure which group of fish to cast to, the ones at 10 o’clock, 12 o’clock or 2 o’clock! Eventually the fish moved too far into the mangroves with the tide so that they were unfishable, but boy was that a fun few hours.

The next day Alvin and I decided to head to the West Side of Andros, the wild uninhabited side of the island, and the home of monster-sized fish. We left at 7am to get an early start for the 45-minute run through the Middle and North Bights. Our target destination was the mouth at Cabbage Creek, north of the North Bight West Side entrance.

Well, that early start paid off. We had our first fish landed by 8:15am, a lovely bone of 6lb. Two more fish followed in fairly quick succession, each one bigger than the previous with the largest about 8lb. I also missed shots at some very big fish, at least 10lb+. But then the action stopped, as if someone hit a switch and the bonefish vanished, just like that. We scoured the flat and eventually headed into the creek, assuming the fish had followed the rising tide, but didn’t see a single fish. Just about every other fishy species was around, an abundance of sharks, cudas and rays, but no bonefish. Where the hell had they gone?

We were close to giving up and going back into the North Bight but made a short diversion to a mangrove zone at the point of the creek mouth. This was immediately rewarded with a few fish sighted, but we were in the open wind and casting was challenging to say the least. We persevered and poled around a big clump of mangrove and suddenly saw, there before us, the largest concentration of bonefish I have ever seen. No exaggeration, there were hundreds if not thousands of fish schooled up together so thick that it looked liked like a trout farm! Alvin almost dropped his pole and I almost dropped my rod in awe. Wow.

Quickly regaining our composure I shot a cast into the school which parted as if I’d thrown in a stone. Two long strips though and they were fighting over my fly, we were away again. Each fish we caught forced the school further into the mangrove though, until again you just couldn’t fish for them. Time to stop for lunch and see if they would emerge again.

They didn’t come out by the time we’d eaten so we poled further into the mangrove to try and scare them out for the other boat that had travelled west with us. This proved a successful strategy as one of the guys on the other boat landed a lovely fish as the school came shooting out towards them.

So what a great couple of days fishing and a very worthwhile trip to Mangrove Cay that proved to be! Andros really has got to be the best place in the world to fish for bonefish. Swain’s Cay Lodge is such a convenient spot for fishing any of the Bights that I would recommend it to anyone who wants to catch big bonefish. The guides are superb, the company usually great fun and the rooms are extremely comfortable. Next time, I’m coming back for at least a week!

>> Both Swain’s Cay Lodge and Alvin Greene are listed on this website.