What a wonderful week of fishing we had in the Turks and Caicos, the place is bonefish heaven. I learned a lot about this sort of fishing and it is truly exciting. It is more of a combination of fishing and hunting with you stalking the fish and waiting for the perfect time to "shoot". The four of us Jon, Terry, Scott and myself stayed in a private home owned by a avid fly fisherman who just purchased the place and needed to get some kayaks down there, so we sent 2 Ocean Kayak tandems and 2 Heritage Redfish. The house was better described as a villa right on the ocean with the bay (Chalk Sound) across the street. We were able to snorkel right 30 feet from the house though it was too deep for seeing bones. We explored the island and found some incredible flats that held bones all the time, sometimes the fish were in places that were so shallow that we couldn't float the kayaks - I know these are shallow water fish but I mean 4 to 6 inches sometimes where their backs were out of the water, they were a little less receptive to taking what you offered when they were that shallow but we still get them.
We learned that the best method to find good flats was to have one person standing in the tandem while the other (back paddler) paddled around, I was amazed at how easy and efficient this was, we would sometimes fish this way and caught many fish using this technique but for the most part just wading the fats worked better. We did have windy conditions every day with it blowing between 10 and 20 mph every day, but we learned to get out early and get the early calm to make it easier to see the fish.
Terry and I went out with a guide one day and he took deep into the mangroves and small creeks to find bones, sometimes hooking them and having to work quickly to keep them from breaking you off on the trees - very cool! We both got our first bone on the fly rod which was nice especially since it was blowing 25 all day.
Recommended gear is a good pair of wading boots because you will be getting off the kayak and wading a lot and the bottom can be soft in some areas. The fish took small 1" clousers flies and the best spin tackle lure was a 1/8" jig with a curly grub in pink or gold. Having a light rod that can toss such a light jig is important as most of the action happened in a foot of water or less and you need to use very light jigs to not get hung up, I used the 7'6" Temple fork 3 Piece light action rod sold on this site and it tossed little jigs a mile.
For the most part the bones were on the smaller side but there were lots of them and we saw some big ones. Some mornings we would have some many tailing that you wouldn't know where to cast.
The island is a very nice and very safe, the roads are pretty bad especially if you want to get into the backcountry we accessed. The island is a little expensive but for the most part we eat in or eat at the local hangouts.
I am hopeful that we can do some more of these trips soon. If you are interested in fishing Turks and Caicos and would like to stay at the place we stayed (complete with rigged kayaks) contact us.