How to catch your first bonefish on the fly (and on a budget)

What You Need

Unless you fly fish for salmon, steelhead or trophy pike in Canada, you’re going to need heavier gear. Bonefishing, even for smaller fish, requires a powerful 8-weight outfit, with a reel tough enough for saltwater. That power is not for the size of the fish—it’s for the conditions, because there’s a 95 per cent chance you’ll be casting in wind. But you don’t need a second mortgage to afford the gear—I used a $500 Redington rod/Sage reel combo (below), and it was outstanding.

Spool up with a weight-forward floating line. Consider one of the new stiffer “tropical” fly lines, since standard lines tend to go limp in the Caribbean’s 30°C water, making them harder to cast. For leaders, either buy some knotless tapered saltwater ones in various sizes or take spools of 12-, 16-, 20- and 30-pound tippet.

As for flies, you should have two to three dozen bonefish patterns. Preferred sizes and colours vary, so get local intel, but you need a variety of weighted and unweighted shrimp patterns (above), including a half-dozen weedless ones, along with a few weighted crab flies. That said, many guides mistrust clients’ terminal tackle, so they supply their own leaders and flies. Still, I always take everything anyway, if only so I can make a few casts off the dock in the evenings.