DIY Bone Fishing Turks & Caicos

It's pretty easy to hand grab small crabs in grassy flats or the break and free line them to bonefish if you can see them. That's most of my bonefish experience.

Which island are you going to? I've never been but I have a couple of friends that have fished there a few times. There are some accessible looking areas on Middle Caicos that I'd check out.

Bottle Creek on north Caicos is a pretty well known area so I'd check that out too, but there is probably fishing pressure.

Are you fly fishing? I've spent the last several years making DIY bonefish trips and am actually leaving in 3 weeks to head to the Bahamas. If you are there for a limited time and you've never targeted the fish, it will be a better expense of your time to hire a guide for a day. Bones are pretty predictable but it takes awhile to figure out what to look for and how the tides affect the fish. If I were going once and wasn't sure if I'd go back any time soon, I'd hire a guide.

My first trip sucked. I think we caught like 5 fish the whole trip - which I considered to be a huge success at the time. If I knew then what I know now though, it would've been a really successful trip. The weather and fishing were good. We just didn't know what we were doing. There's only so far general fishing knowledge gets you when targeting a totally new fish in completely different geography.

If you are anything like me though, it will totally change your life. I can't get enough of the shite. Here are some photos from recent trips.

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Heading to Turks next week on vacation and would like to do a self guided bone fish trip (no boat). Has anyone done this before in Turks? I have read on a few on other forums that there are a few good spots that I could get to by a car.

Any advice is appreciated as I have never targeted bone fish before.

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Ought to be places but I'd go with a guide the first time if you haven't targeted the damned things...they can be frustrating. Hire a guide and pick their brain and do the DIY thing. At times they aren't selective...I have caught them on cut bait on a fish finder rig and at times it ain't hard...I have also been in the middle of hundreds of the damned things actively feeding and when you couldn't run them off a flat with 15 folks chasing them while flaying the water with a cane pole and couldn't get a bite on a dare. I have been in the same situation and taken a bad step and watched as hundreds of them headed for deep water never to return...they can be very frustrating. I don't like guided trips generally speaking but a new species in an unfamiliar setting is one area where I would consider it...