Kicking the week off with a brand new moon and big tides meant lots of water movement and, in turn, ice cold water. This cleaned the atoll out and prepared us for the slower tides later in the week.
With many guests new to the fishery, or saltwater fly fishing in general, bonefish were first on the menu and everyone wanted to get their first bonefish under thei belt and some had such fun fishing for them that it became an obsession for their week.
The guide team delights in spending time with kids who have just started fishing and David Brown proved to be a remarkably talented and passionate young angler. He landed well over 100 bonefish, however his real focus was to close his triggerfish account, which he finally achieved with a big yellowmargin.
As the tides started slowing down the trigger fishing got better and better; John Berzins and Peter James both joined the triggerfish club with great yellowmargins but Steven Hopkins was the triggerfish champion of the week, achieving a ‘Trigger Slam’.
Alfredo Carballuse struck gold by fooling one of the wisest characters on the flats and collected his prestigious golden badge after landing a gorgeous 7lb indo-pacific permit.
David Balderson fished the Alphonse lagoon once all the guests had set sail to St. Francois for the day and as the milkfish made an appearance he got the job done by landing his first ever milkfish on fly. Bill Hegberg also had milkfish on his mind and put aside some time to search and target them on the flats but despite a good number of fish pricked none were landed. This ignited Bill’s flame and, on the last day of the week, he went on to land an impressive 107cm GT, a big yellowmargin triggerfish and a handful of Bonefish.
Pieter Stofbergh got right into the swing of things spending some time offshore and on the flats. On the flats he managed to land an 80cm GT on his 9wt with a small ‘Gotcha’ bonefish fly. This was not your typical GT tussle though; they ended up almost a kilometre away before they managed to put their hands on its tail. Offshore, Pieter got stuck into an impressively large saddleback grouper – a beautiful and formidable foe.
Neil Van Der Merwe, however, had a more interesting tale, after spending a day fishing for bonefish with his two sons, the family went offshore on the bluewater boat and Neil managed to hook a respectably-sized jobfish. On the way up the jobfish’s luck changed and so did Neil’s; a big GT came out of the depths and took the jobfish back down leaving Neil with an ultimate upgrade. After a good battle they managed to tail the fish measuring in at 112cm from nose to fork.
Alexey spent most of the week offshore with the occasional afternoon inside the atoll. He managed an array of incredible fish, landed his first sailfish on fly and then duplicated this later in the week. Not only did he tick his sailfish-on-fly box, he also closed the ‘Bills and Bones’ account and joined the 20 plus bonefish club.
Peter Ottesen also spent some time outside and after having an incredible bluewater session raising over 20 sailfish, a few wahoo and a black marlin, Peter managed to hook up and jump his very own sailfish on fly.
Tight lines from Keith and the Alphonse team.
