Kick Back and Enjoy the Beauty

by | Apr 27, 2011 | Uncategorized | 3 comments

April 14

Fly Fishing Isle Saint Marie Madagascar – Day 15

We get up early every day but today I must have wandered out to the beach before 5 AM. It was well before sunrise and the lighting on the water was incredible. After a short walk and some play time with a local lemur, I grabbed my 8-weight and headed for the point overlooking the channel between the Isle Saint Marie and Isle Aux Nattes. By now the sun was up and the locals were in action like they never went to sleep. The pirogue taxis were vigorously shuttling children, fully decked out in their school clothes across the channel. Evidently there’s no school here on Isle Aux Nattes so they make the trip across everyday. That’s a cool school bus alternative! Along with the taxis, the channel was crawling with fisherman. Some were hand lining bait while groups of others were dragging huge nets and tossing a few small fish into the bottoms of their boats – not a good sign.

As I cast away, it was obvious I’d be the talk at school and amongst the local fishermen. The kids and pirogue guides especially, stared and watched my fly line sail through the air both curiously and cautiously. What the heck was this alien doing? Then to show them, even to my surprise because action was truly slow, I got ripped by a fish. At first I thought I really had something good but the run faded fast and it turned out to simply be a scrappy bluefin trevally of about 10”s. That gave me a mental boost but after an hour and a walk around the point, the only other fish I caught was the common blackspot emperor fish, another tiny one. This morning was my realization that there may not be many fish here.

During breakfast with Granny and my new South African friends, I noted that the fishery here could be in trouble. The water is spectacular looking. Water such as this in Belize or Christmas Island would be crawling with fish. And the Seychelles, a mere 1000 miles away, is one of saltwater fly fishing’s best, but here seems not only slow, but nearly void of fish.

After breakfast I actually relaxed (3rd or 4th time now this trip) in a lounge chair in the shade and typed up yesterday’s blog. Time flew and before I noticed it was lunch time. They make some great food here at La Petite Traversée so Granny and I had the cook, Oliver, make us a pizza, and of course we enjoyed a tall Three Horses beer to go with.

During our lunch along came the pirogue boatmen I spoke with briefly last night about fishing today. They were caught up on their taxiing for the day and were ready to make an extra buck by taking me fishing. We negotiated a price of $3 an hour – yes $3 an hour! As you can imagine, with a price like that and I woofed down the rest or my share of pizza, told them let’s fish till sunset and grabbed my gear. Granny opted to stay back and relax.

My guides, Florio and Herman, were super nice guys. Florio spoke reasonably good English while Herman is learning. Both shared the workload of guiding me. While one poled the other paddled and they switched off jobs on occasion. Remarkably, they moved that boat as if they had been guiding fly fishers their whole lives. They were very impressive. And surprisingly, they never questioned my fishing method (remember, they have only seen fish caught by hand line or net) or suggested we fish their way. They just watched and moved the boat and we chatted about the usual things – where the USA is, family and fishing in general.

Casting from the pirogue wasn’t easy. I’ve fished from plenty of dugouts and other strange watercraft my whole life. But usually I stand up and cast from these unstable boats on freshwater. It’s often calm and large rolling waves don’t exist. But on the ocean, in a wobbly pirogue, standing took some practice.

Once I got comfortable, casting was easy and I combed the water column around the coral reef with “old reliable”, the Clouser minnow. About three hours went by like nothing and we hadn’t even a follow. Seriously, we fished to coral head reefs that should have been teaming with life, but zilch. Not a single fish. Then it became apparent why. The fellas asked me to reel in as they were going to move past a particular area. At first I couldn’t figure why, the place looked just like the previous places we fished, but then I saw. I noticed fishermen nets tied from coral head to coral head. I’ve been plenty of places where over fishing is a problem, but this was ridiculous. They were literally netting every fish alive here! Even little tropical fish – yikes!

Let’s just say I didn’t have a lot of confidence from that point onward. And being the person I am, I started lecturing Florio and Herman about how bad netting coral heads was. They had a simple answer, “we must eat”. Well, there’s no doubt about that statement. It’s the way of the world. What can you say? Nothing. I just swallowed hard and thought to myself, “okay man, this area is more beautiful than anywhere I can remember, relax and enjoy it. I’m lucky to be here. Lucky I can leave and fish places that are full of fish. And lucky to be from the USA”. The world is full of places like this and I aint gonna change it. So I went back to my casting and prayed for a miracle. I wanted to catch and release a fish more than you can imagine!

I, Florio and Herman had a great time this afternoon. We had some great conversation and they worked as hard to please me as any fishing guide I’ve ever been with. They were fantastic. And best of all, I caught a fish! It was the smallest grouper I think I’ve ever caught. Juveniles like this are difficult to identify but the three of us are pretty sure it’s a baby Malabar grouper. The fishing trip was a success!

As usual, we just finished up another great night around La Petite. Granny and I and our adopted family of South Africans just enjoyed a fun cocktail hour and a massive seafood feast. This place really does it right. Now we are exhausted. The evening rains have started and it’s time for bed.

3 Comments

  1. Urocyon

    Jeff, thanks for another great blog, and great photos! I’ve encouraged biologist & fishing friends to check it out too. If the nearshore fishery is so depleted, how is La Petite Traversée able to serve up massive seafood feasts? Local (offshore) fishing fleet or importation of seafood from elsewhere? Just wondering! Pat

  2. Erik

    That is too bad about the netting of every fish… I bet you were frustrated with that… Good job on the Grouper, looks like it took an Avalon fly. And is that a gecko ?

  3. Jeff Currier - Global Fly Fishing

    The offshore and inshore are definitely two different deals with many different species. Here very few people have motors so the offshore does not get much pressure. We hoped to get out there but could not – bummer! You could litterally see beyond the reef from our beach and we never saw a single pirogue out there. It must be good!

    The owner of La Petite has an offshore boat. Unfortunatle he was in SA. He has plenty of fish pictures on the wall of tuna, dorado, mackerel, sailfish and etc. So at the right time of the year it must be good. And I’m sure the bottom of the deep water still has decent supply of grouper, snapper, jobfish, emperors etc that do a good job of reproducing. Their young must move or hatch in the shallows giving these local fishermen a reason to keep after it all the time.

    Indeed the seafood at La Petite was superb. However, we never had grouper or snapper or any of the usual “reef gamefish”. The food consisted of mostly prawns, crab, one night we had surgeon fish (first time I saw them on the dinner table and they were excellent) and on night we had those small blackspot emperors.

    Anyhow, perhaps our food lives a little deeper from where netting effectivly catches fish. And also where I can’t effectively get my fly.

    Thanks for the good comment and thanks for spreading the word about the blog!

Welcome to the Blog of Jeff Currier!

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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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