Rangeley-Wilson On Bonefishing In New Caledonia

The latest issue of the Gray’s Sporting Journal‘s Expeditions & Guides Annual contains a long story from Charles Rangeley-Wilson, who travels from his native England to New Caledonia in the South Pacific and discovers that quick tides and big fish make for serious drama: “Big, big bones in tight, fast-swimming platoons that are on you and past before you can blink or think. We see them for a fraction of the tide, and haven’t yet worked out where they are before and after. But in those few minutes of chance all hell has broken loose

. My first whopper — a 10-, maybe 11-pound fish that I flossed on the first strike and that took again — ran me ragged for 10 minutes only to be abraded off the line by the rough skin of a pursuing shark.”