I hope some of you may find the following notes of interest.
Pegleg and I decided to forego our 1st week of Feb on the Scottish Dee in favour of a boys’ trip to Christmas Island, the Pacific one, not Indian Ocean! I’m pleased we did forego the Dee, as the river was totally blank below Banchory, where we fish.
Kiritimati, or Christmas Island, lies about 120 miles North of the equator, and is accessed by a once a week (!) flight from Fiji to Kiritimati and on to Hawaii, doing a complete return trip the same day. It is apparently the largest atoll in the world, and was the site for early atomic weapons testing in the late 50s/early 60s. The SE Tradewinds blow at about 10mph each day, and the daylight hours are basically 6am to 6pm.
Our journey started at Heathrow, to Los Angeles, then Hawaii – about 18 hours flying time. An overnight in Honolulu and then the 3 hour flight down to Kiritimati. We left home at around 5am on Monday, night stopped Monday night and flew out of Hawaii at noon on Tuesday, arriving Kiritimati at 3pm Wednesday – you cross the international date line on this flight!! Watches / cameras / brains all needed to be reset.
We booked our trip through Fly Odyssey (I have no connections with them) and all the arrangements worked flawlessly, so hats off to Mat Mchugh.
About 50 anglers, mostly from the USA, boarded the flight at Honolulu, all heading to the small number of “lodges” that serve the visiting fishermen. We stayed in Tabwakea Village at "The Villages", a fishing lodge run by the Church.
It was pretty basic accommodation, but the food was good – we lived on fresh fish each day. The 12 anglers at The Villages are looked after by 12 guides, and we changed guide each day. There were 4 boats with a boatman, each taking 3 anglers and 3 guides to different areas of the vast lagoon systems, and the anglers were also mixed up each day, so you always had new company for the day.
Our team of 12 comprised 4 Brits, 1 Dane, 1 German, 1 Canadian and 5 from the USA – a super bunch of guys and good fun to be with.
This trip was what I call “immersive”, in that 6 days were spent with no phone connectivity, no WiFi, no TV etc. Our daily routine started with breakfast at 5:45, you made your own sandwich lunch, and headed out on the boat at 6:30, just before sunrise.
A normal day saw us back at the lodge around 5:30 to 6pm, with dinner served at 7. A very long, tiring day – but well worth every moment. This was all wade fishing, with the guide beside you, dropped off and moved around by your allocated boat.
We each normally fished 2 locations in the morning and 2 in the afternoon. Mostly, you could see no other fisherman in sight, with the 3 in your boat all sometimes 2 miles apart !
The guides used their extensive knowledge to put us onto different flats according to the tide, wind and sun conditions. This is all sightfishing, and you need the right sun angles to best see the fish.
The fish – mostly Bonefish, with a sprinkling of Giant, Bluefin and Yellow Trevally, Trigger fish and the usual aquarium suspects. The odd Black Tipped shark cruised around, also hunting small bonefish.
Most of us were kitted out with an 8wt rod for the bones, with a 12wt ready for GTs, carried by the guide to be quickly available should a GT pitch up. When they did, they were cruising erratically and at warp speed, and you were very lucky if you could get a cast in. There is a lot of footage on UTube of large (60-100lb) GTs being caught, and these are almost exclusively fish that have been lured into the edge of the flats by chumming, a practice which in now somewhat frowned upon and certainly not practiced by The Villages guide team.
Over the week, I lost many more fish than I would normally expect to lose in the Keys or Cuba, simply because of fish running through coral heads and cutting off the leader. I lost 3 Trevally and about 8 bonefish in this way, including my best bone of 8-9lb which cut me off just before the guide was about to land it. All these fish are returned, the guides unhook all the fish and we used barbless hooks only, making unhooking by such skilled guides a quick and simple task.
The bones I encountered probably averaged about 2 – 3 lbs, but a lot were around 4lbs, some 5lbs. During the week, bones of 10lbs and 9 lbs were taken by members of our team. My Keys and Cuba flies were mostly ignored by these fish, which live on worms, rather than shrimps and crabs. For those of you who fancy a trip, you need “Christmas Island Specials” in sizes 6 and 4, with various weights of dumbbell eyes, according to the depth and current.
In 6 days of fishing, one of which was pretty much a write-off for all of us due to rain and wind affecting the water temperature, I took around 90 bones. My best day was the last, when I took 30 by lunch and another 10-12 in the afternoon. And remember, all these fish are sight cast to – it’s a very visual and totally absorbing and rewarding experience.
There are also opportunities for “blue-water” fishing, and Pegleg and 2 neighbours of ours took the plunge. A 3-hour motor to the right area on the exposed lee shore, led to 5 or 6 hours fishing – a mix of trolling and fishing into the back of the surf with giant poppers for GTs. Our 3 intrepid heroes, fishing with only 2 spinning rods between them, managed to land 2 Wahoo (Pegleg’s was around 75lb), a 40lb GT, 2 Yellowfin Tuna and lost another 6/7 fish in play.
Plus a rod "exploded" (!) under the strain of trying to winch up a Wahoo that had run deep, and for much of their day, they took turns on just one rod. Needless to say, we enjoyed very much the fruits of their labours over the following days, with daily Tuna sushi and Wahoo cooked a number of ways.
All too soon our week was over, and we headed back, via another stopover in Honolulu, craving steak and salad !
Would I do it again ?? MOST CERTAINLY, particularly in these days of vanishing Dee salmon !!
Hope you enjoyed ?
TL
Nick
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