Grand Bahama DIY

As I wrote in my last post, I was interested in finding some bonefish on my own. On Monday, my wife and I took the ferry over the canal to another resort for a day of beaching. I took my 8 weight. We found a couple of open chairs on the far end of the resort's beach and I strung up the rod. We took off toward the point pictured in the first pic below and when I made my third cast something grabbed my crab fly and instantly broke me off. I retied with wire and a deceiver and was met with a blank for the next 30 minutes. I changed to an EP streamer on 12 pound tippet and after a few minutes hooked something that took me into my backing and thrashed around until, it too, broke me off. After an hour and a half fishing my way out to the point I clipped off the streamer and decided to try fishing the sand beach near our chairs, with another crab pattern, hoping to hook a few small jacks that I had seen earlier. When I got there I noticed a school of decent fish that showed up as gray/green shadows over the sand...nice sized fish. I led the pack and dropped the fly about 4' in front of the traveling school when two fish sped up and intercepted the fly. Feeling tension, I strip set and came up with nothing. Before the school moved off I repeated the cast with the same results. It seemed that the fish were interested but not completely convinced. Pattern change. I replaced the crab with a bead chain eyed, Crazy Charlie style fly with a few rubber legs. I tracked down the school and led them again with a cast that dropped the fly 3' in front of the lead fish. The fish sped up, tipped up its tail, ate the fly and I was into my very own DIY bonefish. My better half, seeing the action, walked over and took the camera off my belt and snapped the action (see below). I had hooked it only 150' from the chair she was tanning on! I worked the beach for another hour or two and managed a few more casts at the school, but by then they were a little skittish. They actually spent most of their afternoon close to the swimming area and I decided that cutting up a few swimmers with hot backing behind a hotter bonefish wasn't the right move. I met a lot of very interesting people while I waited for the school to move my way...It actually got to the point that I had a half dozen people updating me on the movement of the fish! Not exactly solitude, but highly entertaining.