He’s back already, but Jim Klug of Yellow Dog Fly Fishing Adventures just went to St. Brandon’s Atoll in the Indian Ocean and it looks AWESOME.
That is beautiful. (photo by Jim Klug)
Nice, nice bone from the Indian Ocean.
Yeah… the obligatory GT. I need to catch one of these.
—
It is Thanksgiving today and I have a lot to be thankful for.
I’m thankful for my wife. It isn’t every woman who is cut out for Stepmothering or for a previously married man, but she saw something in me that was worthy and she has become my wife, life partner and great second mother to my daughter and I’m pretty happy (and thankful) about all of that.
That is my beautiful (and wickedly smart) wife.
I’m thankful for my little girl. She is equal parts amusing and frustrating and wonderful and being her father is something that defines me and gives my life purpose in a way nothing else can. I am thankful that she loves nature as much as she does (which is substantially).
The girl and her shark.
I’m thankful for two saltwater trips this past year which were both amazing. The first was a trip to Cuba with Jim Klug and the second was to El Pescador in Belize for my honeymoon. Not a thing to complain about there!
Photo by Jim Klug
I’m thankful for bacon, for obvious reasons.
mmmm…. bacon.
I’m thankful that my dad’s health scare earlier this year seems to have passed and that he’s still fishing.
My dad pulled out the cast of his lifetime to get this pretty fantastic mutton snapper.
I’m thankful for this blog. It gives me an outlet for my passion and a community of people I find both interesting and inspiring.
Thanks for reading and Happy Thanksgiving.
I’ll admit that I spent some time on Google Earth today scanning for little bits of land in the Indian Ocean that might be fishworthy. I have no idea how you get to some of these places unless you are just either part of the idle rich or part of the… well… people that just don’t give a toss and don’t have responsibilities.
I actually already have a trip on the books… Spring Break, Grand Bahama (anyone going to be in Grand Bahama first week of April?), but I have the end of my startup job on the horizon and I can’t stop thinking about where I might be able to go catch something somewhere warm and salty.
Clearly, I don’t think GTs are on the menu and that’s OK. I love bonefish and would like to catch some and if that’s out of the question I’d settle for some Cudas.
What are you doing to get through the winter??
I’d bet there is something here worth catching.
I’m still loving the Form Game Rod from Redington. Yesterday at work it was raining outside and there was almost no one in the office. I took a little time to go casting in the hallway with the iPhone as my target in the hall.
http://youtu.be/APBXdHcbw5o
Yeah, I know… those are pretty sweet shoes, eh?
Yup… Pat Ford’s photo album from the Seychelles over at Sport Fishing confirms something I’ve believed for some time now.
The Seychelles are awesome.
The bonefish alone would be enough, but when you start to think about GT’s… well… GT’s. I want to catch one. Someday, assuming I live long enough to afford it, I just might. Add to that all the other wacky kinds of fish out there and it seems kind of awesome.
At $6,250 (although can be as much as $7,500), it doesn’t actually seem that much more expensive than a lot of destinations. I’d bet the travel is a bit more difficult, but even that doesn’t sound too daunting (minus air, which is not cheap at $1,500-$2,500). You also need time… you add another couple days of travel on the bookends and you end up with a trip that requires the majority of our 2 weeks of vacation time.
Jim Klug also has a photo album from the Seychelles.
Yes please.
Booked by:
OK, I did the list of reasons why bonefishing was better than trout fishing, but Soren suggested it was a lazy list. It may have been. So, I thought I’d give a non-tongue-in-cheek list of why I have come to prefer a day on the flats over a day on the stream.
There are likely even more reasons and I’m not saying these are “the” reasons, these are “my” reasons. Can’t wait for my next trip, be it bonefish or trout (or even bait fishing for shark off the pier). Really, I love it all and every day I get to spend on the water is a good day.
Fishing is good.
That’s right… I’m upset with Confluence Films. I’m upset for several reasons, but primarily because I’m selfish and prone to jealous. See, they are off to begin filming for their follow-up to Connect. I kind of love Connect because it is beautifully filmed, expertly crafted and also features the same waters in Cuba that I fished with one of the Confluence Film founders, Jim Klug. Where do they go to start filming for this next film?
St. Brandon’s Atoll (also known as Cargados Carajos Shoals).
That is why I’m upset.
Why would that make me upset? Primarily it is jealousy and my penchant for selfishness. See, I want to be fishing St. Brandon’s Atoll. Me! I want to go there! Now!
St. Brandon’s is in the middle of no where. The operation is a live-aboard as I don’t think there’s actually much land there. What you do have are just silly numbers of unmolested bonefish and Indo-Pacific Permit, GT’s and who knows what else.
The place is located to the east of Madagascar, way south of the Seychelles. I have no idea how long it takes to get there, but I’m guessing it is really, really quick, easy and comfortable to get to some tiny islands off the east coast of Africa. I mean, how hard could it be, right? And if you forget something, I’m pretty sure you can pop into the local Walmart or fly shop, right?
Packing light.
St. Brandon’s. Man. That is going to be kind of amazing footage.
I know it is going to be too long for me to wait to see the footage from St. Brandon’s, but I can’t wait to see it.
When you talk bucket lists, this place is tops.
I like this pic of friend Derek Rust. I like it for several reasons. First, because he’s living his dream. He was a guide up in Tahoe who longed to pole the flats of Florida and he made it happen.
I like this pic because he’s sporting Skinny Water Culture gear and I like those guys.
I like this pic because he’s in his new Hell’s Bay Boat and I can’t even comprehend how fantastic that must be.
I like this photo because that fish is dripping wet.
Nice one Derek.
I’m a fly fisherman. I have been self-identified as a fly fisherman basically since I picked up a fly rod back in 1996. It is how I choose to pursue fish, it is how I choose to spend time in the wilderness and wild places. Somehow, it became a foundational part of who I am.
Fly anglers, especially trout anglers, tend to be purists. Once you start casting #22 tricos, you are less likely to thread the worm on the hook. It just… happens. You tend to start looking for other fish to catch on a fly, maybe even revisiting species from your bait soaked childhood with an eye toward enticing them with a fly. There is a mindset that seems to emerge. You fish with a fly rod. You release your catch. You change in these and maybe other, deeper, ways.
I went through this change myself. I started out throwing single salmon eggs to steelhead, and worms for bluegill, a panther martin here or there for the odd trout, a jig for shad at the opening days of summer. That was my childhood. Then I went fly fishing for the first time and it was a bit of a revelation and I was voracious in my appetite for the “quiet sport.”
So, it is with this growing fly fishing pedigree that I find myself slicing up strips of squid and threading them on big circle hooks on a rig that also includes an 8 oz. pyramid sinker and then hucking the whole thing out into water that is the color of chocolate milk, or maybe a mudslide. There is even the much maligned bell atop the stout rod to indicate when a fish has found the stinking squid in the fast moving and opaque tidal flats of the San Francisco Bay.
There is one primary reason for my sudden interest in this type of fishing…
The girl and her shark.
My girl pretty much loves in out there. She loves sharks, almost, if not more than she loves snakes. She has little use for ponies or unicorns or the color pink, for that matter. What she loves are what she calls her “dangerous creatures.” These include sharks, snakes, crocodilians, and, to a lesser extent, tigers, bears, leopards and the like. When I understood that we could actually catch sharks, and just a few minutes from the house, well… it was on. I got the gear. I got some advice. I learned to snell a squid hook. I got a cart to haul all this stuff the 1/2 mile to the end of the pier and we got to embracing the stinky, smelly goodness that is bait fishing.
I baitfish.
Taken by the little girl
That would have been rather unexpected a year ago and I might have even scoffed at the notion. However, I find myself out at the pier rather often these days and, surprisingly, I’m enjoying it.
If I had a choice between baiting a line and throwing a fly, I would choose the fly pretty much every time, if it were just me to consider. However, if the options were to catch fish with my daughter or to not go fishing, I would take the stinky squid every time.
Bliss.
Purity would have kept me from this experience and I think both my daughter and I would be poorer for that.
Still, I’m not likely to put a shrimp on when pursuing bonefish or to thread that worm on a hook for trout, but I will be less judgmental of those who do.
Deneki Outdoors is a pretty impressive machine, even more so for being a relatively small organization. Andrew, the owner, puts out a stream of content from his blog and it is largely original and largely awesome.
Here are Deneki’s top ten bonefishing links.
Awesome.
PS – Great job SF Giants!
