Cooler weather brings changing rules for catching bonefish in South Florida
Given the recent chilly temperatures, most anglers think it’s too cold to catch bonefish during the winter in South Florida, but captain Jorge Valverde knows that now can be a great time to catch the bucket-list fish known as the gray ghost of the flats.
Most fishing guides say that water temperatures have to be in the 70s to catch bonefish on the flats. So when temperatures are cool, they will typically fish in channels where there’s deeper, warmer water. But Valverde, who has fished the shallow waters of Biscayne Bay for more than 30 years, has learned that winter cold fronts won’t keep you from catching bonefish on the flats.
Valverde, of Cooper City, (www.lowplacesguideservice.com) has caught tailing bonefish — fish that are feeding on flats so shallow that their tails and dorsal fins come out of the water when they dig in the bottom for food with their mouths — in 63-degree water. As he explains, even when it’s cold, the fish still have to eat. The coldest water Valverde ever caught bonefish in was 57 degrees.
The key is for the bonefish to get acclimated to the cooler temperatures after a couple of days. When temperatures drop, bonefish initially will go to deeper water and feed there, and Valverde will fish for them in channels. “Then they go back to what they were doing before it got cold,” says Valverde, who goes back to catching bonefish on the flats, which he usually has all to himself.
Valverde has disproven many commonly held bonefish beliefs, sometimes by accident, sometimes by observation and sometimes because he’s not afraid to try new things.
For example, most anglers believe you have to use fluorocarbon leaders, which appear invisible in the water to the often spooky bonefish. But one day when the tide wasn’t quite right for sight-casting to bonefish, which is when the water level is shallow enough for an angler to see bonefish on a flat and cast a bait or lure or fly to the fish, Valverde’s client decided to fish for sharks.
Valverde rigged a spinning outfit with a wire leader and hooked on a live shrimp. Shortly thereafter, a bonefish appeared and, lacking time to rerig, Valverde told his angler to make a cast. The bonefish ate the shrimp, and the myth about having to use fluorocarbon leaders to get wary bonefish to eat was shattered.
That discovery made an impression on Valverde, who now routinely uses a 20- or 30-pound wire leader instead of small lead weights known as split shot when he needs to sink a bait. “Split shot makes noise when it hits the water, and fish hear it,” he says. “Wire is much quieter.”
Another belief is that bonefish feed into the current, so guides pole their skiffs with the current or anchor their boats up-current of where they expect the fish to appear and look for the fish to swim toward them.
“I had always read that bonefish feed upstream into the current. Then one day I watched five schools of bonefish swim into the wind,” says Valverde, who since then positions his boat with the wind at his back. “I’m not as concerned about current as wind direction. I’ve had bonefish swim crosscurrent and downcurrent into the wind.”
Most bonefish anglers will tell you that when you spook a school of bonefish, you might as well move to a new flat. But Valverde learned that sometimes spooked fish can’t leave a flat even if they want to. He was running his boat on a flat and ran over a school of fish that he didn’t know was there. He stopped the boat and watched the fish swim to the edge of the flat and then come right back.
Poking around the flat later, he discovered the water was so shallow that the fish had only one way to get off the flat, so they had to come back.
“I fish a lot of falling tides,” says Valverde, who knows every nuance of the bonefish flats he fishes. “And often as the water falls off the flat, the fish have one way in and one way out.” When that’s the case, he knows how to approach the fish and where he needs to be.
And because Valverde is not afraid to break the bonefishing rules that other anglers swear by, his clients have many more opportunities to check off bonefish from their bucket list.
Even on the coldest winter days.