Fishing: Fox of the Flats

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Big-game fishermen naturally think big, and they tend to sneer at anything under 20 Ibs. But there is one little fish found in the world's warm waters that sends saltwater anglers into shivering ecstasy and rates up with the monster marlin and tuna. The name is bonefish (Albula vulpes, literally white fox). The biggest ever caught on rod and reel weighed only 19 Ibs. A ten-pounder is worth mounting in the game room, and a 15-pounder is brags forever. Baseball's retired great, Ted Williams, fishes as passionately as he played. He once landed a 1,235-lb. black marlin off Peru. And what does he do now? He lives in Florida, poking around the Keys after bonefish. "The toughest saltwater fish there is," says he, adding with a slight ahem that he has caught more than 1,000 in his lifetime.

In Florida last week, so many fishermen were chasing bonefish that some guides were booked solid, seven days a week clear up to April—at $50 a crack. Yet a less spectacular target for such frenzied attack could hardly be imagined. The bonefish looks a little like a herring; in fact, it is a kind of herring—long, scaly cigar-shaped body and all. It does not pursue its food like a proper game fish but grubs around the shallows, gulping down evil-smelling worms and other tidbits. People who have sampled its flesh discreetly describe it as "gamy," and even the Japanese can think of nothing better to do with bonefish than grind them up for fish cakes.

Lights & Inner Tubes. But try to catch one. No fish has a greater ability to bewilder, bedevil, confuse and confound a fisherman, and none, pound for pound, fights harder. Because it inhabits exposed tidal flats, the bonefish is a nervous wreck—always on the lookout for enemies, spooking at the shadow of a bird overhead, fleeing in panic from the sound of a beer can being opened. Ever so stealthily, the bonefisherman tiptoes across the flats, taking care not to step on sting rays, his freshly baited hook (live shrimp is tasty) all ready, his eyes peeled for a waving tail, a moving shadow, anything that might suggest bonefish. Once in a while he sees the fish before it sees him. Not often.

Hawaiian sportsmen try to beat the game by jack-lighting bonefish at night with miners' head lamps. In Bermuda, they wade out to deeper water where the bonefish hopefully feels more secure—but that risks a dunking, and the shrewd Bermudian floats himself out in Junior's inner tube. The best way is in a flat-bottomed skiff with an expert guide like Florida's George Hommel to spot the fish and patiently explain the technique. "You cast ahead of the fish, in the direction he's moving," says Hommel. "You try to get six to ten feet in front of him. In the grass flats, you let the lure drift, and hope he'll pick it up. In the rocky bottoms, you twitch it a little to catch his attention, because he's going by sight rather than by smell. But if a bonefish wants the bait, he won't nose around much—he'll just strike."