Fool’s paradise
Darrell Hartman joins a group of middle-aged fly-fishers in search of bonefish in the Bahamas, where the pressures of life back home sharpen the bonds between them
I’M UP at dawn and happy about it, which can only mean one thing: I’m going fishing. But this is not one of the woodsy angling outings I’m used to. The air coming in through the window feels rich and sticky. Squat coconut palms nod in the morning breeze. Ah, yes. I’m in the Bahamas. I’m here as part of a promising group of middle-aged men, in pursuit of bonefish.
We emerge one by one from conjoined apartments and onto a screened patio, coffee mugs in hand. Grayish hair flecks our jowls, but our eyes are sparkling. We exchange spirited good-mornings. Someone mentions sunrise yoga, eliciting chuckles.
The peace is unbroken by the sound of showers running. The smell of frying sausage has driven David, our organizer, out of his humble suite and into the narrow common area, where he busies himself examining fly-boxes and predicting which of their contents the guides will approve. We’ve been advised that crab patterns don’t work here, so we’ve brought shrimp imitations only, in shades of white, pink, brown, and orange. Plenty of Pink Puffs and Crazy Charlies, and no lead eyes, because the flats are too shallow for them.
A healthy selection for the shallows — with lighter bead-chain eyes rather than lead.
I think of my own 86-year-old father, who believes that fishing trips give a man carte blanche to eat meat out of cans
Daubing SPF 50 onto his beard and forehead, David waxes philosophical: “You know you’ve reached a certain age when people stop telling you that you’ve got a big smear of sunblock on your face.”
“That’s how I remember my father looking,” Markley says, stepping onto the patio with a plate of the dubious-looking breakfast patties that drove David out of his room ten minutes earlier.
A fastidious eater back in New York, Markley has entered camp mode. I think of my own 86-year-old father, who believes that fishing trips give a man carte blanche to eat meat out of cans, and realize that I’m now the age that Dad was when he started trying to impart this wisdom to me. Forty or so years later, I’m still not fully on board. Like the rest of the group, I stick to scrambled eggs for now.
We’re not here for fine dining anyway, are we? Or for a luxury experience. Not that those things are foreign — at least half of us are members of private clubs with dress codes, and used to flying business. Some are spendier than others, though, and David, to his credit, has convinced all of us to shack up in a cement-block building that smells like bleach and has no amenities. This is not the Caribbean vacation that most people dream of. Spa? Ha! The place lacks so much as a kiddie pool.
Ready for action!
Make-do lunches prepared.
And yet the lodge suits our needs so perfectly that David has asked me not to reveal its name or location. (I’ve creatively renamed our guides for good measure.) We’ve got the six-bedroom housing unit to ourselves, which is by design. The owner lives down the road; his wife cooks and delivers dinner. We’re paying for cheap mattresses, simple sustenance, and the guides who will pick us up each morning at the end of the patchy lawn and whisk us away to the inshore flats, some of which are just ten minutes away.
We don quick-dry shirts and trousers, wipe polarized lenses clean, and rummage through duffle bags, pouches, waterproof slings, and rod tubes as the day brightens. I test the zippers of the neoprene booties that I’ll be stalking the flats in. David has debriefed our group the night before, mainly for the benefit of the two guys who are new to bonefishing. I’ve done it once, in Belize, but that was casting into big schools from a boat — beginner stuff. Here we’ll be targeting small gangs, pairs, or even singles as they cruise through the flats or root around on the bottom.
Sharp eyes and stealth are key, David says. Hook a bonefish and they’ll tear out line at 20mph. But they’re nervous buggers that spook easily, and their edginess can be contagious. The margin for error is slim; afternoon winds are guaranteed. “You will make a fool of yourself,” David assures us. Here’s hoping we achieve something to be proud of, too.
It's on it… strip, strip, stop!
The knot I tied last night, after three glugs of Caribbean dark rum, has failed abjectly
Markley and I are assigned to the top guide, a lean veteran named Winston, who offers a muffled greeting from behind his neck gaiter before motoring us through a low-slung landscape of sea, sand, and mangroves.
The sun is shining, which bodes well for visibility, and the light breeze ruffling the surface should also work in our favor. The bottom feels reassuringly hard against my feet. We fan out and advance slowly, squinting like gunslingers in a Sergio Leone western as we scan the knee-deep water for the faintest of moving shadows.
Winston, walking an arm’s length ahead of me, is the first to spot one. He stops cold and points straight ahead. “Two bonefish coming,” he murmurs. Seconds later, I see the dark shapes ghosting, as immaterial as a light effect. I make the straightforward cast, strip, feel a brief tug, then nothing.
What happened? I reel up to inspect the line. It terminates not with a fly but with a bare pigtail of monofilament. The knot I tied last night, after three glugs of Caribbean dark rum, has failed abjectly. Ding! The fool has punched in early. Winston wordlessly ties another fly on for me. We see no other fish on this flat or the next one.
Markley, who casts beautifully and fishes with stork-like poise, lands one on the third flat, just before lunchtime. I watch him grinning to himself as he lets it go, then notice five or six feeders heading my way. I cast my fly ten feet ahead of the pack, see a fish dart at it, and feel the pull.
My line races off the reel, making a tearing sound as it slices through the water.
This time the knot holds, and I reel in a two-pound bonefish with a tapered snout and slightly rounded chrome flanks. It’s a changed day that I release this little silver torpedo into. Now I’ve got the smell of fish on my hands, and some of the electricity that was pulsing up the line moments ago is radiating inside of me.
Off grid in body, but not mind.
Back at the lodge that afternoon, we hose off and hang-dry our gear. The three guys I know in this group — four, including me — practice emotional restraint and prize cultural originality back home. Yet here we are, clapping each other on the back and cranking Bob Marley. The profound uncoolness of it bothers no one. The part of our brains that would care is snoozing.
Cold beer out of the bottle tastes like a drink of the gods. And as with the fishing, we’ve just started to tap into our allotment. So much of it remains that you can forget, for a moment, that it will have to end at some point.
The phones that we’ve ignored on the water are alive with messages. Some of these tug at us more than they would have a decade ago, when things felt lighter. We check in with kids and partners. Not all the news is good. A girlfriend’s father is in the emergency room. A teenage son’s car got stolen. Part of you is glad not to be there, but part of you feels you should be. Here on the patio, one guy’s troubles are shared with five. The group commiserates and then the conversation drifts to other subjects, mostly fishing.
Part of you is glad not to be there, but part of you feels you should be
Tropical energy – pick and go bananas.
The other house on the property is just within yelling distance and sleeps two. One of its occupants hobbles over and lets himself in through our screen door. He’s pulling on a cigarette — his millionth, from the looks of him — and wearing sunglasses. “So, how many did y’all catch?”
Our eyes wander uncomfortably. It’s not that we’re not counting; we just think you should ask a man what he does for a living before demanding to know his salary. Someone coughs out a rough number. Our visitor grunts — he’s been outfished — and tells us about a time several years ago when he caught a lot. Before leaving, he makes it known that he can use a fly-rod, but prefers not to.
To think that we might have been taking two meals a day with this character. David’s strategy of filling every bed in the larger house in order to avoid sharing with strangers strikes me as brilliant.
Fishing competitions are as pointless and grotesque as eating contests, but it is impossible not to care about how you perform on the water, because the competitive instinct is almost as ineradicable as hunger. One reason I like to fish alone is that it removes the most obvious point of comparison, the guy right next to you. But I also know from experience that the solitary angler can be a jerk in defeat, both to himself and others. The best antidote is camaraderie. In a good fishing group, there are more personalities to distract you from a lousy day and more people rooting for you.
In a good fishing group, there are more personalities to distract you from a lousy day and more people rooting for you
It turns out that the first day was better for Markley (and even for me) than it was for others, especially the first-time bonefishers. I’m paired with one of them, Lewis, on day two.
Lewis has two children and the most demanding job in the group. He’s brought a Starlink Internet kit for better Wi-Fi, to ensure that he can be in touch with the office in the evening.
Despite this job, and his love of hunting and golfing, he’s allotted five precious days to fly-fishing. He caught the bug only recently, on another trip of middle-aged men that David organized in Patagonia. Lewis is also here for the company, he tells me. He knows just two of us in the group, but trusts David’s judgment in people.
Lewis’s day is made early, when he hooks and lands the first bonefish of his life that morning.
The moment of truth: a much-anticipated bonefish sets off.
Afterward, while we eat lunch on the skiff, Lewis tells me that another reason he joined the trip has to do with the mass emails that periodically circulate within his large firm, announcing the death of a senior lawyer who did one of two things: worked way too hard and dreamed of retirement, only to die before it came; or worked way past retirement age, rather than spending his last days doing what he might have dreamed of doing. Lewis doesn’t want to be either of those guys. That is part of why he’s drawn to fly-fishing and on this trip, even though he’s got to haul in his own satellite-internet dish.
These reflections unspool amid worsening fishing conditions. By the third day, a cold front has driven many of the bonefish out to sea and unnerved the rest of them. I walk several long flats with David without hooking anything, then 25mph winds send my cast exactly where it needs to go. He lands a couple for himself, and our long hours of silent staring are rewarded.
The fishing overall has been fine, not great; there are fewer fish around than usual for this time of year, probably because of the cold front, and we’ve only seen a couple of five pounds or more.
By that evening — our last — everyone has caught a few, though. And each day has been made better by the camp banter that came thrumming along at the end of it.
By the third day, a cold front has driven many of the bonefish out to sea
On the last day, we leave the mangrove-y maze of the inland flats to fish those on the doorstep of the open sea. My fishing buddy is Taite, whom I’ve only just met on this trip. He is a trained chef who guides 100 days a year on Idaho trout streams. He is the best and longest-bearded angler in the group, and has a disarming habit of referring to women as “gals.” And he needs no help from our guide, nineteen-year-old Desmond, to land his first fish of the day.
Other bonefish file past us on the outgoing tide, but they are moving fast in the full sun, and very hard to see against the white-sand bottom. After lunch, we make another seaward dash, to another ocean flat that looks nothing like the first one. This one’s mint-green water is dyed burgundy and yellow by sea grasses that have dried and remoistened under the incoming tides. It is nicer to look at than it is to wade, and each step on it sends Taite and me up to our knees in goopy mud. Desmond weighs a good fifty pounds less than us, but eventually he’s sinking, too. “Let’s go back to the boat,” he mutters.
He is the best and longest-bearded angler in the group, and has a disarming habit of referring to women as “gals”
Chasing shadows on the flats.
It’s 3pm and about time to head back. I don’t want to. I’m facing my first skunking of the trip and suspect that Taite also feels unsatisfied. Do we get greedier about fishing as we get older? Conventional wisdom says no, we mellow out. But the older you get, the more you realize that your remaining hours on the water are limited.
And if you’re seeking more hours on the water, it’s good to be guided by a tireless teenager who’s eager to prove himself. Reading our minds, Desmond asks if we’re down to stay out another hour. It’s on. He climbs onto the platform and poles us into deeper water.
We’ll be fishing one at a time now, from the casting platform. “You go ahead,” Taite says. So eager to catch a fish that I have left my wading booties on, I accept. I pull out about fifty feet of line, which Taite rearranges on the floor of the boat to keep it from snagging. “School at one o’clock,” Desmond says. I cast and wait as the dark mass nears. “Strip. Strip,” Desmond says. I give the line two smooth pulls. “Strip — stop! They’re on it — strip!” I feel a bump on the line, and strip again to set the hook, but the line slips from my hand, and has gone slack when I retrieve it a split-second later. My tired brain and fingers have failed me. The school, alarmed, veers away from us.
Before I can mull over what all this means, another school is coming our way in the tidal swirls. This time the hook sticks, and the fish rips out a great run of line before it is reeled in. It’s my smallest of the trip yet, caught in the easiest way imaginable. Neither of these things matter.
The older you get, the more you realize that your remaining hours on the water are limited
The Bahamas — lost in time.
Taite unhooks the dinker and releases it for me, and I catch another one. “Go on, get a bigger one,” he says. I might as well be fishing with two guides now. I cast again, because at this point, I might actually hook another fish in less time than it takes to change anglers, but also because I’m greedy. A few minutes later, I’ve got what feels like a decent fish on. The slack wraps around my ankle, which I can’t feel because of the wading booties. Taite lunges to uncoil it, but the fish breaks off. In different circumstances, this could be heartbreak. But me, here, now? I’m just grateful for the extra hour we’ve been granted, and glad that now my buddy can go catch one.
Taite does that, sits down, and clinks bottles with me. “We did it, brother.” The engine roars to life for the ride home.
PHOTOGRAPHY: MARKLEY BOYER
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DARRELL HARTMAN
Darrell Hartman is a writer based in New York City. His articles about fly fishing have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Fly Fisherman, and Condé Nast Traveler.
