“It happened right there—just off that mangrove island,” Ansil Saunders says.  He points to the spot where in 1971 his client, Jerry Lavenstein, a now-deceased sportsman from Virginia Beach, VA, caught a 16-pound bonefish on eight-pound test on a live shrimp. That fish was an all-tackle world record, one that still stands.

Saunders is a lanky man with chiseled forearms and a clear complexion that is anachronistic given he’s been poling a boat under the blazing sun for decades. He has lived on Bimini of the Bahamas for his entire life and retired from guiding last year at the age of 83. Saunders is a fifth-generation Biminian. He started fishing at 18 years old and within 15 years, in 1966, he had converted his religion to fly—which says a lot, as he is a devout man. Even today, he regularly attends church on the sleepy but rapidly developing island of North Bimini…

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above Ansil Saunders points to the mangrove island, still visible today, where the all-tackle world-record bonefish was landed.

Photo: Brian Irwin