Rather go kiteboarding!

Its been damn windy lately - its 11pm now and the live wind report says its dropped to 20knts but the rattling windows makes me think its pushing 30 - and I honestly don't think I've seen the sun in three weeks. If the temperature didn't continue to hang out at 27degrees all day and night I'd honestly think I was stuck in some far flung latitude. But its not: its 4degrees and 20minutes South of the Equator. And you thought paradise was perfect all the time!

Needless to say, the shite weather, an impending lack of transport and my fast arriving departure have got me a little on edge when it comes to fishing time. They say that a man only truly worries about what he is leaving behind when his final days are near. I always figured that was all about death and legacy. I now think it's all about no longer living down the road from a Bonefish flat. I'm running out of fishing time and getting rather edgy!

So, amongst packing up two years of rubbish and fishing gear I've been doing my best to get down to the flats whenever possible. It has not been easy fishing but its been awesome. The fish are scarce but my spotting is great and I haven't ever been this good at casting into the wind!   :)

Liam Surridge, a fishing mate living in the land down under, is out for a few days of fishing before hitting an Inner Island Yacht cruise. (Read bounce in a washing machine rather than cruise!) Well, it was with wild tales of Exmouth Madness that he stepped straight into the howling South Easter. I really don't blame him for going kite boarding instead.

We have managed to get some fishing in at the protected beaches which lie in the lee of the islands. The flats are unfortunately all rather exposed to the devil wind so any 'easier' fishing is done in deeper bays and off the beaches. We've caught a few of the usual suspects but the fishing is most certainly of a "you should have here last month' quality.

I think I should have started kiteboarding!

You think its going to blow this weekend? And clouds? Wait, and throw in some rain for fun!

Flutefish. Funny looking bugger!

At least there has been some bending over of rods!

Windy, no sun; school of hard knocks!

Not a bad choice!

Dad's First Bonefish

Bonefish found in the inner islands of the Seychelles rarely swim in shoals and do not swim in shoals of hundreds (and definitely not in shoals of thousands). They are educated - they do not simply eat anything and have been known to refuse a perfectly good Charlie that worked just yesterday. And catching Bonefish in the inner islands takes patience, effort and hard work. They can be downright enigmatic.

Dad didn't get one on his trip here in 2004. He's been visiting for three weeks and has been practising his double haul and perfecting presenting a heavily weighted Charlie on a #9 as if it were a dry fly on #3.

Yesterday we had a early mission to the Grand Anse flats on Praslin. The goal was to find the bones or Golden Trevally that quietly inhabit these flats. The tide wasn't perfect, the breeze was a little strong and , although they were around, the Bonefish weren't exactly calling us over to join them for breakfast. 

It took awhile before we found three big fish feeding tacitly in the shallows. They were moving left to right between us and the beach. The cast that needed to be made was fairly long and straight into the wind. 

Dad - a trout fisherman by birth and life has only recently bothered to get to grips with double hauling a nine weight - swore before his first cast even landed. Luckily it was behind the last fish and made no difference to the body language of the three feeding fish. He went into trout stalk mode. I don't I could have moved around the flats like he did. Obviously the years of stalking brown trout on rock strewn streams and rivers made moving across the sand a pretty straight forward procedure. 

Suddenly there was a lot less distance to cover and the wind, although across his casting shoulder, was far less of an obstacle. The pink Charlie looped out and landed with a plop.

Strip, strip, INSIDE!

Textbook hookup and the rest was simple. A few burning runs and eventually he was tailed.

I'm not sure if Dad could choose between solemnity or biggest smile ever in which to mark the occasion.

At 60 he has at last come of salt water fly fishing age.

Casting like the Flemish

I thought I'd heard of them all... The roll, the steeple, the Spey, the overhead, the reach cast, the Skagit, the double haul. (It's a long list and some differ only fractionally!)

But thanks to the guys at Gink and Gasoline, I learnt a new one today. The Belgian Cast.

Personally, when the wind is giving me gears over my casting side I've always just switched over to backhand casting and have had just as much success with distance and hookups (I think so anyway!). But it is interesting to see a new angle on dealing with a most annoying situation of having the wind blasting your casting ear.

Thanks to Gink and Gasoline and Bruce Chard