I met Brian Iannacchione at the Denver Fly Fishing Show about five years ago.  He was a delight to talk with.  He’s young and full of energy.  What I loved about him was that he was going to do his best to budget his life to experience some of the amazing fisheries on the planet while young.  During that visit Brian flat out said, “When you host a trip to Cosmoledo, I’ll be there”.

 

Brian was dead serious because today I had the pleasure of sharing the boat with him here in Cosmoledo.  Our guide was Dean.  When we woke up the weather was awful.  So bad we didn’t get on the water at 8 but rather 9:30.  When we finally left the lodge the tide was great for one of Dean’s GT flats.  As you can see, Brian nailed the first geet we saw!

 

The GT window was short.  We didn’t see another after the one we caught so the next stop was one of Deans triggerfish spots.  Brian is following my path of species fishing and he wants his first trigger badly.  While the triggers wouldn’t cooperate I plucked off a yellowlip emperor and Brian got his first bluefin trevally.

 

Considering the flats fishing challenges dealt to us by the clouds, drizzle and wind, we were doing quite well in the first few hours.  But Brian and I wanted more species.  Deep inside both of us we wanted to do a dredge.  A dredge is when you go outside the reef to deeper water and send down heavy flies with big weight and tangle with grouper, snapper, trevally, jobfish and the list goes on.  Brian had read some of my Farquhar Atoll blogs from 2014 and 2016 and wanted to experience the same.  So much so that we actually made plans to do one together on this trip over a year ago.

 

Dean saw that we each brought extra 12-weights with SA Sonar Titan Big Water Tapers and barrel sinkers to help send down our flies when we boarded the skiff this morning.  Dean sort of laughed and said its likely too rough.  But he was cool about it and said we’ll see.  Well, after seeing the fun we were having with our three different species to start the day, Dean suddenly asked us, “How badly do you guys want to dredge?  Its gonna be rough out there but we can take a look.”

 

Brian and I knew what the open ocean would be like.  But we had to give it a try – especially now that Dean was willing.  Off we went.

 

 

 

Photos don’t show how big waves and ocean swells really are.  You simply can’t capture that.  So take my word, everything about the ocean today was huge.  So much so that it was hard to stand up and fish.  But we managed and on our first drop we hooked into one of my dredging favorites, the brilliantly red and yellow colored, yellow-edged lyretail grouper.

 

Dredging action is always good in the Seychelles.  While many of the ocean floors are fished out, especially near any form of human civilization, the Seychelles are alive and well.  Almost every time we sent our flies down we caught something.  Second drop produced another lyretail for me and this slick frigate tuna (Auxis thazard) for Brian.

 

We braved outside the reef for about an hour.  It wasn’t like it was unsafe (could have been), but getting tossed around gets tiring.  We caught a ton of fish.  We got numerous more lyretails, one huge bluefin trevally, one whitespotted grouper and I caught this brown African marbled grouper.  I wish Brian got this pretty fish because it’s a species he had his eye on.

 

We returned to the flats for a two hour session early afternoon.  While the sun was mostly out, the wind raged.  I’m not talking a steady 20 mph but rather gale force.  We found out tonight that the wind blew a steady 30.  That’s a tough day of fishing!  And indeed it was.  It was all Dean could do to hang on to the boat.  Brian and I spread out and walked.  The highlight for me was getting a few casts at emerald scale parrotfish and Brian lost a large GT that broke his fly line.

 

For the last hour the tide got too high to wade fish reasonably so we went back to the dredging waters for about 45 minutes.  We knew we’d get tugged around more and we knew it would be fun.  We caught a bunch more lyretails and a big yellowlip emperor.  I busted up this beautiful bohar snapper.  I love the bohars and have posted some monsters in the past from Sudan and Anaa Atoll.

 

We ended the day with this beautiful double.  Me with the whitespotted grouper and Brian happily got his first African marbled grouper.  We caught nine different species today and Brian caught at least five new ones.  That’s a really cool day.  We waited a long time for this adventure and despite the interesting weather, we had great success.

 

There were nice fish caught all over the board today amongst the rest of my group as well.  Dave Meyers caught a permit on day one but hadn’t hooked another fish since.  Well, today he landed two GT’s including this dandy with Brad.

 

You don’t get much of a weather forecast at a remote place like Cosmoledo.  But tonight the wind continues to rage and the occasional rain hits every couple hours.  Like every night, we had a wonderful meal and a good time around the dinner tent.

 

I broke out my sharpies and took on a big challenge.  I drew this African marbled grouper on Brian’s pack.  This unique piece of art was well deserved!  We are back at it in the morning.

 

This is a Yellow Dog Hosted trips and if you ever want to go feel free to contact me or go directly to Yellow Dog.

 

Be sure to keep track of my upcoming travels around the world!

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Jeff Currier Global Fly Fishing