I was with Jono again today and my fishing partner was another of my buddies who travels with me regularly, Jeff Smith. I don’t think Jeff has ever missed one of my hosted Yellow Dog trips and he’ll be with me in Bhutan this November. Jono was decked out in the chili suit today for a minor offense amongst his guide peers. We headed for Pauly’s Island which has meaning for me. Pauly’s is where I caught my first Indo-Pacific permit back in 2018.
For some reason, there are a lot of permit at Pauly’s. It’s where Heath caught his yesterday and if I remember correctly, the day I caught my first, my friend Tim Babich caught one also. We arrived under mostly sunny skies and a light breeze.
The permit were there and so were many of our casts today but other than a “maybe” he ate it and only a couple of looks at a variety of flies, they were their usual stubborn and annoying selves. Furthermore, Jeff S. and I each bared through a few EXTRA frustrating moments as well.
Jeff’s was minor; he had three happy tailing permit appearing to be eating everything. When he went to cast, his back cast got hooked in the bushes behind him. All he did was scare a bunch of shore birds which in turn sent his permit running.
I had a few minor annoyances throughout the day like that as well, but I had one big one that has me wearing the chili suit tomorrow. I was casting to two tailing permit next to part of an old shipwreck. You can see one chunk of rusty old mast sticking out in the picture. And if you look really closely, you can actually see the tip of a permits tail. I made several casts to these fish with no response.
These permit were so engrossed in whatever they were eating that they hung around long enough I changed flies several times from different colored Alphlexo’s to Merkins to a shrimp pattern. At last I went tight. Yes! I thought. However, the fish only acted like a permit for about five seconds. It ran out about 50 feet and stopped (permit run you deep into you backing). The fish remained in place for about ten seconds then ran back to where I hooked him and buried me in the shipwreck.
It wasn’t one of the permit after all but rather a blue spangled emperor. Disappointed, I reeled myself towards the mess. My line was going under rusty chunks of crap then around another then over and under again. I reeled myself right to it and was using my rod tip to untangle. When all of a sudden, only a couple feet from me, there was the emperor with my fly sticking out of his mouth. Realize, if he’s next to me, my line would be back towards me for 9 feet opposite direction of my rod tip. Well, the fish decided to make another surge and with no slack because I had reeled myself to the junk, he pulled my rod into the mess and broke it in pieces.
Stupid hurts. All I had to do was stand back and break my fly off. Instead I was greedy and tried to salvage my fly and the fish. A big mistake.
I was mortified not to have another rod with me because there were more tailing permit. Jono and Jeff S. were long gone because I was on my usual solo flats walk. Not that they had a spare rod. But Jono wasn’t there to recommend for me to go back to the boat the way I’d came (which was about a mile). Instead, I assumed because I went a mile, if I kept going around the island, I’d be close to the boat. I was wrong. From where I broke my rod and continuing around to the boat, was two miles. I didn’t get back to the boat and my spare rod for at least 45 minutes. And I wasn’t back to the permit flat for at least another hour after that.
So a two hour waste of prime time occurred in my day. By the time I was back in business, the tide was too low and the permit were all gone. But one must never give up in fly fishing. There were other fish meandering around with their tails out. They were a species of surgeonfish. Many experienced anglers will tell you not to cast to tailing surgeons because they don’t eat flies. These anglers are only 99% correct. I’ve caught two in a 1000 casts. The most memorable last year on Providence Atoll. So I went to work.
While I’d like to tell you I succeeded, I did not. However, in making heaps of competitive on the money casts, I ended up lassoing this one. It’s really unbelievable how my leader wrapped around this crazy looking fish’s horn!
This is the bluespine unicornfish (Naso unicornis), and while he won’t count towards my species list because he’s not a legitimate catch, he’s incredible nonetheless. I had to post this fantastic picture of him. What a creature. And I promise, I will continue to cast to these and someday I’m going to get one legitimately!
I need to point out, that surgeonfish get their name for a reason. At the base of their tail they have protrusions that are no less than the sharpest scalpel blades you have ever seen. If you don’t know the fish, always be careful. Fortunately for me, I knew not to touch this area and in fact, I used a glove to get a handle on things before we took any photos.
Just because Jeff S. and I couldn’t get it done, doesn’t mean some of the others in my group couldn’t. While the day was slower overall in comparison to others, there were some nice fish caught. Here’s Mike Lodge with a hefty bonefish.
It was hot wearing the chili suit at dinner tonight. But I earned it. I’ll make damn sure to catch a blue spangled emperor first thing in the morning so I can take the suit off. That’s the rule, you wear it until you catch a fish.
It was another incredible day at St. Brandon’s Atoll. And today marked the halfway point. It’s hard to believe we have another seven days of fishing!