BONEFISH 



beach, seeing several bonefish on the way, and finally 

 we ran into a big school of them. They were right 

 alongshore, but when they saw us we could not 

 induce them to bite. 



Every day we learn something. It is necessary 

 to keep out of sight of these fish. After they bite, 

 everything depends upon the skilful hooking of the 

 fish. Probably it will require a good deal of skill 

 to land them after you have hooked them, but we 

 have had little experience at that so far. When 

 these fish are along the shore they certainly are feed- 

 ing, and presumably they are feeding on crabs of 

 some sort. Bonefish appear to be game worthy of 

 any fisherman's best efforts. 



It was a still, hot day, without any clouds. We 

 went up the beach to a point opposite an old con- 

 struction camp. To-day when we expected the tide 

 to be doing one thing it was doing another. Ebb 

 and flow and flood-tide have become as diflScult as 

 Sanskrit synonyms for me. My brother took an 

 easy and comfortable chair and sat up the beach, 

 and I, like an ambitious fisherman, laboriously and 

 adventurously waded out one hundred and fifty feet 

 to an old platform that had been erected there. I 

 climbed upon this, and found it a very precarious 

 place to sit. Come to think about it, there is some- 

 thing very remarkable about the places a fisherman 

 will pick out to sit down on. This place was a two- 

 by-four plank full of nails, and I cheerfully availed 

 myself of it and, casting my bait out as far as I 

 could, I calmly sat down to wait for a bonefish. It 

 has become a settled conviction in my mind that 



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