Our Korean Wreck day was, well, different than I envisioned.
First off, the ride was longer. We just went further than I had ever been… than anyone in the group had ever been. We passed turnoff after turnoff after turnoff and ended up driving for 2:30 before Phil and I started fishing. Each turnoff my blood pressure went up just ever so slightly. I’m not patient when it comes to getting on the water and this was not a good stress test of that character flaw.
When we DID get off the truck and to the water… well… there wasn’t much water. The tide was going out, almost out, and there wasn’t a lot of swimmable water up on the flats available for the fish.
I did go out and promptly stick a Christmas Island Wrasse, because they are awesome.
After that, I went off to try to pop some trevalley in the cuts. I got one grab from a bluefin, but it didn’t stay on. Beyond that, it was pretty grim there in the morning.
We moved, which meant more truck time (yay) and we dipped into the beers before 10:30.
After lunch, when I was maybe a bit grumpy, we had a kind of crazy experience.
We head back out onto a waterless flat but the guide says to follow him. He takes us to a little cut in the reef and there, in the water that is a couple hours from reaching the flat itself, are about 200 bonefish.
I don’t know why I don’ thave a picture of this, but I don’t.
The fish were there, sort of milling around, moving as the surges from waves teased in and out.
The Would. Not. Go. Away.
We started casting into the school, both of us, and after about 20 casts or so, we started hooking up.
Phil and I figure we caught maybe 24 bones out of this little bucked in a couple hours. Phil had maybe 14, I had maybe 10, including a couple very solid, nice fish, maybe to 6 pounds.
It was very much like shooting fish in a barrel. You could cast right in the middle of the fish and they wouldn’t spook. They wouldn’t eat on most casts either, but they wouldn’t run off into deeper water. They just swayed there, in the surf, and let us catch a whole bunch of them.
There were bigger fish just at the back too. These fish were maybe 8-9-10 pound fish… big bonefish. But a cast their way and they’d slide into the deeper water until you’d given up on the pursuit.
When I’d catch one of the bonefish in the school I’d put the stick to it. I had my drag cranked down and was using 20 lb tippet. There was coral everywhere, so the risk of cutting the fish off was very high, and it is probably better to have the freaking out fish out of the school. I managed to do this pretty well, only losing two fish to cut tippet.
It was a really, really crazy couple of hours and changed the Wreck day from one nearly devoid of fish (along with the water) to one of the most productive days of the trip.
Local knowledge… the guide knew that spot was there and that those fish would behave in that way.
Wild.
