Meet The $70,000 Fish

For many, catching a bonefish on the fly is tantamount to turning the saltwater flats to holy water

As a fly fisherman, I feel naked when I wade a saltwater flat to cast for bonefish. I try and play the part of motionless heron but nevertheless feel so exposed in the open expanse that it sometimes feels as if I’ll need a 90-foot cast if there’s any hope of hooking a bone before it alerts to me.

Seeing a tailing bonefish (one that is feeding and presumably most receptive to the fly) a great distance off sends me into an intense predatory state, as if I’m a hungry leopard watching a gazelle oblivious to my presence. Initially there is excitement at the prospect of a close encounter. Then I begin calculating the variables that all must align perfectly to place the fish within casting distance. There’s so much ocean out there, I think to myself, some 32 million square miles of Atlantic alone. How vain and ridiculously optimistic to think the lone fish will come exactly my way. As catchers of fish, however, we have forever believed ye shall find more fish on the other side of the boat…or pond, river, lake or flat. We survive on a diet of faith and optimism that there will always be fish willing to dance.

When a fly fisherman hooks a bonefish for the first time, he undergoes a transformation, as if some dormant genes are suddenly awakened, perhaps an atavistic memory from a previous life as an osprey. When I hooked my inaugural bonefish, watching it deform my rod and torture my reel, I wanted to put my trout books and art prints in boxes and start anew. Some convert to Catholicism, others become Methodists and a few evolve from trout streams to become flats fishermen. Once baptized by a bonefish, I never looked upon Montana trout waters quite the same way again.

This isn’t to confess that I still don’t enjoy catching a fat brown on the Yellowstone or a giant rainbow on a tributary to Alaska’s Lake Iliamna, but there is a recalibration of expectations that occurs following an angler’s inaugural exposure to bonefish.

When you grow up in the Great Lakes states or New England where the water is hard half the year, a bonefish flat seems more a dream state than a place to fly fish. Wading barefoot in knee deep bath water with soft sand between your toes sometimes blurs the line between a spa date and fishing. Stand in a flat and study the surroundings, however, and you quickly realize what a savage environment you’ve immersed yourself, all manner of sharks, barracudas and needlefish cruising the neighborhood looking for a distressed sale. All of them have bonefish on their menus, so the vulpes clan are survivors, the genetically superior members of an ancient species made faster and stronger thanks to an ecosystem top-heavy with predators. 

When a bonefish is hooked, then, it’s as if a thousand years of evolution flashes through its primitive brain. The genetic memory of every terror a bonefish has ever experienced electrifies its reaction, combining flight and fight into one nervous system reaction to scram as quickly as its design will allow. You aren’t catching just a fish, but rather are harnessing an evolutionary marvel that has achieved perfection in its ecological niche, like Cindy Crawford in her prime.

Yet as wondrous and tenacious as a bonefish is, it is surprisingly vulnerable as well. Because they exhaust so much of their strength during a fight with an angler, they leave a chemical trail that might as well be blood in the water for sharks. The currents betray the released bones, casting their scent across the flats whereby sharks detect it and follow the fish like a blood hound tracks a prison escapee. As anglers, we now know to release the fish quickly, keeping them in the water as we do it which greatly improves their survivability.  

The other weakness of the species is that they favor places preferred by man, coastline that a developer looks upon and sees resorts and condominiums, sandy beaches and marinas…dollars, many of them. The bonefish was once the lure that brought thousands of anglers to Florida each year, the fishermen becoming obsessed with angling for the species. They came in droves, infusing the state’s economy with hundreds of millions of dollars annually. As blue herons were replaced by construction cranes, however, the flats nurseries so important to billions of dollars of fish and shellfish gave way to development.

Thanks to the efforts of a small group of citizen conservationists and the scientists they support—an organization called the Bonefish & Tarpon Trust—south Florida and the rest of the Caribbean are coming to realize the value of these delicate environments…to both fish and people. While there is no turning back the clock on the Florida coastline, what has happened there is a cautionary tale to other nations that have been privy to BTT’s ongoing research.

In one Florida study, each bonefish was valued at $3,500 annually or more than $70,000 over the 20-year average lifespan of a bonefish—the worth derived from the median expenditure of visiting bonefish anglers. What Florida and much of the Caribbean is sitting on, then, is nothing short of a piscatorial gold mine…if they don’t sacrifice long-term sustainability for short term profits. Fundamentally, it’s the same question facing conservation the world over.

Ostensibly we wade a flat to catch bonefish but, in reality, they are the ones who so often hook us. How do you calculate such value? For me and thousands of other anglers and conservationists, I know that I do not want to live in a world without bonefish and the places they call home. To lose them would be a sacrifice we’re simply unwilling to make.