New ideas for Christmas

So here we are again, returning to Christmas Island with a keen group of anglers to throw flies at anything that moves. Armed with the knowledge of last year's experiences, we already had an idea of what to expect and this time along with all the fishing gear, I brought a few spare spark plugs. Rod tubes were packed, fly boxes were stacked and our group of swoffers was ready to tackle whatever CI could throw at us. Well just about; first we need to get there.

Air Pathetic

Our journey to Christmas Island via Fiji was a complete nightmare. Air Pacific couldn't have done a worse job at completely stuffing things up for us. For reasons unknown, we initially flew to Apia in West Samoa and waited on the runway for 2 hours, then at 3:30am took off and headed for CI. An hour away from CI the Captain turned around and headed back to Fiji! No explanation was given and the crew and captain were changed over in Fiji, the plane re-fuelled, some luggage removed (perhaps this could be the reason?) and we eventually headed for CI some 11 hours later. We only arrived at 5:30pm which meant we lost the first day's fishing.

Island life

Accommodation was once again at The Villages www.thevillagesci.com and it was great to see that the lodge has been investing money back into upgrading the facilities, making the lodge even more comfortable for visiting anglers. There is now a large undercover outside seating area constructed in the local tradition using weaved palm leaves and coconut trunks, plus there is also now a 3rd bungalow that has been completed and the lodge can now cater for 12 anglers.

The anglers over the 2 weeks were Charles Barrett Jnr, Jamie McKinnon, Bruce Scott, Corin Smith, Gavin Davis, Rod Kimberley and me Jono Shales. Charles and Jamie had flown to Fiji 3 days earlier and had enjoyed a few days of surfing, beer drinking and other local attractions including an Israeli backpacker but let's just end that story there.

Charles and Jamie brought their surfboards along and enjoyed a great session one afternoon at the reef break at the bommie right in front of London. Surfing at CI isn't for the faint hearted, the surf can be huge at times and with coral everywhere the last thing you want to do is injure yourself when there's only one flight on and off the island each week. Charles told us a story of a guy who was surfing at CI and was on a wave when a GT chased him down and was trying to eat his leg rope as it was skipping along behind his board.

Bones

This year there definitely seemed to be a better class of bonefish in the lagoon. Perhaps it was the different moon phases to last year's trip or maybe because we already knew what to look for, but there seemed to be larger numbers of quality bonefish and between us we would have seen a dozen or so fish that would have been around 10lbs and more. Big bones usually stay in the deeper water and they get big for a reason. It was Kiwi Bruce and Big Gav's first time bonefishing and it didn't take long to get into it and on their first day they both went on to tally up over 10 bones each; a great way to start the trip. On some days anglers were catching anywhere up to 20 bones a day. That's good bonefishing by anyone's standards.

Recent research has shown that the handling of bonefish with bare hands should be minimised and head guide of The Villages, Teanaki, understands this and has come up with an ingenious little contraption made from the wood of the local Kasava tree and a bit of bent wire. The little hand-made device allows the angler to slide one end down the leader and remove the barbless hook from the fish's mouth without actually touching the fish. They also make pretty neat little reminders of your trip to CI so if you plan on heading to The Villages make sure you pick one up from Teanaki.

We all had some really memorable sessions on the bones with everyone catching good fish at different times. At the back of the lagoon one day Corin's rod broke by accident so he simply put his reel in his pocket and just fished with the tip and still caught bonefish. No point in crying over spilt milk hey, there's fish to be caught. One day while wading in deep water I saw what looked like a decent GT right in front of me on the flat and made a quick cast with the 6wt. As the fly landed it was engulfed and the fish tore across the flat nearly spooling me, however as it turned out it just happened to be a big bonefish.

Flies that worked best were the usual suspects like CI specials and gotchas in tan with gold eyes. If you tie them in two different weights; one for skinny water and one weight for deeper water, all bases will be covered.

Offshore

The yellowfin tuna schools the same as we experienced last year hadn't arrived at the Island yet. There was the odd tuna that could be seen tearing through a bait school from a distance, but these were singles and pairs and you'd be wasting your time if you started chasing them in a longboat to throw flies at.

For the past 2 seasons my good mate Corin has been working as a fly fishing guide in the Seychelles for Flycastaway and he brought with him some blue water teasing gear and a wealth of experience with regards to teasing and targeting large offshore species of fish. We spent time trying to raise a sailfish again but unfortunately had no joy. The odd wahoo hit the hookless teaser, with only one fish coming close enough for a reasonable shot but the fly was ignored and the fish preferred to attack the stationary teaser which was literally dangling off the back of the boat right under our noses.

Fishing with conventional gear, Rod managed to catch a 6ft barracuda from the very same bommie where the guys were happily surfing a few days before. Charles, Jamie and Bruce managed a couple of big GTs on poppers plus 2 of them connected to sailfish one day in the pouring rain, but Jamie's fish unfortunately spat the lure. Charles landed a nice sailfish on a stickbait in exactly the same place as where we caught ours on fly last year. It's good to know where we can head to target these fish now but all in all, things were pretty quiet offshore for the fly anglers compared to last year's action.

Trevally

Gav and I had an epic session on the oceanic GTs miles away from home where we ventured out with Teanaki in one of the flats boats loaded with extra fuel, two teaser rods and a bunch of hookless poppers and although we didn't land any monsters we saw plenty. It was possibly some of the most insane and risky fishing that I've done where at times we were literally hanging off the back of the waves that were smashing onto the coral reef and we were casting flies at behemoth monsters as they chased down the teasers. Not easy conditions but great fun none the less and great to see Gav popping his GT cherry.

This year in the lagoon we all either saw or had shots at good sized GTs on the flats. One day with guide Ekati (pronounced Ekis), we saw 6 or 7 good sized fish between 40-60lbs but couldn't get one to commit to eating the fly. I guess that's what keeps anglers coming back!

My setup was an Orvis T3 12wt rod, Mako 9550 reel, Sci Anglers floating Tarpon line and 80lb down to 60lb leader. Flies for GTs offshore were 8/0 pink deceivers, in the lagoon it was 4/0 surf candies in blue over white.

Triggers

Rummaging around the patches of coral on the flats in the lagoon you will quite often see trigger fish feeding with their brightly coloured tails waving around revealing their position from afar. Triggers are definitely up there in the 'cool fish' category and I've got to agree with Corin in saying that triggers are a very under-rated fish.

Whatever you do, do not ignore them, they readily eat bonefish flies and if you do manage to connect to one of these little tractors, hold on because they pull like all hell. Triggers won't usually take a moving fly so you'll need to adjust your retrieve if you want to get one. Be patient and see if you can find one that's not right in the middle of the coral patch but more in an open sandy patch. These fish are a lot easier and if you slow down your retrieve to small 6 inch strips, you should get their attention. Cast right at them when they're head-down and feeding, then strip the fly so they see it and then stop. They will turn on the fly and all you need to do now is slowly draw the fly towards you and in a perfect world, you should pin one.

Once hooked they will often dash for deeper water so it's advisable to keep your rod high and quickly make your way towards the edge of the flat to keep your line away from the coral edge. Once in deeper water, they hold themselves sideways similar to a trevally and it's a tug-of-war to get them in. Triggers are great fun however be warned, their teeth are used for crushing coral like marshmallows and they will bend or break your hook with ease. On the last day Rod hooked one that dashed into a hole in the coral, so he thought it'd be wise to use his hand in an to attempt to get it out and the trigger quickly made a meal of 2 or Rod's fingers. The CI trigger grand slam would surely have to be a picasso, yellow margin and a titan trigger all in the same trip.

Milkfish

Getting any milkfish to eat your fly is a momentous feat in itself. They have amazing eyesight and their diet consists of micro-bacteria, algae and other virtually invisible surface scum. Once hooked those who have been lucky enough to stay connected to one report that they go absolutely berserk with long powerful runs, acrobatics and stamina that seems to never end - not surprising when you consider the size of their massive forked tails. As a target species they frustrate the hell out of most anglers because they just don't seem to be eating anything so targeting them becomes very specialised and one has to be disciplined enough to ignore everything else and focus only on milkies, and this takes up precious fishing time.

One of the most challenging things while fishing for them at CI was fishing from the local boats. As we found out last year, the communication on board is 3 way; we tell the guide where we want to be and what we're trying to do, he then relays that back to the boat driver in Gilbertese and an array of hand signals. The boat driver isn't a fly fisherman, he's not thinking about fly fishing and what the needs of a fly fisher are - all he's doing is driving the boat waiting for the next set of instruction from the guide up front. Those who have been there and tried casting flies from these boats will tell you, it's not easy at all!

In the lagoon at CI there are plenty of smaller milkfish that can be seen on the flats. These are small 30-45cm fish that blend in well with the light coloured flats and are often confused with bonefish however they tend to sit higher in the water column and cast a darker shadow than the bones. Don't waste your time on these fish, they will drive you crazy. Offshore however the milkfish are a completely different story all together. All the fish we saw in the ocean were dark, mature fish in the 10-20lb range and they could be seen in large schools feeding on the surface in the wind lanes. It's anyone's guess as to what they were feeding on but they were often sharing the water with mantas.

The flies we were using were tied to imitate small pieces of weed that we dead-drifted by casting into the wind lanes where the fish were feeding. Both Kiwi Bruce and I had our weed flies eaten by the mantas, leaving us with no other option other than to lockup the reel, point the rod at the fish and bust them off as they speed off. Right idea, wrong fish!

The weed flies are a compromise between sink rate, hook strength and hook size. Mine were tied on Owner 'Flyliner' hooks in size 6 using olive green antron dubbing that I wrapped over a small strip of foam that I'd tied on top of the shank. I also used a strike indicator made from a small piece of foam and a toothpick and slid it up to where my leader joined the fly-line and this worked really well as I was able to see when a fish had eaten the fly. My setup was a 9wt Orvis T3 rod, Mako 9500 reel, Sci Anglers 9wt floating bonefish line and 15lb fluorocarbon tippet.

We found the fish were feeding heavily in the mornings just after first light and they were nearly always feeding in wind lanes. This I believe to be a fundamental factor in unlocking the methods of successfully targeting milkfish on the fly. These techniques have been documented previously both in the Seychelles and in Australia and I can't tell you how many times I've cast at milkfish and how many different types of flies and methods have been tried but it's a lot and none of them worked, except this method.

In total we had 4 positive eats from these oceanic milkfish - Gav pinned one and stayed connected for about 10 seconds on one of his flies then unfortunately the hook pulled. I pinned 3, of which one popped the leader like dental floss as it accelerated away, the second pulled the hook after about 20 seconds and the third we stayed connected to for 35 mins and ended up landing a 16lb specimen.

Never before have I longed to catch a fish so much as I did for this one fish and never before had I spent so long targeting one species with no success. After 24 years of fly fishing this single fish made me more nervous than all other species of fish that I've targeted. I felt like a kid again catching his first fish on fly, it was a complete rejuvenation of the passion, fuelled by the excitement, the adrenalin and the reward of the capture.

Surely this is what fly fishing is all about.