Fly Fishing in Sudan – Day 3

by | Mar 27, 2014 | Uncategorized | 2 comments

blog-March-27-2014-1-exploring-the-nubian-flatsWe awoke to the revving of the engines of our mother ship.  It was time to move.  The flats we’ve been on were fantastic but this is an exploratory so we must explore.  The place we headed for were flats we saw on a map about a six hour boat ride straight out into the Red Sea.  This is a place Rob and Ed wanted to visit last November but the weather wouldn’t permit.

 

blog-March-27-2014-2-rough-red-seaI can only imagine how rough it must have been for them to have not gone because today as we ate breakfast in the cabin plates of food slid and drinks were impossible as our mother ship heaved over enormous waves.  The ride probably took more than six hours due to the headwind and the waves.  Two of the guys got sick.

 

blog-March-27-2014-3-first-flyfishers-in-sudanWhen we arrived the sight of the new flats made the tiresome boat ride all worth it.  We anchored on the back side of an island that had a deep blue channel cutting through it.  We were sheltered but could see that a short walk would take us to a huge flat that went from the island to the wave busting reef.  Our tracks were about to be the first ever by fly fishers.

 

blog-March-27-2014-4-rob-scott-oftourette-fishingI fished with Rob.  He packed his 8-weight and the teaser rod while I stuck with what’s been working, my 8- and 12-weight Winston Boron III SX rods.  We didn’t get far before we found a huge titan triggerfish wallowing the edge of a flat.  I put the sneak on him and got three excellent casts with a crab fly.

 

blog-March-27-2014-5-triggerfishThe strike zone for triggers is small. I had to get my fly almost exactly in front of him.  Once he saw it I let my crab sink.  The colorful strange fish tilted and I strip set.  I felt him but he came off.  Triggers are hard to hook because of their small human-like tooth filled mouths.  He chased again and ate again.  But for a second time he wasn’t hooked.  I got three eats but no hook up before he finally bolted.

 

blog-March-27-2014-6-thornfish-in-sudanFor the next few hours Rob and I cast at triggers.  I had two solid hook ups.  One was a small titan triggerfish that I brought close to hand and the hook pulled.  The other was a huge yellowmargin that I should have gotten.  He was on the reef and I hooked him solid.  But I stupidly let him run too far and he made it over the edge of the reef and freed himself.  There were other opportunities but they were wrecked by other more aggressive crab heisting species such as this very attractive thornfish (Terapon jarbua).

blog-March-27-2014-7-jeff-currier-with-twospot-snapperI picked up two new species today, the thorn fish a bigeye jack (very similar to the horse-eye).  I also got this respectable bohar behind Rob’s teaser on the reef.  Overall, our fishing results could have been better.  Mark, Chris and Eric got into the triggers thick and landed five!  But we did experience something unique and incredible.  We saw a dugong.  The dugong is very similar to the manatee but is indeed different and unfortunately as close to extinction as a species can be.  There may be less than 100 on the entire east coast of Africa.

 

Jeff Currier Global Fly Fishing

2 Comments

  1. Erik Moncada

    I have a hard time on boats in the ocean myself… I need pills ha ha

  2. Jeff

    Anyone who’s been to college knows how to puke and rally. Here in Sudan its even more worth it!

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I started fly fishing at age 7 in the lakes and ponds of New England cutting my teeth on various sunfish, bass, crappie and stocked trout. I went to Northland College in Ashland, Wisconsin, where I graduated with a Naturalist Degree while I discovered new fishing opportunities for pike, muskellunge, walleyes and various salmonids found in Lake Superior and its tributaries.

From there I headed west to work a few years in the Yellowstone region to simply work as much as most people fish and fish as much as most people work. I did just that, only it lasted over 20 years working at the Jack Dennis Fly Shop in Jackson, WY where I departed in 2009. Now it’s time to work for "The Man", working for myself that is.

I pursue my love to paint fish, lecture on every aspect of fly fishing you can imagine and host a few trips to some of the most exotic places you can think of. My ultimate goal is to catch as many species of fish on fly possible from freshwater to saltwater, throughout the world. I presently have taken over 440 species from over 60 countries!

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