Summer Bonefish Fishing/Remembering the Del

Before I jump into a report about my fishing this morning with Aaron, a story from the Del that I wanted to remember. Just because we didn’t catch any fish doesn’t mean that we didn’t almost get caught out ourselves.
On the second day of the tournament, a large storm rolled through the backcountry from the south. We had been fishing pretty far east, and as such we were past the storm on that side. As it rolled through Key West, we left our buzzing fly rods to cut through loggerhead and ran down the ocean towards home–hopefully, getting around the storm on its trailing edge. As we approached the channel towards Hurricane Hole, we pulled off plane and began discussing how often (and what happens when) the nearby radio towers get struck by lightning. As we motored through, Aaron and I stared up at the towers as they were both struck.
One thing I can tell you for sure–lightning is beautiful, but you don’t want to be anywhere near it when it strikes. Even writing this I can feel my neck tighten where the current ran through my tendons. Aaron had a jolt through the steering wheel, and we bolted as soon as we could to the dock.
Here’s a picture of the storm, pre-lightning incident:

Also, a picture of the fleet preparing to leave for the day:

As for today’s fishing: it was great. I caught my first bonefish of the year, Aaron got some photos:

We had maybe a dozen shots in two hours of fishing, and enjoyed ourselves. It’s nice to see the bonefish in the backcountry–I had heard they were around but had yet to capture one myself.

More to come after tomorrow, when I hopefully will get to fish with Thomas Rapone and Aaron Snell.

ncl