As you may have seen from some of my earlier reports on the website and in the Club's newsletter, I’ve developed something of a penchant for saltwater fly-fishing over the last ten years.  The combination of wild, fast and strong pelagic fish, in often challenging environments is something that floats my particular boat and I’ve been able to combine family vacations with a few days on the water at locations such as Florida’s Gulf and Atlantic coasts, the Florida Keys, Cape Cod Bay, Rhode Island and around Martha’s Vineyard.  The fishing has been for baby tarpon, snook, jack crevalle, striped bass and various tuna species such as bluefin, skipjack, false albacore and bonito.

Late last year I received an invitation, via a colleague at work to fish the Seychelles.  Now, anyone who has read the book “Fifty Places to Fly-fish Before You Die” will have seen the quality of fishing on offer there and, despite it coinciding with the period in which I was to move house, after mulling the issue over for at least 15 seconds, I signed up to go there in February this year.

Alphonse Island and St Francois Lagoon – Seychelles Islands

The fishing centres around one of the most amazing natural lagoons in the world, St Francois Lagoon, which is horseshoe shaped and surrounded by a reef that protects it from the Indian Ocean.  Inside the lagoon, which extends to approximately 40 square kilometres, are the flats, which are hard white sand with minimal weed, turtle grass and coral growth.  These are interconnected to the reef via small channels that are navigable by skiff.  These channels present excellent opportunity to target trevally species, which move in and out the lagoon, depending on the state of the tide.  There are only a few flats that are heavily grassed, but these are often productive fishing spots for larger bonefish.  Numerous small coral “heads” and outcrops dot the lagoon, and again these are excellent locations from which to target trevally, snapper and a whole host of other species.  Wading the flats is very easy and is the norm, as little or no boat fishing is done for bonefish.  The skiffs are useful, however, to look for trevally and milkfish in inlet channels and to navigate hooked trevally away from coral outcrops.  The ocean side has hard coral reefs with fewer bonefish, but with exciting opportunities for trevally and other species.  There are two islands: St Francois and Bijoutier.  Oh and the best bit?  It’s fly only and restricted to 12 anglers daily, although on our trip there was typically a maximum of 8-10 fishing.

Accommodation is at Alphonse Island, which is about 1 hour’s internal flight from the capital Mahe, and a 45 minute boat trip from St Francois.  Accommodation is in chalets, with external showers and is of a high standard, with great food and helpful, friendly staff who want to make your stay a memorable one.  Giant tortoises and spiders were present on Alphonse but neither of these bothered you and every shell on the beach -- of which there were millions -- seemed to house a hermit crab.  Turtles seemed to be everywhere and moray eels snaked in and out of holes in the coral, grabbing small fish as they passed by.

Basically, the deal is that you stay on Alphonse and every morning hop on the mother ship, the Tam Tam, for a forty five minute trip to the lagoon.  When you get to the lagoon you pitch up and jump into a skiff that takes you to the flats.  Even the trip from Alphonse to the lagoon was eventful, with schools of porpoises and dolphins being spotted most days and one day we even saw three sailfish within a mile of Alphonse.  What these guys were doing in 30ft of water close to shore goodness knows but I was able to get a picture from the boat.

The fishing at St Francois is incredibly diverse and is dependent on the tides, but it can be basically divided into two parts.  The first is fishing the flats, primarily for bonefish, but with the occasional shot at permit and some other species.  Milkfish were also present in numbers on the flats, but these algae feeders can only be caught in deep water when they feed in a very noticeable 'daisy chaining' manner.  This is dependent on the tides and unfortunately we did not see this happening during our stay -- but one had been caught on the fly the week before.  The bone fishing is out of this world, with the flats being fished by wading and following the tide as it either recedes from or flows onto a flat.  When we were there it was mainly receding tides and as the tide recedes, the bonefish are moving off the flat, looking for shrimp, crabs and other food items as they move off to seek sanctuary in deeper water.  You basically follow them as the move, casting to individual fish.  The ability of the native guides in particular to spot fish is phenomenal, but after a couple of days you soon get your eye in and can see fish no problem with good quality Polaroids.  I often fished on my own and was able to spot and target the bigger bones quite easily, which is great fun and highly satisfying.

It’s a bit different from trout fishing though.  The fish are in 1-2 feet of water and looking down at the flat bottom, therefore you have to cast well in front of the fish, giving it plenty of 'lead'.  Let the fly sink to the bottom, drop the rod point to the surface of the water and when the fish is close to the fly start to twitch the fly slowly away from it.  If all goes well, you see the fish lock onto the fly and eventually you both see, and feel, the fish take.  The biggest difference is that you must 'strip-strike' the fish, keeping the rod low and only raising it when you feel the fish start to run.  And boy, do they run...

Yellowfin trevally

A five pound bonefish can take your fly line and 100 yards of backing on its first run, so a quality reel with a disc drag is imperative.  I used Sage 7 and 8-weight rods for the bones and Abel reels, but the reels we use for stillwater trout fishing such as System Twos and Orvis Battenkills would also suffice.  A stiff, saltwater fly line is a must in these tropical conditions and a pale-coloured floater is all you need.  You need to be able to see the tip of the fly line so you can gauge the position of your fly in relation to it, and hence how far away it is from an advancing bone.  The main variable is fly weight.  I used mainly tan flies such as 'gotchas' and 'bonefish scampi', mainly in size 4 and 6, with bead chain, and metal dumbbell and lead dumbbell eyes, depending upon the depth of the flat.  Leaders were 9-12 ft of fluorocarbon, tapered down to around 14 lb. You must present the fly on the deck and judge depth and current, but this was relatively easy with a bit of practice.  Small light-coloured crab patterns also worked a treat, especially on the larger bonefish.

All flies must be de-barbed before you start fishing, but this makes no difference, and you rarely lose a fish.  The fish were played-out as quickly as possible and promptly released.  The numbers of fish pouring of the flats at times was unbelievable; both schools of fish up to about 3 lb, and bigger singles and pairs up to 7 lb.

One other tactic was to cast behind any stingrays and this almost always led to a hook up with following bones.  We had several shots at permit and surgeon fish, without success, and large numbers of milkfish were always present but were unfortunately uncatchable. One day a 50 lb barracuda ghosted onto the flat.  I was able to make contact with it briefly on the 12-weight.  You really never know what is going to happen next...

We spent the afternoons either searching the reef edge or coral atolls searching for trevally and triggerfish although the spring tides were not optimal for the latter, which prefer more settled conditions.  There were 3 main species of trevally: Bluefin, Yellowfin and the daddy of them all, the GT.  Hooking these guys is one thing.  Landing them is a completely different experience.  Trying to cast at fish between 30 and 100 lb ten yards in front of you with a 6/0 fly and a 12-weight, with five yards of fly line out, and the wind blowing strongly in your face is a nail biting experience.  These fish move so fast and hit the fly so hard that the temptation to raise the rod is all too easy and you forget to keep strip-striking, resulting in a lost fish.  With these guys you must never raise the rod until you feel the hook sink home and the weight of the fish.

I hooked one GT, which I lost, but we got numerous bluefin and yellowfin to big polar-fibre minnows, simper fleyes, deceivers and big poppers such as Bob’s Bangers.  These fish are the boot-boys of the marine world and fight dirty, so you lose a lot more than you land.  The best retrieve is the PLF or a variant of the roly-poly.  You simply must move your fly as fast as possible.  The fish move from the outside of the reef into the lagoon through narrow channels at slack tide and you can set up there to ambush them as they look for food, chasing baitfish through the channels.

This is a magical place -- it’s just alive and has some of the best saltwater fishing in the world.  Get there if you can!

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