"LAND OF THE GIANTS", published in Trout & Salmon

October 2006



Wading waist deep, the warm waters of the Indian Ocean lapping seductively around me, I squinted warily into the edge of the rapidly flooding flat in search of my quarry. Peering into the deep blue depths of the drop off, I thought I saw a flicker of movement, and momentarily forgot to check the shallower water behind me as I started to lengthen the line.

Suddenly conscious that I was no longer alone, I wheeled round frantically, in time to catch the briefest glimpse of the onrushing phalanx, before the leader of this malevolent pack of shadows crashed headlong into me, snapping ferociously at my legs. Coming away with nothing more than a lump of my trouser-leg, the lead fish reeled off in a dizzy drunken rampage. “It bit me!!!” I blurted out in a stumbling, indignant rage and reflexively launched the 6/0 fly at my attacker in a hideous looping splat of a cast that would have sent most fish scuttling for cover. Not this one: bullying his lesser brethren out of the way, this stampeding underwater rhinoceros came barrelling back into the fray and demolished my fly in a skipped heartbeat. My twelve weight slammed unceremoniously down to the horizontal and the big Tibor Gulfstream started to sing out its sweet, crazy music as the fly line and 150 yards or so of gelspun backing went hissing furiously out into the blue.

Mayhem.

For fifteen long minutes.

Ripping tearing screeches of spray as the fly line carved great arching swathes through the aquamarine, and I just clung on grimly and retreated into shallower water, glancing around warily for other ankle-biting hazards. Slowly the long runs subsided and the fight resolved itself into a savage, elemental tug-of-war, in which the rod was largely redundant. And then, after an interminable age of ugly, brawling attrition, I glimpsed light at the end of the tunnel, as this seemingly indefatigable beast started almost imperceptibly to tire.

Wiping away the eye-stinging sweat trickling copiously down my forehead, I gathered myself for one last effort and finally wrenched this hulking brute of a fish over the edge of the deep water and onto the shallows of the flat. At long last, the tables were turned, and my tormentor lay exhausted at my feet. Very close to fifty magnificent pounds of psychotic, Indo-Pacific nastiness – Caranx Ignobilis - the one and only Giant Trevally.

Cosmoledo is just about part of the Seychelles: a coral atoll approximately ten miles wide, that sits around 170 miles north of Madagascar and about a million miles from anywhere. You have to go there: There can be few other places on earth so infested with Giant Trevally – or GTs - and these fish are the equivalent of a fly-fishing horror show. On a falling tide, as the poor wretched baitfish start to empty off of the receding flats, the surf-line is alive with hordes of these big black dogs, murderous marauding buccaneers that will attack almost anything they see. They really just do not care: There are few more astonishing sights in fishing than to see a fish that you have been playing savagely for upwards of three minutes spit the hook and then bolt straight back to eat that same fly again. As one American angler, Todd Sabine, commented: “You gotta love that in a fish!” Countless times, I witnessed the spectacle of seeing the fish that I was playing desperately shaking his head in order to prevent other fellow gangsters from snatching the fly from out of his mouth. GTs are surely the maddest, baddest thugs in the sea.

This fishing is not for the faint-hearted. Long days wading under the blistering equatorial sun, throwing huge flies at big, spiteful fish that will shred your nerves and your fly-lines is not for everybody. Don’t even think about it unless you’re reasonably fit and can cope with a long journey in small aeroplanes and violently rolling boats. Pack heaps of Dramamine and make sure your casting is up to scratch – these things are suckers for just about anything that you throw at them, but they move fast and won’t hang around all day waiting for you to stop false casting. Oh, and don’t show up with sub-standard gear – GTs will demolish anything that is not 100% bulletproof, and if Cosmoledo has a tackle-shop, I couldn’t find it. The forty-pound weight limit on the Beechcraft light aircraft from Mahe means that you are obliged to pack quality not quantity. At least two good twelve-weights are a must, and only top-quality reels like Tibors or Abels loaded with ludicrous quantities of 50 pound gelspun will do. Keith Rose-Innes, our head guide, provided really excellent flies, but if you like to tie your own, your flies need to be on really serious hooks – Gamakatsu’s in the SC13s or Trey Combs Big Game patterns, Owner AKI’s or my own, razor-sharp favourites: Tiemco 600SP’s. 6/0’s. Or bigger! And don’t make the mistake I made of spending hours crafting beautiful, imitative patterns – just make lots of big-eyed, flashy-profile style flies that are simple and robust, and as big as you can handle. They should feature heaps of flash, and need to be made of tough synthetics like ultra-hair or EP fibres: materials that shed water and are a million times easier to cast than their absorbent natural counterparts. They might even last two fish! When you realise that you can expect to hook upwards of fifteen fly-demolishing fish each day when the place is cooking, you won’t want to get too precious about your flies.

Leave all your fancy bimini twists and class tippets at home, by the way – leaders are simply eight feet of 130 pound Suffix tied direct to your fly-line – yes, of course your flyline will give out first, but you may just land the fish of a life-time due to this super-abrasion resistant hawser at the business end of your gear. I broke two fly-lines in a week, but this was due to contact with razor-sharp coral, not sheer pulling power.

As always, in saltwater fishing, your sunglasses are your most valuable asset. Even these huge fish have an uncanny knack of merging with their surroundings, and a pair of good polarizers are essential, and may just help you spot the leviathan before your wading buddies! Optilabs make an excellent new pair of yellow-tinted “extreme” polarizing lenses in standard and prescription formats which I find fantastic in all light conditions, not just the low light levels in which yellow glasses traditionally excel. Putting them on is a little like “turning the lights on”, and despite the fact that they seem to make the flats “brighter” than is apparent with traditional amber shades, I didn’t suffer from any eyestrain as a result.

Sight fishing is undoubtedly the purest form of fishing for Trevally, or any other fish for that matter. However, when clouds or low light impair visibility, the action can be kept on the boil by “teasing”: your guide throws a large hookless plug over the sheer drop-off and you toss flies at whatever comes racing up after it. Be warned: this is real x-rated stuff, even by Cosmoledo standards. At one secret spot – “the wall” - the water drops from four feet straight into the abyss, and there’s just no knowing what’s going to come hurtling up at you from out of this cerulean Pandora’s box. Some of the GTs are just frighteningly big, and they often bring a few ten-foot lemon sharks along for the ride. Try not to remember that you’re waist deep in the water and one hundred yards from the beach when this happens. A bang on the nose with the teasing rod usually scares them away. Usually.

One of our intrepid gang, a Kiwi mate of mine, Andrew Donaldson, watched his guide Tim tease up a hideous black behemoth of a trevally at “the wall”, one afternoon. As he lengthened his line and prepared to make the cast, Tim asked dryly: “Are you sure you want to hook that?”

The story will last much longer than the fight ever did: Andrew is a true Kiwi, to whom the concept of sporting defeat is incomprehensible. However, deprived of the use of the All-black’s favoured spear-tackle, our hero could only watch his reel empty and holler a lamentably large repertoire of expletives before the inevitable happened & another £60 fly-line met its Waterloo on a coral-head. Needless to say, the stunned British onlookers chortled long and hard in an unfettered round of sympathy.

Like a true New Zealander, Andrew came storming back for the last laugh. Thanks in great part to his guide, Paul, who threw himself headlong into the surf in order to guide the bowstring-tight fly line away from some razor-sharp coral-heads, Andrew achieved the remarkable feat of landing a fish estimated in the 70 pound region from atop a jagged, line-gobbling coral outcrop. This was one of two of this size for the week, the other being landed by Olly, a really lovely guy from Kenya trying out saltwater fly-fishing for the first time!

Predictably, we saw and lost fish that were bigger. Much bigger. I nearly bumped into one on the edge of an ocean flat that looked like the Number 73 to Stoke Newington – this fish was way, way over 100 pounds, and it scared the living hell out of me. Why IT chose to spook I really have no idea!



Cosmoledo has a kaleidoscopic mix of other fabulous fish to tempt the fly-rodder: hordes of sapphire-spattered Bluefin Trevally in the 5-15 pound class that would take your breath away anywhere else. Here, they simply get in the way of their big vicious cousins, the Giants. Big, gleaming bonefish are plentiful, and have none of the inhibitions of their Floridian cousins. Then there’s Permit, Barracuda, Triggerfish and one of the wildest-fighting fish in the sea – the Milkfish. Whilst others made hay, I shunned them all in my ultimately unsuccessful attempt to “catch the bus”. I did relent briefly on the last evening. Tim Marks and I bravely set out to investigate what lurked “beyond the wall”. In little more than half an hour, we managed a couple of Yellowfin Tuna, including one of around 35 pounds that unceremoniously snapped my 17 weight fly rod in half and took line faster than I ever believed possible, before our guide Keith somehow wrestled her into the tiny rubber zodiac. I had my revenge for the broken rod: If there’s a better meal than yellowfin tuna sashimi and a cold Seybrew beer, with great company, a million tall tales and the sun sinking into the golden waters of the Indian Ocean, I haven’t encountered it yet.

As we set sail on the first leg of our long trip back to civilisation, I took one last wistful look back at Cosmoledo. What a place. Our group had caught well over three hundred GTs on fly, ranging from 15 to 70 pounds, but I couldn’t help but feel that the real monsters had eluded us. I made a Douglas McArthur style resolution to return. I’ll be back, armed to the teeth with new lines, bigger flies and Trevally-proof trousers: and next time, of course, I’ll be heading home with pictures of the number 73.




Contacts:

If you think you’re brave or mad enough to want to fish Cosmoledo, contact Matt Harris at mattharris@mattharris.com

Keith Rose-Innes, Gerhard Laubscher & Arnold Matthee are a triumvirate of three extremely hard-working, knowledgeable South African fly-fishermen who run Flycastaway (www.flycastaway.com).
Their operation specialises in fishing the wilder waters of southern Africa and the western Indian Ocean, catching big nasty fish like Giant Trevally, Dogtooth Tuna and Tigerfish, and they are one of the most professional outfits I’ve had the pleasure to fish with.

Contact them by e-mail: info@flycastaway.com

Our group fished with Keith and his two guides Paul & Tim. All three were magnificent: totally committed to helping us make the most of our time on Cosmoledo, and willing to brave almost anything in order to help us put these big ugly fish on the beach. All three were great company, extremely constructive and had none of the “attitude” sometimes encountered on saltwater trips. I can’t praise them highly enough. We stayed on the Seastar, a large, comfortable schooner that anchors close to the atoll and drops anglers off on the flats via zodiac tenders. Be warned: there are no skiffs and you’re on the flats all day, so get fit.


Flycastaway are represented in the UK by Pete McLeod at www.aardvarkmcleod.com Pete knows fly-fishing: he offers a high level of extremely personal service and can advise on all aspects of fly-fishing travel in salt and fresh water. Give him a call on 01980 840 590 or e-mail mail@aardvarkmcleod.com

Tackle:

As stated, only the best & most robust kit will stand up to this fishing.

For the Trevally, I used an old 12 wt Sage RPLXi & it stood up to an absurd amount of abuse, although one or two of the corks have popped off. A 9 wt is a good versatile tool for the milkfish, bonefish, permit and triggers.

Tibor or Abel Reels, loaded with floating lines like the excellent Lee Wulff or Cortland 555, ( consider one size up, to load the rod quickly ) and as much gelspun backing as you can afford!

For the blue water, you’ll want some really fast sinking lines like the Rio Leviathan in 700 Grains and up, and a rod like the Cam Sigler 16/17 wt, available from Farlows of Pall Mall.

Simms make the Dry Creek Backpack, an excellent waterproof rucksack that will safely house your expensive camera gear, and their waterproof Dry Creek Roll-top Lumbar pack is invaluable for keeping your flies dry, rust-free and to hand. Attach a large water bottle and don’t stop drinking from it.

Apart from the occasional large sharks, one of the few dangers on Cosmoledo are the deadly cone-shells – wear only heavy-duty, hard-soled wading boots like the Simms Flats sneakers or the Patagonia Marl-walkers.

For fishing off of the rugged coral heads, at high tide, a good, simple fold-up mesh line-tray is a godsend.

Flies: Keith supplied an excellent range of flies for all species, but the GTs will eat just about anything you put in front of them. Fairly sparse Flashy profiles of around 4-5 inches are perfect: Don’t beat yourself up by throwing flies that you can’t manage – these fish have amazing vision and see flies from a long way off. The fish will attack poppers but hook-ups are far less reliable.

Lots of high-factor sun cream and all the protective clothing you need – you’re very near the equator and sunstroke will wreck your trip.

Finally, good mates are essential – you’re going to spend a lot of time together, so make sure the group all get on well! If you do, you’ll have a riot!










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