Biscayne Bay Bonefish

Miami Bonefish

Mark Strickland from Arizona joined me for a full day of fishing on Friday August 7th. We decided to start at 7:00am and I had hoped the wind would die down before the morning started. I had to re-rig most rods because the previous trip was targeting large Barracuda and Sharks on the flats. When I checked the NOAA weather buoy at midnight after rigging the rods for Permit and Bonefish, I knew the 21knot reading was no good knowing we had 7 hours to go before the first Shrimp was cast off the deck. All you can do is make the best of it…

With this heat, the summer shrimp have not even resembled the normal size. I bought 5 dozen shrimp that looked like the “Sea Monkeys” I used to order out the back of my Aqua Man Magazine. What does a guide do with Sea Monkeys? Buy another 3 dozen from a different bait shop in hopes to find a few that are DOA sized and plan on making Bonefish Boogers with the rest.

We hit our first spot early in the morning and we found a few schools of large bonefish pushing along their normal track for this flat. Unfortunately, we were not able to get a hook-up. On to the next flat we found nothing but sharks cruising in mere inches of water… so low that I knew we would be hard pressed to find any bonefish or Permit and decided to move on. The 12-14mph wind we were experiencing was gradually picking up and I could tell the morning calm was over and we would soon be in 20mph winds. We took off for another area with no shots on the second flat.

We came in the front side of what I call the Bahamas Flat and scooted along the mangrove shoreline. Nothing! I headed out to the middle of the flat with a full moon incoming tide blazing across the flat and staked off. A little shrimp chum goes a long way with fast moving current and soon we had Bonefish all around the boat. 2 hours later and we had boated 7 small Bonefish, several Bonnet Head Sharks, Bar Jack and one humongous Box Fish, which Mark thought was pretty interesting. I was hoping some large bones would get chummed in for Mark but we made up for size in numbers. Not many anglers catch 7 Bonefish in Miami’s Biscayne Bay. Not only did we catch 7 but we lost another 5 so there was some pretty good action and I noticed Mark laughing at a double header and how fast the rods started going off. I was happy and Mark can now add Bonefish to his repertoire of caught fish.

Later in the day, we found a very large school of Aresenicker Bonefish, but trying to get a good distance cast into the 20mph winds with “summer shrimp” was as hard as Hugh Hefner on Viagra.

All in all we made the best of a day that the weather man was calling for 5-10 and Mark Strickland was as nice as they come.

Your Bonefish Guide,

Capt Tom Weber
Florida Native Charters
www.floridanativecharters.com
tom.weber@floridanativecharters.com
(954) 536-6646