At the beach

This has been a summer out of the bag. Blue marlin in record numbers are being caught and almost unbelievably we’ve seen the return of yellowfin tuna runs after an absence of almost exactly 10 years. Not huge numbers, but enough to warm the hearts of game fishers everywhere.

My main fishing focus over the holiday period has been tying flies for bonefish. As all of the Christmas Island fishing collateral says “there are no fishing shops on Kirimati” so you have to turn up prepared or really be wasting your time [and money].

In between there have been trips here and there, most notably a few days spent on the Coromandel Peninsula for my folks’ 50^th wedding anniversary. We had awesome weather in a fantastic location and a couple of early morning fishing missions in the company of my dad and brother turned up enough snapper to feed the extended family.

Evening fly fishing for kingfish has been very productive, I can say that I’ve never seen as many kingfish around as I have this season. They’ve been prolific in numbers, if not size.

The break culminated yesterday [am at work today…] with a rock fishing session. TT and I set out in a snotty SW wind to get to a rocky ledge with a decent drop off and berley up snaps. Despite my coat the quartering wind blew tons of spray and I got soaked; and with all the boat traffic it resembled a washing machine out there, so by the time we got to our spot I wasn’t getting any wetter  by dropping him and our gear off then anchoring the boat and swimming in to the rocks. The next few hours were entertaining – not for fish caught [zero] but for fish seen. Tons of piper swirled around as rays cruised through. Occasionally a snapper would scream into view but they really stayed down and away from danger. Very nice change of pace from fishing off the boat; I’ll do that again soon.

The wind turned to the West so our strip home was into a chop that slowed our pace somewhat. When we reached Rough Rock I threw a piper fly in and immediately hooked a decent 72 cm kingi that didn’t want to play ball and continually charged away from the boat before being landed. Next cast saw a rat inhale the fly deeply; he was bleeding badly upon release. Would’ve been better in the smoker than in some damn shark’s guts; but rules are rules.

Hope this weather holds.

Some photos courtesy my bro, Snuffit big bro