Inshore & surf · Saltwater
Bonefish
Albula vulpes
West Atlantic native. Ranges from North Carolina south through the Greater Caribbean, with records to Brazil. IUCN lists the species as Near Threatened. Nomenclature is unsettled: Albula vulpes sits inside a seven-species complex and at least two genetically distinct congeners overlap it in the west Atlantic.
Also called Common bonefish, Macabi, bone, grey ghost, banana fish.
- Inshore
- Regulated context
- 4 of 4 overlays reviewed
- Reviewed 2026-08-27
Before you target this fish
Regulated context — check the rules for the exact water
Where this applies Florida (FWC) state and adjacent federal waters; separate rules apply elsewhere in the Caribbean and western Atlantic.
The reviewed context, unedited
Harvest of bonefish has been prohibited in Florida since 1 September 2013 - the fishery is catch-and-release only, commercial sale is prohibited, and the use of multiple hooks with live or dead natural bait to take bonefish is prohibited. Other jurisdictions in the species' range manage it differently, and some permit harvest. The species is IUCN Near Threatened and peer-reviewed work reports post-release predation by sharks reaching roughly 39% within an hour at a site with high shark abundance, so release handling is a real mortality term rather than a formality. Check current rules for the jurisdiction you are standing in before fishing.
Rules for this fish change at a state line and sometimes inside one. Check the ones that apply to the exact water you are standing on before you act on anything here — this record is biology, not permission.
Take this somewhere
This page is the record. The reading is what happens when you add water, a season and a temperature to it — that is where the families below get ranked against each other instead of just listed.
Those three links carry the fish and nothing else. No conditions were declared on this page, so none travel, and the link says so rather than sending an empty reading.
The half nobody publishes
What this record does not know
Everything else on this page comes from a named agency or peer-reviewed source. This is the other side of that: the questions a reviewer went looking for an answer to and came back without, and the fields the record leaves empty because filling them would mean guessing.
It is here rather than at the bottom because a page that only shows what it knows is easy to read as a page that knows everything. For Bonefish there are 24 of them.
Named by a reviewer
21Somebody looked for this and wrote down that they did not find it.
- Behaviour
Nobody has sourced:
- The full tidal detection curve in Murchie et al. could not be reconstructed reliably from the material fetched; only the low-water absence, the post-low-tide rise and the roughly four-hour-after-low peak are recorded here
- No sourced cold-front or barometric response, despite a published cold-shock study that could not be retrieved
- No sourced angling-pressure response
- No sourced water-clarity response, despite clarity being central to how the species is fished
- Territoriality and aggression not addressed by any source consulted
- All tidal and diel behavior here comes from Bahamian tidal-creek systems; transferability to other bottom types and tidal ranges is not established
- Studies published before the taxonomic revision may not have separated A. vulpes from congeners
- Identification
No field-usable character separates A. vulpes from A. goreensis or A. sp. cf. vulpes; the complex was revised and sources acknowledge visual identification is unreliable. This is the central unresolved item in the record.
Nobody has sourced:
- No sourced meristic key (fin ray, gill raker or scale counts) that separates the western Atlantic congeners
- Maximum size figures disagree between FWC, the Smithsonian database and museum sourcing; no single reconciled maximum
- No sourced length distribution for commonly caught fish - only a weight range
- Sexual dimorphism not addressed by any source consulted
- Spawning coloration and regional color variation not sourced
- Forage
Nobody has sourced:
- No adult stomach-content study located; the quantitative diet data here are from juveniles only
- No seasonal diet breakdown - seasonalDiet omitted rather than invented
- Relative importance of mollusks versus crustaceans in adults is unquantified; both are listed but the ranking is not sourced
- The Florida samples in the diet study were reported as Albula spp., so Florida diet cannot be attributed cleanly to A. vulpes
- Season
Nobody has sourced:
- early_summer and late_summer entries omitted - no source distinguishes them from summer for this species
- No sourced seasonal diet emphasis, so forageEmphasis is absent from every entry
- Seasonal habitat shifts other than the reproductive movement are not documented in the sources consulted
- All seasonal behavior derives from Bahamian systems; Florida seasonality is asserted by no source consulted beyond the spawning window
Absent from the record
3No reviewer wrote a gap here. The field is simply empty, which is its own answer.
- Water temperature
No agency or peer-reviewed temperature band for Bonefish was found that a review would accept. The reading runs without one rather than borrowing a number from a related fish.
- Identification
No reviewed image. A photograph is only in this catalog when an agency or a named creator labelled the subject, and nobody has cleared one for this species yet.
- Population context
No regional population profile is registered. The species-level reading stands on its own; it does not silently become a local one.
Where the record puts it
Water and range
Inshore
5 reviewed holding classes- Grass flat
- Sand hole
- Mangrove edge
- Tidal creek
- Creek mouth
DepthAdults forage over soft bottom in water shallow enough to feed head-down; Bahamian study fish used creek backwaters well under 2 m. The species is recorded across a much wider depth range than the shallow fishery implies, to at least 84 m.
Moving waterTide-driven. Acoustic telemetry in Bahamian tidal creeks found bonefish essentially absent from shallow creek backwaters around low water, entering as depth rose after low tide, with detections peaking roughly four hours after low tide. Access to shallow foraging ground is a depth-over-bottom problem set by the tide, not a current-seam problem.
LightStrongly day-biased use of shallow foraging creeks. Murchie et al. recorded 10,040 daytime detections against 1,452 at night in the same creek system.
Thermal band
Temperature
No reviewed temperature band
Nobody publishes a preferred or active temperature range for Bonefish that a review would accept. Borrowing one from a related fish would look like knowledge and behave like a guess, so the reading runs without it and says which parts of the answer that weakens.
How it uses water
Behaviour
Bonefish travel in schools whose movement tracks the tide, and disperse somewhat while actively feeding. Half of tagged fish in the Bahamian study showed high site fidelity, staying within about 1,500 m of where they were tagged; median distance travelled ranged from 118 to 10,691 m across individuals.
A rooting benthic feeder. The conical snout is used to dig through soft bottom and turn prey up, and granular dental plates crush what comes out. This is a bottom-directed animal, not a mid-column pursuit feeder.
Shallow foraging creeks were used overwhelmingly by day in the Bahamian telemetry study - 10,040 daytime detections against 1,452 at night in the same receivers. The authors read this as feeding activity acting on top of the tidal constraint rather than instead of it.
Seasonal activityBahamian telemetry recorded a winter concentration at one end of the study creek from November into late January, corresponding to the proposed spawning season. Recorded as biology; that period and that behavior are excluded from targeting.
Temperature-driven behaviourLaboratory work put peak critical swimming speed at 28.0 C (82.4 F) and maximum scope for activity at 26.7 C (80.1 F), with critical thermal limits of 14.5 C (58.1 F) and 37.9 C (100.2 F). In the field, tagged fish exceeded their thermal optimum roughly 54% of the time and experienced diel swings up to 8 C and seasonal swings up to 14 C, but did not exceed the laboratory critical limits. Shallow tidal creeks are thermally extreme habitat this species tolerates rather than prefers.
Depth movementMovement into shallow backwater is depth-gated by tide. Detections in creek backwaters were near zero around low water, rose as depth increased after low tide, and peaked roughly four hours after low tide. On a falling tide the same water empties and the fish leave it.
Facing the currentNot sourced. What is sourced is that tidal stage governs access rather than orientation.
Water levelThis is the whole axis for the species. Tide height determines whether a given piece of shallow bottom is available at all. Bonefish are absent from shallow creek backwaters at low water and present on the flood, and the useful window for a given piece of shallow ground is set by how much water the tide puts over it, not by the clock.
CoverSoft-bottom shallows, mangrove edges, estuarine lagoons and tidal creeks. Bonefish use depth and open escape routes rather than hard cover.
Open waterBonefish are recorded to at least 84 m depth, well outside the shallow fishery. Movement corridors between shallow foraging habitat and deeper water are a documented part of the species' behavior but are not treated here as holding water.
Predator avoidanceSharks are the operative predator. In a Bahamian catch-and-release study, about 39% of released bonefish were taken by lemon sharks within an hour at a site where sharks were abundant, while all 17 fish released at a low-shark-abundance site survived 30 minutes. Fish given long air exposure had trouble holding equilibrium and sat still on the bottom instead of swimming off - which is what the predation acts on.
Spawning (conservation context)Conservation context only. FWC gives a November-May spawning period. Peer-reviewed Bahamian work documents fish leaving normal shallow habitat to form very large schools, with ventral nudging and porpoising observed as probable courtship. Pre-spawning aggregations are the most concentrated and most vulnerable state this species is ever in. The timing cue, depth, structure and time of day that the source records alongside this are deliberately omitted here, because together they are directions to an aggregation.
Where the general rule stops
- Bonefish taxonomy is unresolved. A fish that keys out as Albula vulpes in the field may be A. goreensis or A. sp. cf. vulpes; the three are genetically distinct and morphologically near-identical. Treat this record as covering the field-identifiable bonefish, not a confirmed genetic identification.
- Pre-spawning aggregations are excluded from this catalog. Aggregation behavior is recorded here as conservation context and never as holding water.
- This record does not include coordinates or named flats, and we never give them.
What it can eat
Forage
- Crustaceans
- Mollusks
- Worms / annelids
- Small forage fish
Crustaceans dominate. A published comparison of juvenile bonefish diets in the Bahamas and Florida found amphipods and carideans - both crustaceans - to be the most important prey items, with amphipods the only group in the top five prey categories in both regions. Museum sourcing adds mollusks, worms and small fish such as gulf toadfish for the species generally, all taken from the bottom by rooting with the snout and crushed on granular dental plates. Capacity is not a current bait event.
- Feeding style
- Opportunistic
- Feeding zone
- Benthic
By life stage
- Juvenile
- Amphipods and caridean shrimp dominate; amphipod abundance in the diet increased with bonefish size within the juvenile range studied.
- Adult
- Benthic invertebrates - crustaceans, mollusks and worms - with small fish taken opportunistically. Adult diet is less well sourced than juvenile diet.
Prey sizeWithin juveniles, larger bonefish carried more amphipods. No sourced prey-size relationship for adults.
Ontogenetic shiftNot sourced as a described shift. The available diet study covers juveniles only, and adult diet comes from a museum synthesis rather than a stomach-content study.
SubstitutionsPrey composition varied between coasts of a single island and between the Bahamas and Florida, tracking local prey availability rather than a fixed preference. Substitution is system-specific.
Diet capacity is not proof that a prey event is occurring. Observed current forage still comes from a user observation or Hatch Match.
Through the year
Season
Winter
- Where they sit
- Soft-bottom shallows, mangrove edges and tidal creeks, availability set by tide height.
- Depth
- Depth-gated by tide as in every season; absent from shallow backwater at low water.
- Temperature
- Laboratory critical thermal minimum is 14.5 C (58.1 F). Shallow tidal water is the part of the range that reaches thermal extremes fastest in either direction.
- Current
- Enters shallow foraging ground as depth rises after low tide; detections peaked roughly four hours after low tide.
- Light
- Day-biased use of shallow creeks.
What that changesFlats sight cast is the reviewed family. Tidal drift bait covers the same edges when the water is moving.
What would count against it
- treating a piece of shallow ground as available regardless of tide height
- reading the winter aggregation period as a targeting window
Falls inside the sourced spawning window (November-May per FWC; October-May per Bahamian telemetry). Aggregation behavior is excluded from targeting.
Early spring
- Where they sit
- Soft-bottom shallows, mangrove edges, tidal creeks and creek mouths.
- Current
- Same tidal gate: shallow backwater fills on the flood and empties on the ebb.
What that changesFlats sight cast; tidal drift bait along edges the tide is already moving water over.
What would count against it
- assuming a seasonal change in tidal behavior that no source supports
Still inside the sourced spawning window.
Spring
- Where they sit
- Soft-bottom shallows, grass flats, sand holes, mangrove edges and tidal creeks.
- Temperature
- Laboratory optima are 26.7 C (80.1 F) for aerobic scope and 28.0 C (82.4 F) for critical swimming speed; field fish exceeded optimum about 54% of the time.
- Current
- Tide-gated access to shallow foraging bottom.
What that changesFlats sight cast; live or natural bait suspension where a single-hook natural presentation is legal.
What would count against it
- using diet capacity as evidence of a current prey event
The sourced spawning window runs to May.
Summer
- Where they sit
- Soft-bottom shallows and tidal creeks; the same structure classes, at the top of the thermal range.
- Temperature
- Laboratory critical thermal maximum is 37.9 C (100.2 F). Field fish spent roughly half their time above their thermal optimum, and authors warned that even a 1 C rise in tidal creeks increases exceedance of optimum and critical temperatures or reduces access to foraging habitat.
- Current
- Tide-gated as in every season.
- Light
- Day-biased shallow use is the sourced pattern, in a season when shallow water is also warmest.
What that changesFlats sight cast remains the reviewed family.
What would count against it
- assuming the warmest shallow water is the most usable water
Fall
- Where they sit
- Soft-bottom shallows, mangrove edges, tidal creeks and creek mouths.
- Current
- Tide-gated access as in every season.
What that changesFlats sight cast; tidal drift bait.
What would count against it
- treating the onset of the aggregation period as a targeting cue
The Bahamian telemetry spawning window opens in October. Aggregation behavior is conservation context, not holding water.
Late fall
- Where they sit
- Soft-bottom shallows and tidal creeks.
- Movement
- A winter concentration at one end of the study creek system began in November, corresponding to the proposed spawning season.
What that changesFlats sight cast.
What would count against it
- converting a documented seasonal concentration into a place to fish
Inside the sourced spawning window under both agency and peer-reviewed sources.
Spawning · Late fall, Winter, Early spring, Spring
Conservation context only. Florida agency sources give a November-May spawning period, probably in deep or offshore water. Peer-reviewed work in the Bahamas describes pre-spawning aggregation and nocturnal offshore movement over a 4-7 day window around full and new moons, October through May. Aggregation behavior is exactly what this catalog refuses to direct effort at.
Recorded as conservation context. No spawning site, staging concentration or migration bottleneck is named anywhere in this catalog, because naming one is how a population gets fished out.
Telling it apart
Identification
What to look at
- Snout is conical and overhangs an inferior, sub-terminal mouth; agency description has the snout projecting about a third of its length beyond the lower jaw.
- Mouth is small and does not extend back under the eye.
- Dorsal surface silvery bluish to greenish; sides and belly bright silver.
- Dark streaks follow the scale rows along the sides in adults.
- Teeth are granular and form crushing dental plates rather than cutting teeth - consistent with a hard-shelled benthic diet.
- Juveniles carry a series of dark saddles or crossbands across the back; agency sources give seven to eight, a museum source gives nine. They fade with growth into the adult longitudinal striping.
- Average adult length
- Maturity is reached at about 17-18 in total length, at three to four years of age.
- Common angling size
- Not sourced as a length distribution. Museum sourcing describes typical western Atlantic fish as 4-6 lb, with fish over 8 lb considered notably large.
- Typical weight
- About 4-6 lb in the western Atlantic; over 8 lb is a large fish.
- Maximum documented
- Sources differ. FWC gives a maximum recorded length of approximately 3 ft and a maximum weight around 15 lb; a museum source gives maxima near 31 in and 13-14 lb; the Smithsonian shorefishes database gives a maximum length of 77 cm.
- Longevity
- FWC states bonefish may live longer than 23 years; a museum source gives over 19 years.
What it gets confused with
- Albula goreensis
- Genetically distinct from A. vulpes but very similar in form. The Smithsonian shorefishes key states plainly that A. vulpes, A. goreensis and A. cf. vulpes are all genetically distinct and very similar in form. There is no reliable field character; assume field identifications are to the complex, not the species.
- Albula sp. cf. vulpes
- An undescribed member of the A. vulpes complex whose range overlaps A. vulpes in the western Atlantic. Separated genetically, not visually.
- Bigeye bonefish (Albula garcia)
- A second Albula recorded in Florida waters; FWC notes juveniles are present alongside A. vulpes. Not separable here on the sourcing available - flagged as a gap rather than resolved.
What follows from all of that
Presentation families
Inshore
Flats sight cast
Present to a fish you have actually seen, leading it so the bait arrives without landing on it.
- spot first, cast second
- lead the fish
- quiet entry
- strip or retrieve across its path
What it asks of the tackle
- Depth control
- Low
- Sensitivity
- High
- Casting distance
- Moderate
- Weight range
- Unweighted to 1/4 oz
- Cover resistance
- Low
- Line visibility
- Low
- Retie frequency
- Moderate
Tidal drift bait
Let a natural bait travel at the speed of the tide along an edge fish are feeding on.
- match weight to the run
- stay in the seam
- let it swing at the end
- reset up-tide
What it asks of the tackle
- Depth control
- Moderate
- Sensitivity
- High
- Casting distance
- Short to moderate
- Weight range
- 1/8–1 oz
- Cover resistance
- Moderate
- Line visibility
- Low
- Retie frequency
- High
Live / natural bait suspension
Present a natural food form with enough life or scent to hold in a station without looking mechanical.
- keep it alive or fresh
- match the holding depth
- minimize hardware bulk
- detect without pulling it away
What it asks of the tackle
- Depth control
- High
- Sensitivity
- High
- Casting distance
- Short to moderate
- Weight range
- As light as conditions allow
- Cover resistance
- Moderate
- Line visibility
- Low
- Retie frequency
- High
What moves them for this fish
Reviewed rules that push particular families up when the conditions match. Each one names the conditions it needs and why it exists, so you can disagree with it.
Acoustic telemetry found bonefish essentially absent from shallow creek backwaters at low water, entering only as depth rose after low tide and peaking in detections roughly four hours later, so a rising tide is what makes this shallow foraging ground reachable at all, not a preferred feeding stage layered on top of access that already exists.
When
Inshore · Tidal creek, Creek mouth, Grass flat, Sand hole · Flooding
Moves up
Flats sight cast, Tidal drift bait
Reviewed 2026-08-30
The same telemetry recorded near-zero detections in these shallow creek backwaters around low water. There is not enough water over the bottom for the fish to be using it, so presentations built around fish holding on this ground should be discounted at low slack rather than simply fished more quietly.
When
Inshore · Tidal creek, Creek mouth, Grass flat, Sand hole · Slack low
Moves up
Flats sight cast, Tidal drift bait
Reviewed 2026-08-30
The same telemetry study recorded roughly seven daytime detections in these creek backwaters for every one at night, so darkness is not just a sight-casting problem for this species on this ground; the fish are mostly not foraging there at all after dark.
When
Inshore · Tidal creek, Creek mouth, Grass flat, Sand hole · Night
Moves up
Flats sight cast, Tidal drift bait, Live / natural bait suspension
Reviewed 2026-08-30
Where every sentence came from
Sources
Agency
Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission - Bonefish
Used for identification; behaviour; season. Read 2026-08-30, next check 2026-12-01.
Agency
Used for habitat, thermal band and presentation families. Read 2026-08-27, next check 2026-11-27.
Agency
Used for habitat, thermal band and presentation families. Read 2026-08-27, next check 2026-11-27.
Agency
Smithsonian STRI, Shorefishes of the Greater Caribbean - Albula vulpes
Used for identification. Read 2026-08-30, next check 2026-12-01.
Peer reviewed
Used for habitat, thermal band and presentation families; behaviour; season. Read 2026-08-30, next check 2026-11-27.
Peer reviewed
Used for habitat, thermal band and presentation families; behaviour; season. Read 2026-08-30, next check 2026-11-27.
Peer reviewed
Used for habitat, thermal band and presentation families; behaviour. Read 2026-08-30, next check 2026-11-27.
Peer reviewed
Used for behaviour; season. Read 2026-08-30, next check 2026-11-19.
Peer reviewed
Used for habitat, thermal band and presentation families. Read 2026-08-27, next check 2026-11-27.
Peer reviewed
Lingering taxonomic challenges hinder conservation and management of global bonefishes (Fisheries)
Used for identification. Read 2026-08-30, next check 2026-12-01.
Peer reviewed
Used for forage. Read 2026-08-30, next check 2026-12-11.
Synthesis
Florida Museum of Natural History - Albula vulpes species profile
Used for habitat, thermal band and presentation families; identification. Read 2026-08-30, next check 2026-11-27.
Synthesis
Used for forage. Read 2026-08-30, next check 2026-12-11.
A source with no link predates the rule that one has to carry a URL. It is still a real citation and still checkable; it just takes a search rather than a click, and that is worth knowing before you rely on it.