GHOSTBUSTERS!
BISCAYNE BONEFISH
Capt. Joe Gonzalez was first to eye a single cruiser. Time froze as he placed a bait in the bonefish’s path, and I even held my breath for fear of scaring the fish. The gray shadow slowly proceeded in the same direction, but suddenly the fish tensed up and charged the bait. As Gonzalez came tight, the hooked bonefish vanished in an explosion of water and a cloud of marl. It was now OK to resume breathing.
Gonzalez masterfully played the fish alongside the boat. I removed the hook, snapped a few quick pictures, and set it free. Measuring 27 inches to the fork, the plump fish was a solid 9-pounder, a classic representation of a Biscayne Bay bonefish.
Nationally Acclaimed
As a Miami native, I can attest to the countless newspaper and magazine articles, television shows and fishing seminars in the 1970s and ’80s touting Biscayne Bay as the destination for trophy bonefish, and justifiably so. Here, bones live within the northernmost range of their preferred water temperature.
Subsequently, it’s the larger individuals, more tolerant of cooler water, that populate the famous shallows. Today, for bonefish approaching or exceeding double-digit weights, Biscayne Bay is still hard to beat.
Hot Pockets
My largest bone to date, an 11¾-pounder, was caught off Mashta Point in Key Biscayne while wading for tailers, with Miami’s skyline as the backdrop. Capt. Carl Ball, another veteran of the area, claims bonefishing
around Key Biscayne remains productive. “The average fish now weighs 3 or 4 pounds, instead of the 5 to 8 back in the day. But you can’t discount the possibility of scoring bigger fish,” he adds, though chances at large bones increase from Soldier Key to the south.
Picking Off Mudders
Gonzalez and I recently chased bonefish in the bay, concentrating on cruising fish, those mudding, and any responding to our prior, he encountered two big muds on the bay’s western side, and he brought us to this area during the same tide stage. Sure enough, we located active muds and scored.
For mudding bonefish, Gonzalez prefers a ⅛- to ⅜-ounce brown-andtan jig. His tried-and-true tactic is simple: You cast into the fringes of the mud, hop the jig through it, and it shouldn’t take you long to connect with one of the bones churning up the bottom in search of forage.
Stage Presence
“Many of the Biscayne Bay flats that produce good fishing comprise three different bottom compositions, which I refer to as stages,” Gonzalez says. “To have healthy turtle grass on oceanside flats, there has to be a buffer serving as a barrier against strong winds and waves, and that’s where stage one comes in.
“A part of the flat typically never exposed at low tide, stage one has a colorful, aggressive type of bottom with many different soft corals,