BONEFISH 



is beyond belief. I could not cast where I wanted 



to; I tried again and again. When I did get my 



bait off at a reasonable distance, I could feel crabs 



nibbling at it. These pests robbed us of many a 



good bait. One of them cut my line right in two. 



They seemed to be very plentiful, and that must 



be why the bonefish were plentiful, too. R. C. kept 



losing bait after bait, which he claimed was the work 



of crabs, but I rather believed it to be the Work of 



bonefish. It was too windy for us to tell anything 



about the pressure of the line. It had to be quite 



a strong tug to be felt at all. Presently I felt one, 



and instead of striking at once I waited to see what 



would happen. After a while I reeled in to find my 



bait gone. Then I was consoled by the proof that 



a bonefish had taken the bait off for me. Another 



time three bonefish came along for my bait and stuck 



their tails up out of the water, and were evidently 



nosing around it, but I felt absolutely nothing on 



the line. When I reeled in the bait was gone. 



We kept up this sort of thing for two hours. I 



knew that we were doing it wrong. R. C. said bad 



conditions, but I claimed that these were only partly 



responsible for our failure. I knew that we moved 



about too much, that we did not cast far enough 



and wait long enough, and that by all means we 



should not have cracked bait on the bottom of the 



boat, and particularly we did not know when we 



had a bite! But it is one thing to be sure of a fact 



and another to be able to practise it. At last we 



gave up in despair, and upon paddling back toward 



the launch we saw a school of bonefish with their tails 



in the air. We followed them around for a while, 



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