Tracy&James | Wednesday, 16 April 2025
Some time back I read an article about a study conducted on London taxi drivers by a psychologist. The research paper, published in a respected psychology journal, had an interesting conclusion that had caught the attention of the mainstream media. The author had studied the working hours of the cabbies, the amount of trade they were doing, the weather etc. and come to the conclusion that they were, on average, working very inefficiently. Quite logically the study found that the busiest days for taxi drivers in the city of London was when the weather is lousy, people want to get across town without getting their designer clothes wet etc. By contrast, the slowest days for the drivers takings were the balmy, sunny days when people were happy to take a stroll and be seen out and about. The interesting data on working patterns showed, however, that the taxi drivers worked longer hours on the slow days than they did on the good (rainy) days. I'm sure the actual paper delved deeply into the psychological reasons why the taxi drivers choose to do this (they are mostly self-employed so choose their own hours), however the conclusion was fairly clear cut; by not chasing a certain revenue on the bad days they could cut their working hours with no loss of income. If they put the long hours in on the high turnover days instead of stopping early (probably when they've hit their self selected daily target) they could in fact take the sunny days off completely without hitting their overall bottom line.
I think I fell into this exact same psychological 'trap' last Tuesday when bonefishing. Mine and Tracy's flats trip had got off to a great start, in the first few days we were averaging 8 bones a day, with some nice sized fish amongst them. Funny enough, we both caught with our very first cast of the holiday, although my first cast was 5 minutes before Tracy's so I won the first bonefish of the year award and am looking forward to my prize of an Indian takeaway meal on our return to Wales. Anyway, on day four of our trip the tides were perfect for a visit to one of my favourite flats, a huge area of rough ground where I've probably caught more bonefish than on any other flat I've fished. The roughness of the ground means that there's nooks and crannies for crabs, shrimps and many other bonefish prey items with every step. However, every step has to be carefully made as your foot is rarely going to hit a flat bit of bottom. It was this area that influenced my fly-tying, and why I put weed guards on 100% of my bonefish flies in order to bounce the fly off the multitude of snags which would snare an unguarded one within a strip or two.
Getting out to this flat is not straightforward, it involves a 35 minute march through a mix of lava rock, sand, mud and mangroves. However it's been well worth it in the past, so we set off prepared for a hot and sweaty start to the day's fishing. The last bit of the walk is through quite dense mangrove roots but this then leads to a small bay where the water from the mangroves drains into. There's always fish in that bay, normally we have a brief stop to clean the sweat from our glasses (actually I have a 'walking' pair and a fishing pair – I just swap them over) and we're immediately into targeting bones. This time there were no fish. Perhaps more concerning was the lack of crabs swimming away from our footsteps – or standing there, claws apart, looking for a fight with something a thousand times bigger than it. Other than a small cuda, we saw no fish in the bay. Next up was a long wade up the rocky shoreline, usually shots can be anticipated at any point along the way, but this day there were none.
After the rocky shoreline, a point is reached where a right turn takes you on to a truly massive expanse of a flat as mentioned above. Close to the shore the wading is tough going with soft undulating sand and clay moguls. Further out the wading is equally difficult with hard rocks waiting to twist an ankle, or worse. Both routes can be equally productive though so Tracy chose the inside track and I went out. Another hour and a half's wading followed without either of us seeing a single bonefish. We stopped for a drink and a chat on a rocky headland where Tracy, conscious of her knee injury, decided to stop. It's here that the taxi driver mentality took over for me.
Having seen nothing in 3 hours of fishing I should have called it a day. But this was my favourite flat, a flat where I've had some truly epic days, so I decided to wade on. I knew fish could congregate at a certain point waiting for the tide to rise sufficiently to allow them to flood into the mangroves, so I headed in that direction. It's fair to say I flogged myself down the flat (with it's difficult wading) for at least another hour and a half. Seeing nothing at all, I faced another hour and a half's wade just to get back to where Tracy stopped. Then, together, we had to retrace our steps along the rocky shoreline and then the 35 minutes back to the car.
It's far to say I was absolutely exhausted, an awful lot of effort for zero shots. As the car finally came back into view we started to discuss what we were going to eat that evening and the wine we'd have to cheer ourselves up. Then it happened, my back foot caught something (probably because I was dragging my feet due to being so fatigued) and I stumbled forward. I instinctively jettisoned the rods I was holding and naturally broke my fall with my hands. The pain was instant and the moment I looked at my right hand I knew my trip was over – my finger had hit lava rock and was pointing in a very strange direction.
So that leaves me where I am now, pecking this FP out left handed with my hand in a cast of the medical variety. I now face the prospects of being Tracy's bag and spare rod carrier for the next few weeks. I think if we'd have turned around and written the day off after wading the first bay I probably wouldn't have tripped, but who knows.
Take care out there,
James.