A FLAT-OUT
MYSTERY The Search for Bonefish Pre-Spawning Aggregations in the Keys Intensifies BY T. EDWARD NICKENS
C
aptain Rick Ruoff was running late, a not-unusual circumstance when the fish were biting and he was a long way from home. With angler Bill Levy on the bow, he was making the 20-mile trek from Key Largo to Islamorada, deep into an early 1990s November afternoon. It was calm and he was in a hurry, so he ran a bit offshore, in some 15 feet of water. “I took a course straight down the beach,” he recalls, “and I saw these tails zipping out of the water in front of us. I said to Bill, Holy hell, what is that? And it was a ball of bonefish. Thousands of them, tumbling like a bowling ball. The bottom fish would come up, and the top fish would go down.” Ruoff eased up to the school, and Levy cast and almost instantly had a fish. Then he hooked another. Ruoff backed the boat away to keep from disturbing the school, and said to Levy, “Let’s just sit here and watch.” He and Levy watched the bonefish boil at the surface for nearly an hour, until the falling sun prompted the men to head for port. Ruoff, who has guided for 52 years, shakes his head at the memory. “It was incredible,” he says. “I had not seen anything like
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B O N E F I S H & T A R P O N J O U R N A L FA L L 2 0 2 1
that before, and I haven’t seen it since. But boy did I get a good look then. And I feel pretty honored to have seen it just once.” At the time, Ruoff wasn’t certain what he’d witnessed. But now he knows what stopped his skiff cold that late November day. It was a pre-spawning aggregation (PSA) of Florida Keys bonefish, a phenomenon that has been shrouded in mystery for decades. Ruoff’s story—and a double handful of similar recollections told by other long-time Keys fishing guides—has helped refocus a project essential to Florida Keys bonefish conservation: The search for bonefish pre-spawning aggregations in the Florida Keys. The project will expand in the fall of 2021, combining technology with guide observations in an effort to solve one of the most intriguing mysteries on the Florida flats: Where do Florida Keys bonefish spawn? The answer is a missing link in the scientific understanding of what is known about Florida Keys bonefish reproduction. Recent research has provided tantalizing clues, including four probable PSAs reported by fishing guides. Two years ago,
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