This was my second (and not last) trip to Xmas following my trip there in 2019. So, what changed? What was different?
The airport got a major upgrade. There’s now a legit waiting area with enough seating. So, good job to whatever government(s) got that sorted.
Things that were totally the same:
– The boats – The trucks – GTs being hard – Wind, all the time – Periods of clouds and periods of sun – Long days full of fishing – Mostly, the guides – The beauty of the place – The quality of the roads – The quality of the fishing
Things that were different:
Fished a different lodge. In 2019 I was at The Villages and this time I was at Christmas Island Lodge (which wasn’t even there in 2019 and has taken over the site of the Captain Cook). CIL has more of a truck-based program, although their second boat was being repaired, so that might not always be true. Trips to the backcountry and Huff Dam by truck were new.
Triggers were… jerks. In 2019, I had maybe 10 trigger shots and landed 2. It did NOT go that way this year. Had maybe 40 shots at adults and went 0/40. Got one little peachface, but that was it. I had three eats, zero conversions. I don’t know why it was so much harder, but it was.
My bonefishing sucked less. In 2019 I had a day where I started off going about 0/25 on bonefish shots. This year, I feel like I was more on it. I caught more fish on my own, and I had some magical/awesome sessions where I was just dialed. It isn’t that I improved so much in the last 5 years, it just went better this trip. I ended up landing 40 bonefish to 6 pounds. I maybe had half that number in 2019.
A female touch. CIL had a female guide and I think also another female guide in training. Ari, the woman guide, was fantastic. I thought she was maybe the best guide I had. She communicated clearly and often. She asked questions about what I wanted and she had a plan. 5 Star Guide and if you go to CIL, request her.
The beer was better. Flame beer, from NZ, was an upgrade from whatever we had in 2019 and we drank great quantities of the stuff. A nice, light, clean beer, best when cold and after a long day of fishing.
Hosted v. non-hosted. In 2019 I went on a hosted trip with my friend Shane. He saw to all the details. In 2025 we didn’t have a host, but Ty, the manager of CIL, sort of filled that role (in addition to everything else he did). This proved not to really feel like a big change, but was different. Shane was there at the same time, at the Villages, but his trip filled up before we could get in.
Tides. This was not a thing I paid a lot of attention to, but our tides were less than ideal. We had lows througout most of the fishing hours and that really impacted what the Korean Wreck looked like (barren). We were out there for about 20 minutes of the incoming tide and it was shaping up to be MAGIC, but then we had to leave. Boo. They say the best time to go fishing is when you can, and this fell into that sort of category. This was the week I had available and I was going to go no matter what.
More species. Did you know there are Queenfish in Xmas? I didn’t, but I caught one. Also got a sweetlips and wasn’t the only one to catch either of those species. Caught a goatfish as well, which I don’t recall catching before.
I pretty much only want to fish Christmas Island at this point. This is such a special place. I’ll be back.
In my opinion, one of the best guides currently working on Christmas Island is Ari (and not just because she complimented my casting).
Ari with Wallace, walking off the last flat of the trip.
In a place that is fairly male-dominated, Ari is a female guide working out of Christmas Island Lodge.
I had her for 1.5 days and very much enjoyed having her. She not only saw the fish and knew where they’d be, which probably all the Xmas guides can do, but she communicated well. She asked questions. She gave feedback.
The first day I had her as my guide, Phil had told her that I likely needed some sort of therapy due to my blown shot at a big GT earlier in the week. So, she set out a path for the two of us to walk that would give me multiple cuts and points to go in search of trevally. She developed a plan, quickly, that would maybe do the trick, or at the very least it would set me up to be in a good position.
In one cut we found some working bluefin and I managed to get one to hand. When I gave her the phone to take the pic, she’s the one who put it on portrait mode and took the shot below… which is rad.
The next day, I was with Ari as we were fishing the last water we’d fish… and what did we find? A GT on the edge of a channel. It was a 20-25 pound fish, or there abouts. Not huge, but a very nice fish for sure. I managed to get a good cast in and got a follow, but the fish saw us in the last 15 feet and waived off (which is how my previous trip had ended as well… but… that’s for another time).
Ari consistantly put me in a good position to get the shots I was looking for and she checked in with me to make sure we were on the same page.
I was on a big flat, might have been Paris Flat, but I’m not totally sure.
Phil was with the guide and I had peeled away, walking on the very edge of the flat where the tide was pouring off into the deeper water. The wind was also in this same direction, from my left to my right, also heading off the flat.
The wind was sustantial, as it usually is, but coming off my right shoulder is something I’ve heard called a “caster’s wind,” and so it is.
There are days I just don’t see the fish, for whatever reason. In fact, on this day, earlier and with the guide, I was having trouble seeing the fish with the sun right overhead. This now was a couple of hours later in the day and the sun had slid a little lower in the sky and that seemed to make all the difference.
I could see the fish moving toward me along the edge of the flat and I could see some fish also moving off the flat as it lost its water, heading toward deeper water.
The casts weren’t long, but I had several and in an hour I managed six very nice bonefish, including one that was about 6 pounds. It was a very concentrated session of spotted fish and quality shots. Outside of my “shooting fish in a barrel” session I had later in the week at the Wreck, this one one of the finest hours of bonefishing I’ve maybe ever had.
As they were hooked, they’d race off the flat into the deeper water, which seemed an iffy proposition. At one point a GT of about 30 pounds was tracing the edge of the flat, coming toward me. I didn’t have my backback, so didn’t have my second rod, so was unarmed for the encounter. Later, as I was being summoned to give up my bonefish pursuit to head back to the boat, there was GT chaoas at the point of the flat I was still a couple hundred feet away from.
Another surprise was looking over to see a massive manta ray mere feet from me, gliding over the deeper water.
To get to this flat we actually drove. Normally, you’d reach this flat by boat, but we actually drove to Huff Dam and some of us split off and hit the more traditional flats in the AM. Later, I’d have an epic GT shot, of which I’ll write more of later.
The site has a LOT of broken links… hyperlinks pointing to the ghostly remains of “something” that once was, but is no more.
The blog has been going so long there are a lot of markers in the graveyard… companies that never got off the ground, blogs and websites that shared something important once and have faded into and then out of memory.
There are lodges that folded, some that were swept away, guides who have passed on or retired. There has been a lot of water under the bridge.
Heck, even this site has had several near misses with demise. I don’t write much on it these days as more of my time is spent on the youth soccer pitch than on any form of flat or doing any kind of fishing. I still have the itch. I still have the love. I just don’t have the committment to it, as I have other things I love that require tending and attention, like my marriage and my job, parenting and coaching.
It occured to me I was maybe something like an “influencer” back in the day, before that was a way you made a living, back before you got paid for it. I got some trips and some gear and some stories out of that era, but then came short-form social media, which I didn’t put the time into to figure out and when that faded in preference to more photo-driven and video-driven modes, well, I was two formats behind.
Today, no one really cares too much what I have to say on much of anything, and rightly so. But, I still have some stories to tell and thoughts to share on the pursuit of silvery fish in shallow waters with a fly rod in hand.
My Facebook Memory today was me with a very nice tarpon on a trip I had with Yellow Dog Fly Fishing Adventures and Jim Klug in Cuba. I wrote Jim just to thank him for that experience and we got to talking about fly fishing travel and where things stand now. I sent Jim some questions and he took the time to respond. Thanks for that Jim.
Awesome shot by Jim Klug.
For me it is going to be a while longer. I’m vaccinated and employed, so that’s good, but child care is much more complicated and my wife’s doctor schedule is unpredictable for the time being. We’ll need things to settle a bit before I find myself on a flat, but I am thinking a lot more about it these days… looking at pictures, going through my gear, thinking about what plans I need to set in motion.
Jim provides some insight and good advice in the answers below.
How did Yellow Dog weather the pandemic?
Well … We’re still here! There is no doubt that 2020 was a difficult year for our business and for destination angling in general. We had thousands of trips that were cancelled or postponed
What did you learn about the travel business and your own company as a result of the pandemic?
We had some interesting and important take-aways from 2020, and we learned some valuable and important lessons about both our business and our customers. All told, Yellow Dog navigated some tricky waters in 2020, and along the way, we identified some key take-aways from the past 16 months:
We learned that for our clients, having a legitimate agent working on their behalf is incredibly beneficial – especially when things get difficult. We saw this play out time and again in 2020. While we were not always able to immediately fix things or deliver the perfect answer for cancelled trips, we worked tirelessly for our customers – operating on their behalf and looking out for their interests. Having an agent like Yellow Dog (the largest creator of trips for many of the lodges in the industry) often-times made a difference. For people that had booked on their own or through a smaller shop or hobby agent, the outcomes – and the solutions offered – were often-times markedly different.
Patience is everything. We’ve learned that tenacity and persistence goes a long way when it comes to re-bookings, re-schedulings and other resolutions. In the beginning of the pandemic, many operators and lodges were unprepared or unable to provide optimal solutions for cancelled or affected trips. Over time, however, we were able to work with many of these operations – on behalf of our clients – to secure better solutions and improved offers. Patience pays!
Being nice matters, and when the shit really hits the fan, you truly see the very best of people, and also the very worst. Luckily, the vast majority of our customers and clients were patient, nice and incredibly understanding throughout the pandemic, realizing that the world shutting down was not our fault nor the fault of the lodges or guides. The entire destination angling infrastructure took a devastating hit in 2020, and – unlike major airlines or cruise ship companies – there were no industry bail-outs or easy money. Every lodge, guide, outfitter and agent was hurt by this, and for every one of our clients who was kind, patient and understanding in the face of cancelled trips and disrupted fishing plans, know that it was very much appreciated!
Trip insurance can help, but it is important to understand the fine print and details. For years, trip insurance was the security blanket that promised to make things right if a fishing trip was cancelled or disrupted. And when it came to work conflicts, illness, hurricanes or cancelled flight routes, these policies usually paid off. The problem with trip insurance is that – like all insurance products – the companies know how to cover their asses against big-time cataclysmic events, and way down the list in the fine, fine print of things that were NOT covered was … you guessed it … “worldwide pandemics.” It turns out that most insurance policies would not cover trip cancellations that were pandemic-related, which meant that travelers who seemingly did everything right (booking early, securing a trip with the right deposit, and of course covering themselves with a travel insurance policy) were left hanging when their trips were cancelled due to lodges (and the world) being shut down. Moving forward, we fully expect that travelers will remember this, and we hope that those companies and products that have failed to protect travelers in the pandemic will be replaced by innovative policies and new products which actually deliver.
Having a solid and healthy destination angling infrastructure is crucial to our sport. Throughout the pandemic, we’ve known that – eventually – things would get back to normal and we’d be able to get back to doing what we love most: traveling and fishing the world. Having a lodge to return to (or your favorite guide still around to fish with) is a big deal, so being supportive of this infrastructure matters. For everyone that accepted a trip roll-over, re-booking fee or new dates, and especially to those that sent along the equivalent of a guide’s tip or donated to industry economic relief efforts, thank you.
Are you seeing the pent-up demand from a year off?
Oh yeah! Things are absolutely crazy right now. Once January 2021 hit, things started ramping up, and it has only gotten crazier since then. After a brutal 2020, Yellow Dog just closed out a record-setting first quarter of 2021. It was as if someone flipped a switch in early January, and people are now booking and reserving trips at a pace we’ve never before seen. Trip dates are being snatched up as quickly as toilet paper was selling out ten months ago, and the biggest challenges for the year ahead will unquestionably revolve around availability. If you are thinking about planning a trip for the near future – or even 2022 or 2023 – my advice is to start the process now. Getting out in front of the demand will ensure prime dates and great guides at the best lodges and destinations. “Last-minute” trip planning – while still possible – is going to be more of a challenge than in years past. If you know that you want to travel and fish in the near future, then get a jump-start on the planning process and get your dates and destinations on the books.
Many waters got an unanticipated rest over the last year. What are some of the benefits or silver linings after a year-long COVID shut-down?
Obviously, one of the biggest positives that has come from the pandemic is the environmental benefit that comes from literally shutting the world down for months on end. Global satellite images from space in late-2020 showed pollution levels that had dramatically decreased from those of only eight to ten months earlier, showing how nature can heal and recover when we simply reduce our footprint and let the planet do its thing (even for a relatively short period of time). For anglers, the effect of this “global rest” has been evident and abundantly obvious over the past several months in the quality of the fishing and the behavior of fish that we’ve witnessed across the planet. For many of the destinations that have already reopened (Alaska, Belize, the Bahamas, the Yucatan, Costa Rica, the Seychelles and numerous other destinations), we have already seen off-the-charts fishing and numbers that have not been seen in years.
Were there any operations that didn’t make it through?
That remains to be seen. This is something that will likely play out in the year ahead, but sadly, we are going to see some lodge, outfitters, guides and agents that will likely be gone by the end of 2021. The travel industry and destination angling as a whole were absolutely crushed when the world shut down. People stayed home, lodges closed, and airlines stopped flying. Small business loans and programs designed to keep people employed provided some assistance here in American; however international lodges, guides, outfitters and support businesses were largely left to survive on their own. Many of the guides we’ve fished with and come to know over the years were dealt a serious financial blow, as there was literally no work and no income for most of the year. Some guides were forced to sell their boats. Lodges terminated large numbers of staff, and many in the fly fishing community left the fishing world all together. Every international operation (along with many domestic operations) was hurt by the shut-downs, widespread cancellations and the lack of sales, and it will likely take years to fully recover.
When folks are booking now, do they require proof of vaccination or testing or what is it that has to happen to get back out there?
Proof of vaccination is not required to actually book or reserve anything (at this time) but there are plenty of countries that are requiring proof of vaccination for entry as a tourist. Regardless of how you personally feel about vaccinations, the fact is that life as a traveler and as a traveling angler will for sure be easier in the months (and possibly years) ahead with proof of vaccination. This is going to be true for some time to come with many foreign destinations.
Are there places that are still closed/highly limited?
For sure, and some that are likely to remain closed into 2022. Right now, New Zealand, Australia and the Cook Islands are all closed indefinitely. Argentina, Chile, India, Canada, Russia, Christmas Island and several other popular fishing destinations are all still closed as well, although we are hopeful that things will open in the months ahead. We’re thinking August for Christmas Island, although that is not a for-sure opening date!
Is there somewhere in particular you are excited to get back to?
For me personally, I’m really excited to get back to the Seychelles for the coming fall season. Honestly, any place that requires a passport stamp is going to get me excited at this point!
Any recent trips that you’ve been able to do?
I actually just returned from an incredible week in the Yucatan, fishing Xcalak and Chetumal Bay. An incredible fishery with some of the best permit fishing I’ve seen in years.
Jim with a permit from his recent trip to Xcalak… on first glimpse I thought it was a GT.
What would you say to the traveling angler who is still hesitant to get back out there?
You need to be comfortable to travel right now, and that is a personal thing for everyone. DO your homework, research what is involved in traveling to a destination, and above all have someone in your corner that can help if problems or unexpected delays pop up. But travel is possible right now, and there is a lot of great fishing that can be accessed and enjoyed in a safe, easy manner. Regardless of your destination, however, when you are ready to get back out there, we are absolutely recommending that anglers begin their planning and booking processes earlier than normal. As a result of losing the entire 2020 season, there are countless trips that have had to be rolled over and rescheduled for the 2021 and 2022 seasons, which means that availability for the foreseeable future will be tight. For those destinations such as the Seychelles, Cuba, prime permit destinations in the Caribbean, and others that were already in high demand, it will be even more important to look ahead and plan well in advance. Even destinations in Belize, the Bahamas and the Yucatan are likely to book up quickly for this season and well into 2022. Our recommendation for those that know they want to get back out there is to start the process now.
Years ago I tried to put together a trip to a lodge on Ragged Key in the Bahamas. I couldn’t pull it off. No regular flights in or out and charter companies to sort though and, yeah, never got it to happen. I ended up diverting to Long Island, which had regular flights, and had a good trip. But Ragged has always kicked around in the back of my head.
It is isolated. It is small (~60 people live there, maybe less). It looks juicy.
Flats on the west and deep water to the east looks like a very good big bonefish scenario.
So, I was excited to talk to Will Blair, who happens to be making a go of it at the newly opened Lost Key Lodge. He was just about to fly out there when I got a hold of him for a few minutes to chat. Seems he might have the flight situation more or less sorted out, which is good. He’s keeping the numbers low, four anglers a week, and there’s a lot of water to cover. Sounds a bit like paradise.
I just checked, and… well… it might be going well. I stole this pic from his facebook page. Holy bonefish.
Yeah, this place is going to be stuck in my head for a while longer.
There are a lot of bonefish in Christmas Island, which you’ve probably heard. I found the bones of Xmas to be irrationally difficult, due in part to the weather (several days of that high cloud, diffused light that makes bonefish vanish on the white sand canvas) and in part to my inability to make it happen. Let me explain.
There are loads of bones there. I saw maybe 200 a day, even if I got shots only at a fraction of those. In the low light the shots were really, really close. I hooked and caught bonefish with just the leader out of the rod, as well as at 10 feet and 20 feet and 30 feet and, rarely, maybe 40. However, I also botched a much higher percentage of fish in Xmas than I normally do and that comes down to the strip.
The strip, for the lagoon bonefish, is much faster than anywhere else I’ve ever fished for bones. The bones are not picking the fly off the bottom, they are eating it as it swims. This may be because they are taking the fly not to be a shrimp, but as a milkfish fry (that’s Shane’s theory and it is as good as any I could come up with). If you are used to a short strip, pause, short strip, pause, or if you are used to a strip-and-sit kind of retrieve, this is going to be hard to adjust to. I certainly found it difficult to adapt to.
On the ocean-side flats (the Korean Wreck) you may find a school of bones. I saw one of 30-40 fish, a school I took 3 fish out of. Inside the lagoon the bonefish just don’t seem to school up. If you see more than 3-4 fish together there is about a 90% chance those fish are actually milkfish. Milkfish can look frustratingly like bonefish and they share the same flats habitat. In deeper water the milks will be higher in the water column and the bones will be on the bottom, but in skinny water those fish can look very, very similar. When tailing, milks have a tail with some black on it, looking more like a permit tail than a bonefish, so that’s a giveaway.
Don’t get me wrong… I caught bonefish, having one day with ~15 and there were so many other fish to go after. I had one day without a bonefish, but that was the milkfish day and my cup was pretty full with that experience, so I didn’t mind so much.
The last day I had one particularly difficult morning, going 1/25 on legit shots. I was seeing the fish very well, but couldn’t make it happen. I don’t know what was wrong. That same time another angler in the group was going about 25/35… so, it wasn’t that people weren’t smashing it, it was just that I wasn’t smashing it.
Maybe it was the wrong strip and maybe it was my fly selection. Maybe it was the UV flash that has a purple tinge to it that isn’t maybe what’s called for. Maybe I was just having a temporary mental block. I don’t know what my problem was, but I wasn’t firing on all cylinders.
The bones of Xmas ran from 1-6 pounds with a few bigger fish around. I’d say they average 2-3 from what I saw.
I’d tie differently for this trip, knowing what I do now.
I never used a worm fly.
I never used a green fly.
I would have tied more plain Christmas Island Specials.
I would have tied more orange Christmas Island Specials.
I would have tied more #8s with small barbell eyes.
I would have used regular crystal flash, not UV crystal flash.
I would have left off any funky eyes (heavy eyes with actual eyes painted on)
I’d add… my crabs were on point.
I caught some nice bonefish and I had some decent bonefishing days. The days that were a bit more frustrating on bonefish were mitigated by other species (bluefin, GT, triggers, milkies).
So… bones, bones, bones galore, but for me it proved difficult to break old habits to adapt a new mentality to fish for them. Many good bonefish days were had by those in our group, so my issues were not universal or signs of a “problem” with the fishing. Just had some of my own shortcomings exposed… but that’s what learning looks like and I’m not disappointed.
Ansil brought us to an open space in the mangrove. “They call this Bonefish Hole, but I call this Dr. King’s Creek of Peace because this is where I brought Martin Luther King.”
I first published a version of this in 2013 after finding out King had been to the Bahamas and been out with Ansil into the mangroves.
Some of you may have noticed that the old DIYbonefishing.com site, which had allllll sorts of information on where to find bonefish, is now this hot wreck:
When was the last time you were bonefishing in a fresh water lake with snow capped mountains in the background?
This is a snapshot of the old website:
Gee… I notice a considerable difference.
Why buy the site and then put up a totally generic and crappy face on it? I mean… who does that?
Rod Hamilton was the guy behind the original DIY website and a couple of DIY bonefishing books, like “Do It Yourself Bonefishing.”
Good Book Rod!
What happened here is not readily apparent. There was no broadcast farewell. There was no message to fans and friends. The site just went down, replaced by that dumpster fire of a website. Rod’s email doesn’t work anymore. I don’t have a way to contact him. He appears to have called it a day, although no one I’ve spoken to really knows what to make of this sudden departure from the scene. I hope he’s well, as I know many of us do.
One can argue if it was a good idea to “hotspot” in such a public and readily accessible manner. I fall into the camp of “if you tell everyone where all the spots are, you spread out the pressure.” It may be a crap opinion. I don’t know that there is a scientific study here to fall back on.
I liked having all the info out there. Knowing where to go doesn’t mean you are going to find fish, or that you’ll be able to catch them if you can find them. DIY fishing is, simply, harder than doing it with a guide who knows the ins and outs of their particular bit of water.
If you have additional information on what happened here, please share here. And Rod… if you are out there, I hope you are well.
Man… what a week that was at East End Lodge. It’s been a while since I’ve had 6 straight days of fishing and it was glorious. I don’t think I’ve had 6 days of such good weather in all my flats fishing life (only a decade of doing this, so others certainly have a longer time-span to compare).
The fishing was solid. We had days that were better than others, but overall there were plenty of fish around.
I was accompanied on this trip by Elliott Adler, a guy I had never met before. That’s a risk, fishing with a guy who you don’t know. It worked out well and we fished together well. He’s a good caster and easy to share a skiff with, and I’m not saying that just because he let me catch the first fish, although that helps.
We really got to explore the East End on this trip and I remain impressed with the size of the fishery. There really are a lot of options out there and Cecil, our guide for the week, had enough room to enable him to dodge the squalls and thunderheads that would loom, threateningly off in the distance, conjured from the afternoon heat.
A few memorable moments…
The permit shot – wasn’t expecting one. I had it… I missed it, but when you don’t permit fish often every shot is a memory.
Elliott’s first bonefish – always nice to be there for someone’s first bonefish. It is sometimes the start of obsession.
Paddling crabs – we found a bunch of crabs hitching rides and paddling on mangrove leaves. I had heard about that once before, but had never seen it. They were using tools! Somehow we didn’t get a picture of those.
Late nights with Rob – Rob was a great host and we spent many hours at the bar late into the night talking about everything from Rob’s childhood (which was very different from my own) to politics to Bahamian flats fishing regulations to life on the East End.
Some memorable fish – the cruisers along the shoreline the last day, the fish in the mangroves, the shark munched bone that was hit by both a cuda and a shark.
