Buena Vista Fishing - Bonefish Flies

" This guy here, this is George Anderson, and I know George's name, because in fact, George, you're the inventor a particular fishing fly."

" Right."

" Maybe we'll talk about it in a little minute."

" That's true."

" But you're an American angler fishing here in Cuba."

" Yeah."

" And first of all, what do you think of it?"

" Well, you know, the thing that attracts me to Cuba is that this is the, it's a great wilderness, and this is the finest flats fishing in all the world right now."

" What are these flies all about?"

" Well, we're imitating for Bonefish. This is a box of my Bonefish flies. They are a few Permit flies, but the Bonefish flies, imitate a lot of small minnows. They feed on a variety of small bait fish. They like to eat little tiny crabs. So in here, I have a variety of flies that work now. Some of the best flies that we have are flies like this that imitates a small minnow of the family. And now, a fly like this has eyes. In shallower water though, we'll go to a fly a lot more like this that does not have any eyes. This is one of own flies called a Crazy George"

" All right."

" or this is a very popular fly down here. I'm gonna give you this one, and this a Chico Fernandez Bonefish special"

" All right."

" and then that's a very nice fly in shallow flats, where the fish are tailing and you have to fish the fly very shallow."

" So in that sort of fly George, the eyes on the fly are not there for decoration."

" No, not at all, just to get the fly down, just to adds some weight. And then for other fish, like Permit, we use different flies of some of the crab-type patterns. This is one that's called a Del Brown fly called the Merkin, and these are very good for Permit."

" Now lets just talk about Permit, George, because I know that you're probably too modest to actually tell us exactly how many Permit you've got on the fly, but it's a lot. Go on, tell us."

" Well, I know I've caught over a hundred, you know, but I don't really keep tract of them like some guys do, but--"

" But that's an amazing"

" All my years I've caught quite a few."

" I think I should point out that there's very few people have done that. Talk to us about Permit flies and show us a couple of Permit flies."

" Sure, sure. Well, you know, a lot of people had flies for Permit, but never very many realistic ones, and trying a lot of realistic trout flies, I decided to try a fly that looks much more like a real crab, and this is one that I've tried over the years. In fact, you can see this is kind of rusted up here. I've actually caught two Permits on this very fly."

" Wow."

" And this fly, it's called an Anderson McCrab."

" Right. And I think we should point out George, and thanks very much for that concise tour of the world of saltwater flies being brief it was, that a Permit and a fly is probably the toughest challenge in fishing for some."

" That's right. It's fun. It's great fun, but it's tough."