Today’s fishing partner here on St. Brandon’s Atoll was Bob Ylagan. This week was the first time we’ve ever met. Normally I know everyone ahead of time for my hosted Yellow Dog trips but this trip was unique in that I had two friends drop out not too long ago. It’s required that myself and Yellow Dog fill every spot so we had to reach out blind to all YD customers. To my delight, Bob is awesome. He’s one of those guys who you are literally friends with after the first time you meet.
I got to experience a new guide today as well. Bob and I fished with Jonathan Barwick from South Africa. Jono, as he goes by, is the newest addition to the guide staff but he’s well qualified and was a joy to be with. He took us straight across from the lodge to a flat they call, “Big Trash”. It’s a flat I’ve caught a heap of nice bonefish on and also my largest Indo-permit back in 2018. Unfortunately the tide wasn’t right and it was a nice walk with no fish.
Big Trash was simply a quick stop while waiting for Julies flat to fire off like it did yesterday. Tides are about an hour later each day so while yesterday Julies started fishing at 9 am, today it got good at 10. Jono ran us full speed ahead to be there on time.
Once we got there Jono and Bob headed out. I did my usual of letting the guide and my guest get a headstart then I did the cleanup work behind them. I keep saying this and probably will continue to say it, St. Brandon’s is the best bonefishing in the world. They are plentiful on the flats here. They are big. And if you take your time and stroll along with good eyes and casts, you’ll catch a bunch. I could see Bob releasing his first bonefish of the day before I started my walk.
Yesterday was our first day and you could say first days for me are “tune up” days. Jetlagged eyes are never great for spotting fish and simply being out of practice doesn’t help either. You can see in this photo that the tailing bonefish in dead center blends in with the bottom so well it’s unreal. How their so invisible is because each bonefish scale is nothing different than a mirror so they reflect the exact colors of bottom. But today my skills came back to me full on and I had an epic session hooking eight and landing six before our late lunch.
By early afternoon the tides were so high wading the flats were no longer an option. Like yesterday we prowled from the boat for giant trevally. While Bob manned the bow with the 12-weight I poked around with my 9-weight and a small Clouser Minnow hitting all the coral heads. I caught a few blue spangled emperors, yellowlip emperors, baby bluefin trevally and this new on for me, a baby yellowstripe emperor (Lethrinus obsoletus). This one is a juvenile. Adults reach about 22”. We didn’t see any GTs.
At the end of our day we were able to stop and wade a flat near the lodge. Conditions weren’t the best so I did some playing while Jono took Bob and searched for permit. My friend Mark Kuhn, my buddy behind the scene that runs my webstore and website, tied me this fly based on an article he read about catching batfish on fly. Though we see batfish (spadefish) on the flats all the time they pay no attention to flies (I had a miracle catch in Sudan back in 2015). Supposedly some guide in the Seychelles figured out they eat a small blue bottle jellyfish off the top. Well, I made at least a dozen casts to batfish but no luck. It’s a funny looking fly but I will try again because figuring out batfish would be VERY cool!
I didn’t do the best job with photos today. Fishing solo most of the day makes it tough but I’ll work harder starting tomorrow. Bob and I had a fabulous day together and I’ll look forward to getting out with him again a week from today. And I’ll bet you see him on more trips in the future.
The rest of the group experienced more excellent bonefishing. Everyone landed at least one in the 7lb range. Here’s Morgan with a dandy standard-of-St-Brandon’s bonefish. Awesome stuff!