How to Hookset Bonefish from a Skiff
Bonefish really are fascinating creatures. Their lifestyle, their spawning habits ( only recently discovered and ongoing ) , their development from egg to adult, look up leptocephalus ! Sounds nasty I know and you would think requires a jab of penicillin but not so. Seriously, look it up !! it is worth it. fascinating stuff.
So just as fascinating as the above, this interest also extends into the techniques used for their capture on fly. Of the many different requirements there is one aspect of the ' catching ' procedure that is often overlooked or at best, under discussed. The overshadowing of the more popular casting requirements often override other aspects that are equally necessary to be successful. So don't get too caught up in the more visually pleasing aspects of your casting technique and render proportionately too much significance at making lovely tight loops or mastering the double haul. There is far more to it than that and some of the best anglers i know are not necessarily the best or prettiest casters but they know exactly what to do once that fly touches down. They know that the bonefish really do not look at the tightness of ones loop before deciding to eat their offering. So assuming that you now have a bonefish zeroing in on your fly what should be going through your mind at that exact moment ?
Of course as a principal method you would be advised to always adopt the general technique of a strip strike as your go to yet that would still not accurately answer what should be going through the anglers thought process at the moment that bonefish reaches their fly. Being equipped with the knowledge they need to strip strike is a great start and 100 % necessary. so it's not a matter of what to do but when to do it and that is what should be front and center. so when should the angler strip strike ? The answer of ' when they feel the fish ' would be accurate in part but far from being the best answer. If the thought process to set the hook is first based on ' when they feel the fish ' then that angler will miss as many fish if not more than he will hook. Remember at times from a boat you have to contend with slack. The dreaded anti-christ of all things flats fishing. Slack was created by the devil himself !! So when fishing from a skiff for bones anglers need to develop reactions based on the visual indicators first and then rely on the feel as their secondary bite indicator. Of course if the feel comes first then they react but going in blind at that moment their thought process should be first on the visual and adjust from there.
Lets play out a typical scenario…
The cast is made and the bonefish charges your fly. it stops. There are only 2 reasons a bonefish charges your fly and suddenly stops. One is to eat your fly and the other is to refuse your fly. So if we use the primary bite indicator as the fish stopping ( whether you feel it or not ) then you will hook 2 or 3 times as many bonefish as you would if you always wait to feel the fish. Not only that you will also increase your chances of hooking that fish whose reason for stopping was to refuse your fly. So imagine that when that fish stopped to refuse your fly you assume he has it and make a long strip strike to set the hook then there is a good possibility that the sudden reanimation of your fly will induce that bonefish to take. So, when fishing from a flats skiff ( and even wading at times ) if you set the hook when you see that fish stop you will hook it or induce it to take if it has not. Therefore there is no downside to setting the hook when the fish stops. So anglers should get away from putting themselves into positions that they ' hope ' will pan out and are better to take control and put themselves in a position to better control the outcome through their own actions. they should not just wait for that the fish to provide all the indicators. Sometimes, and more often than you think, you as the angler need to generate the result yourself. make decisions, even if wrong they will benefit you in the long run.
Therefore setting the hook with your eyes is a better option for an angler than only using their fingers and that is what should be going through their mind at the moment of truth.