Jordan, David Starr; Evermann, Barton Warren (1905) Shore Fishes of the Hawaiian Islands, With a General Account of the Fish Fauna, Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission, vol. 23 for 1903, part I, Washington, D.C., Government Printing Office

Given their place in the angling firmament you’d think we’d know more about bonefish than we seem to know. I suppose it’s because all those bones make them hard to eat, but information about the fish itself, as opposed to catching the fish, is spotty. There have been interesting recent studies on spawning, and even for fish bonefish spawning behavior is bizarre and orgiastic, but more on that later. Right now other stuff.

Bonefish show up in the Atlantic, the Caribbean, the Pacific, and the Indian Ocean:  pretty much everywhere there’s some saltwater coast with relatively hot temperatures.  The Bonefish and Tarpon Trust says there are 12 species of bonefish,  all sharing the same genus, Albula. 

Albula vulpes is the species fly fishers chase in our neck of the woods. I stole the range map above from the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The IUCN lists Albula vulpes as near-threatened and its population as declining, naming off all the usual causes, habitat damage, harvests, and recreational mishandling, plus climate change and severe weather.  I hope the IUCN doesn’t come after me for stealing their graphics.  They can have it back if they really want it. It’s a very good graphic though.

Since I’m on a stealing jag, Orvis has an excellent description of bonefish behavior:

Bonefish are usually found in intertidal flats, mangroves, and creeks, and they can tolerate the oxygen-poor water often found in the tropics by inhaling air into a lung-like bladder. Often congregating in schools of 100 or more, bonefish often follow a daily pattern of coming up onto the flats as the tide rises and retreating to deeper water as it falls. . . . Larger bonefish tend to travel in twos or threes, and the trophy specimens are solitary. Bonefish feed by digging through the sandy bottom to root up prey, which are crushed in the fish’s powerful pharyngeal teeth.

Phil Monahan, Fish Facts: Bonefish (Albula sp.), https://news.orvis.com/fly-fishing/fish-facts-bonefish-albula-sp

So like tarpon and gar, bonefish gulp air into a swim bladder, and like redfish they root along using their low-slung mouth to sift up prey.  Just like Mary Ann, they’re sitting by the seashore sifting sand. But Orvis’s description is about flats-frequenting bonefish, and it might better read “Bonefish are usually found [by fly fishers] in intertidal flats . . . ” The truth is that not all bonefish are flats-frequenting (though all are coastal). There are actually two common species of bonefish in Florida, the other species being A. goreensis, which live in channels and are also found around reefs in the Bahamas. A. goreensis is apparently not known as a flats fish, but as a fish that hangs out just a wee bit deeper.

Or maybe it’s A. garcia, not A. goreensis. O maybe A. garcia and goreensis are the same thing. This gets confusing.

Hawaii also has two species of bonefish too. One, A. glossodonta, the roundjaw bonefish is what fly fishers fish for on the Hawaiian flats. The other, A. virgata, has only been documented in Hawaii, nowhere else. Similar to the Caribbean’s A. goreensis, it generally shows up in deeper water. This is all very confusing, and it only gets worse when you start piling on the species and places. The truth is that for fish that dwell in the great big sea, bonefish don’t move around much. The furthest distance traveled by a tagged fish is 146 miles, so I guess populations, even among the same species, are pretty much distinct to particular places. That’s why folk can talk about the bonefish population at Campeche, which apparently used to be healthy, as being largely depleted. That population has to recover, no fish are likely to wander in while out on a spree, and unlike redfish or even salmon no one’s figured out how to reproduce quantities of bonefish in hatcheries.

Meanwhile bonefish aren’t particularly big for such a popular fish. The IGFA all-tackle A. vulpes record is 16 lbs caught at Bimini in 1971. The IGFA all-tackle record for the roundjaw bonefish is 10 lbs 4 oz., taken in Hawaii, and the all-tackle, all-bonefish record is for a 19 lb. smallscale bonefish (A. oligolepis) taken in South Africa in 1962.

I know plenty of people who’ve fished for bonefish in the Bahamas and Central America, but only one who’s fished in Hawaii: Gretchen at the local Orvis (who promised to show me how she ties those magnificent doubled Bimini twists). She was going to Oahu anyway, so she found a flat and went a-wading. I know she didn’t catch anything, and she may or may not have seen any bonefish, but I remember what she did see: she said she saw sharks. They were up on the flats sharing her fishing space. She said she saw sharks and it kind of freaked her out. I don’t know whether they were big sharks, they could have been great whites or moderate black tips or 300 pound tigers or any old thing, and I don’t recall if I asked what they were.  I remember this: she said she saw sharks with her on the flats. That part I remember. Sharks.

I have read that as a general matter only birds, sharks, barracudas, and Hawaiians make a habit of eating bonefish, and of those only the first three have had a real effect on bonefish evolution.  Bonefish can live as long as 20 years and grow as long as 30 inches. Fish in Hawaii average four to six pounds. For bonefish, an eight pound fish is a monster, though African fish may reach close to 20 pounds. The fish appear silver or grey in the water, and the bodies are slender lengthwise and rounded in cross-section. I don’t find them a particularly pretty fish out of the water. In the water, either tailing or ghosting, they are thrilling. 

And pound for pound they are about as powerful and fast as any fish in the ocean. They’re built, after all, to get away from barracuda and sharks. They’re skittish, particularly around my casting, but that’s ok. My casting scares me sometimes.

* * *

It’s winter here, or as close as it gets. We took the skiff out Sunday and saw one redfish at a distance. Kris saw it first, and we watched it’s back and tail come in and out of about a foot of water 150 feet from a spoil bank. Every time we tried to get close though it moved, until finally it was gone.

Notwithstanding the general fish sparseness the days are beautiful, with less humidity and clear water and clear skies. We didn’t see any other fish, but who cares? While I poled the skiff I got to watch a flock of roseate spoonbills (a pink of spoonbills?) huddled on the lee side of the grass against the bitter north wind. It must have been 50 degrees.

Take that Wisconsin.