I got the phone call from Clint our lodge manager on Monday that the weekend looked perfect for tides and weather. I quickly assembled a crew and had the flights booked by dinnertime, we’d fly out Friday and come back that Monday leaving us two days to fish the bluewater and flats surrounding Abaco. On my previous two trips the weather was rather challenging and this past weekend made up for it. I don’t think we had a gust over 5 knots the entire weekend and the cloudless blue bird skies made for perfect sight fishing conditions.
On Saturday we drifted around hole in the wall pulling on snapper, grouper, sharks and anything else you can imagine which made for a great afternoon and produced some great eats for the next two days.
On Sunday we launched the skiff around 10 and started poling the mangroves while waiting on the tide to drop. We hooked our first bone around 10:30 and had a few more shots shortly after but did not connect. Around 1 we had a perfect falling tide to take a look for permit and after a short ride we found a ray holding two permit. I proceeded to show these fish every permit fly in the box and got some close follows and a few looks but no dice… permit fishing. Before abandoning the permit we decided to toss a rabbit bonefish jig on a spin rod and worked it right into the fish’s line of sight. All in one motion he ate the jig and began emptying the 2500 size reel. In a moment of disbelief I hustled off the platform and before I could rack up the push pole and start the engine the hook pulled…permit fishing. After a couple beers and a few what if’s we started the bonefish search again and my friend Andrew was able to land his first bonefish on fly. We found a pocket of shallow water back in the mangroves that was loaded with tailing fish and after working them for a while it was time to make our way back to the ramp. We had a wonderful day fishing the flats of west Abaco and it was a great ending to a short, but sweet trip down to the lodge.
On a side note I put together some footage from a few previous trips to make this new short video The Boneyard
Enjoy!
The Boneyard from Austin Bacon on Vimeo.
