I definitely lost my mind for a few hours after the Africanus episode yesterday.  Granny and I ended up in Salalah, Oman.  The trip there happened because I kept driving south looking for rocky points and a rematch with an Africanus.  Eventually I accepted that the occurrence was a rare one that may never happen again.  A fact that has me a little crabby this morning.  I was so close to landing that one.

Salalah is a big city and surprisingly green.  It’s so big that I hated driving there and spent a lot of time white knuckled to the steering wheel getting honked at.  Not knowing where we were going and one of the biggest roundabouts you ever saw were a little stressful.  We found a jumbo grocery store and loaded up on eggs, fresh veggies, pasta, water, cookies and coke.  We didn’t find fuel canisters so the canister we’ve been milking will be for coffee only and cooking will be done on a fire.

We figured we’d camp near Salalah but the area has tons of construction going on and much more population than the coast we’ve been traveling on.  Therefore I broke our “no driving at night” clause and after filling our cooler drove all the way back to the beach we stayed at last night.  The camels on the road had me down to 45 km per hour but we love this beach the best so far and we have only two days left.  We may as well enjoy.

Another day here was a good call because the bait balls were running all day.  Largespot pompano were terrorizing up and down the beach.  We’ve really taken a liking to catching these guys.  They’re aggressive, great fighters, good looking and delicious tasting.

Although the largespots were corralling bait they were suckers for my crab patterns.  The difficulty was being able to reach them.  We kept the rods rigged and sort of kicked back around camp watching the nearby bait balls.  When we saw them pushing towards the beach we got up and ran there.  If you could reach with the cast you were hooked up immediately.

We caught a bunch of the largespot pompanos today.  We also saw three permit.  The last gave me my best chance of the trip.  He cruised the beach in and out of the waves and I got at least six excellent casts.  He seemed to see my fly twice.  He tailed on the fly aggressively and I thought I had him.  Unfortunately I strip set and pulled it away.  The second time he was ready to eat, the smallest largespot we caught stole the fly.  The permit spooked and I thumped that largespot with a smile for tonight’s dinner!

We must return our car in Muscat the day after tomorrow.  Our beach heaven is 600 km from Muscat so at 5 PM we decided we should get up the road a bit if we want have time to fish tomorrow.  The plan is to fish the parrotfish place we fished on the way down.  Hoping to sleep with less dew on us we are camped several miles from the sea in a beautiful wadi.  There’s a gentle breeze so no bugs and this pompano melts in your mouth!

Jeff Currier Global Fly Fishing