In my experience, there's a significantly widespread misconception amongst uninitiated anglers that catching bonefish is extraordinarily difficult. You'd likely be hard pressed to find many anglers that have spent time casting to bonefish that would agree, yet the misconception seems to persist. I've even seen this message perpetuated by bonefish guides and outfitters which, for a business that relies on attracting anglers to their brand of fly fishing, seems like an awful strategy. The result is that novice, intermediate and even some experienced anglers place hunting bonefish on their "can't do" list thanks to its perceived difficulty. Well, I'm here to set the record straight. As it turns out, bonefishing? Yeah, not that hard.

Bonefish are known to virtually all fly anglers as one of the most sought after species across the globe thanks to the ubiquitous dissemination of tales of bright silver bonefish tearing off line, disappearing backing at alarming rates, burning up reels and so on. Add in the fact that all this is happening on a sun bleached, sandy flat somewhere in the tropics and it isn't hard to paint a terribly appealing picture. Unfortunately, these wholly accurate tales about hooking up bonefish also typically include 80 foot casts, often in gale force winds, that need to land on a dinner-plate sized target. That's the part of the story where many a trout fisherman, even some pretty damned good ones, thinks "I can't do that" and checks out. No bonefish in their future.