Jeff tossed me a small zip-lock filled with Jolly Ranchers. I tucked the candies in my shirt pocket as Stanford slid the throttle forward. We streaked towards shore. The 4-stroke was barely audible on this soft morning. We motored up a creek and soon Stanford cut the engine. I could see bonefish scattering in five feet of gin-clear water that was quickly draining over a mocha-colored bottom. The sky was overcast with rain clouds scudding in from the west. The tide had just turned off high and a light wind slightly scuffed the flat. These were poor conditions to find bonefish so we sought the lee of an island where we had a small "window" of calm water augmented by better visibility due to the reflection of the dark mangrove bushes. We hoped to see fish in this narrow ribbon next to shore. I hopped out of the boat and waded along the edge of this low, mostly submerged, cay. I waded quietly over a hard coral bottom riddled with crab holes. Brian waded north along the other edge while Larry went with Stanford to pole another small cay.
I immediately spotted a small bonefish in the calm window. He was fearless and aggressive and pinned my fly to the bottom almost the moment it hit the shallow shore water. "Maybe this won't be too bad." I thought as I reloaded and watched the released 3 lb. bone swim away. As I lost track of my previous catch, I spotted a small disturbance a few yards back in the mangroves. A big tail spiked up, then flapped over comically as mud roiled at the base of a small mangrove shoot. I followed the tail as it disappeared only to see it poke up again a few feet further away in the mangroves. The bushes were too dense to even consider a cast. I popped a watermelon Jolly Rancher pausing to consider my options. I put a few additional candies in my fly box and closed the lid.
Maybe I could spook him out of the mangroves. A piece of coral well-thrown might spook him just enough to encourage him to swim out... then I could get a shot. I squatted down to search for a piece of coral, but as I did, I briefly lost sight of the fish. Fortunately he tailed again. If I lost sight of the fish, a hunk of coral was of no use to me. What to do?
Then a thought came to me... a thought so brilliant that I now consider it to be perhaps the pinnacle of my angling career. An idea that I congratulated myself for even before I had tried it. Emboldened by my obvious genius, I took the Jolly Rancher from my mouth and holding it like a dart, pitched it to the left and just slightly beyond the fish. At the splash, the bone darted about two feet then turned and meandered ten feet to the mangrove's junction with the calm slick. I casually flipped my Labrador deceiver (a fly tied from my dog's fur... but that's another story) and he pounced, flaring his dorsal fin as he sucked the fly back toward his crushers. I struck and he ran towards deeper water.
Yes, I landed the fish, but all that was meaningless. What was important was that I was a clever little monkey. This hairless ape had devised a new angling technique... the Jolly Rancher Flanking Maneuver and I was a smiling mass of self-congratulations, laughter and pure homo sapien piscatorial pleasure. I donated another Jolly Rancher further down the shore and it worked like a charm with similar results. This one was grape. I really think any flavor will work, but remember, if considering the JRFM, please remove the wrapper first.
