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.

The Evening Permit

So I’ve been trying crack the Muggle problem lately. I have been wanting to catch Mugil Cephalus (Mullet) without chum for ages now. Using bread, it’s easy. But I want one without using a starchy chum and a ‘Bread Fly’. I've been playing with floating shrimps, blood worms and variety of educated guesses but the Muggles have been difficult. There has been little success. But this is not about Muggles...

It is about one of my other piscatine infatuations: Permit.

Evening shades of gold.

The uttering of that name sends shivers down the necks of any serious saltwater flyfisherman and a trophy specimen is on the top 3 bucket list of the same group. I’ve been lucky enough to catch several fair sized specimens over the years but have been chasing my trophy for a long time now. And, well, I am still waiting. He will come though!

But to prevent this post from becoming convoluted, let me get back to point. This evening I grabbed the #3 and few experimental Muggle flies and heading down the road to see if I could convince one of them eat my latest guesswork of fur and feather. In the pocket I had a couple of blood worm imitations, a small shrimpish looking fly, a minuscule crab and, as always, a few Crazy Charlies (one should never leave home without at least a couple of Charlies in the box).  Mom and Dad, who are visiting at the moment, came for the short and where heading down the beach for a swim.

Chasing Muggles

As things go, I had barely told them to enjoy their swim when Dad shouted that there was a permit swimming toward me. I asked him if he was sure. He told to stop being ridiculous and catch the damn thing! 

"Our" Permit, by-the-way, is actually called a Pompano (Trachinotus blochii) and is the Indian Ocean’s version (and close cousin) of Trachinotus Falcatus – the famous Permit of the Western Atlantic.

Now he wasn't a big Permit but neither is my little trout rod. And well, a permit is a permit so I very hurriedly changed the San Juan looking blood worm that the Muggles had be so willingly kicking to the curb to a dark brown Crazy Charlie and began hoping.

Small...

Getting ahead of the fish was made easy by the sea wall that I was fishing from and a flick of the old 3 weight put the Charlie just far enough ahead of the Permit for him see it sink but that close that he got spooked by the big plop.

... but you know you want one!

After that it just seemed too easy. The little beauty sipped up the Charlie, I set the hook and he gave me a great rev on my trusty old #3. A couple of photos courtesy of Mom and my little Permit was sent back to grow into my trophy. 

Not a terrible evening at all!