I live to fly fish for bonefish. I love to wade barefoot while stalking tailing bones on hard-packed white sand. If that challenge is not enough, consider that bonefishing takes you to some of the most splendid flats fisheries on Earth in The Bahamas, the Caribbean and Florida Keys.

Anglers launch for a great day on a Bahamas flat.

Whether I’m flying out of the country to fish, or just hitching up my skiff for a short drive to Biscayne Bay or the Keys, it’s usually for bonefish, so I pack every kind of bonefish fly for every bonefish situation I might encounter. But I’ve also learned to pack flies and gear for the “alternative” fish that have saved my trip when the bonefishing was a bit off.

And this is also a good idea when the bonefishing is very good. How so? As much as I love bonefishing afar, the novelty begins to wane after I have released my tenth or fifteenth 2- to 5-pound bonefish of the day. By that time I usually ask my guide what else we can fish for. And that can produce mixed reactions. The old adage, “variety is the spice of life,” certainly applies, even in bonefish paradise. While I am still looking for that backing-melting run, I like to mix it up with a little variety—like an explosive surface strike or multiple jumps—neither maneuver of which bonefish are famous for. This kind of action would certainly make things a lot more interesting, wouldn’t you agree?

Now, I realize there may be some flyfishing bonefish purists who are aghast at reading such blasphemy, but the truth is that sharks, barracudas, jacks, snappers and baby tarpon are regulars that a bonefisherman can expect to encounter on a Bahamas, Central America or Florida bonefish trip.

I can remember, for instance, one particular day on Long Island in The Bahamas when the morning’s bonefish window closed after the incoming tide flooded the flats. The bonefish were out of there, but there were some big barracudas around. I hooked and landed a 25-pound cuda that zeroed in from 30 feet away before clobbering my Deceiver in an explosive strike. The subsequent run and overhead jumps that the fish performed made a much more indelible impression on me than any of the bonefish I caught that day.

While fishing an Andros Island flat in April several years ago, the outgoing tide had fallen so far that the bonefish flats were high and dry. Our guide took us to deeper flats, where the water was three to four feet deep. We had a number of shots at 15- and 25-pound mutton snappers that traditionally come into the shallows that time of year. And, though I only caught a small mutton of around 8 pounds, it was the highlight of the trip for me, not the dozen or more bonefish that I had landed earlier in that tide.