Monthly Archives: November 2012

Bonefish Missionaries

It’s always Christmas, 24-7.

The Bonefish Missionaries

Bonefish Missionaries

For over two hundred years, English, Australian and American missionaries have cast their secular nets over a small isolated outpost in the Line Islands of the North Pacific.  Their prized catches were the hearts and minds of the Gilbertese, Polynesian descendants named after the British Sea Captain and explorer, Thomas Gilbert, who inhabit the planet’s largest coral atoll of Christmas Island.

Today a new kind of disciple preaches to devoted followers.  Often shoeless and quick to smile, meet the “Bonefish Missionaries”, a handful of highly skilled native fishing guides that patiently teach a steady stream of converts who come to Christmas Island weekly to pursue Bonefish, a.k.a., the silver streak of the flats.

Guides, like Tanaka, who learned to swim before he could walk.  Born to become a fisherman, his knowledge of the flats and his uncanny ability to see “through the water”, provide an exciting narrative for the thousands of fly anglers that have made the pilgrimage to this Bonefish Mecca.