"DIVINE PROVIDENCE", published by Fieldsports Quarterly

November 2007



My wife rolled her big brown eyes in a theatrical expression of resignation as, for the umpteenth time that Christmas Eve, the bleary eyed call of “Is it morning yet?” came drifting down the stairs. “My turn” I sighed, and I dragged myself off to admonish my three young boys. In truth, my scoldings were pretty half-hearted, loaded as they were with a huge dose of hypocrisy. Hadn’t I been lying awake late into the night just recently, dreaming of my imminent trip to the fly-fishing nirvana on the far side of the world that is the western Seychelles? Anyone who has fished these remote atolls will know that the lead-up to any trip is likely to be full of over-excited insomnia, as wild days tangling with huge, nasty fish draw ever closer.

Last year, six days fishing on the remote flats of Cosmoledo produced more thrills and thrills with a fly-rod than I ever believed possible. The guides at “Flycastaway” had talked then about Providence, another, new-found “Eldorado”, where huge bonefish, trevally and any number of other exotic species abound. Was I interested in joining them on an exploratory trip the following year? The Pope’s still a Catholic, right?

As the trip drew nearer, I found myself almost wishing the weeks away, as images of the huge, savage beasts of the Indian Ocean crowded my feverish, fish-filled dreams. I made a mental note to go easy on my boys the following Christmas, as I tied flies, oiled reels & generally prepared for war.

The last of the icy February rains were still falling as I boarded the Air Seychelles flight to Mahe, and ten hours later, as I ducked out into the steamy equatorial heat of Victoria, I’ve rarely felt more excited about a fishing trip. And then, disaster. Literally. A tropical storm had whipped itself up into Hurricane Gamede, and was currently doing its best to demolish Madagascar. The prospect of our getting anywhere near the tiny atoll of Providence seemed extremely remote. Christmas had, effectively, been cancelled.

Three days we sat in the Casuarina Hotel, drinking beer & looking wistfully out to sea. All that anticipation turned to sour frustration. We’d dodged the sunbathers and managed to prize the odd decent bonefish from the Casuarina’s well-trodden ocean flat, but in truth, it was a pale imitation of the wild dreams that Providence had inspired. With bitter regret, I started to consider coming home early.

And then, at the last minute, we got lucky. Gamede moved south, and we were given the cautious go-ahead to fly out to the staging post of Farquar, where we might – just might – be able to board the schooner “Sea Pearl” and head for Providence.

After some agonising last-minute technical hitches with the tiny Beechcraft plane, and a long chat with a nervous Belgian co-pilot who clearly thought that flying into the tail-end of a tropical storm in ANY plane was bonkers, we set off, and after a surprisingly easy flight, put down on the tiny tarmac strip at Farquar. We crossed the island on a tractor, jumped into three tiny tenders, and after two fairly hair-raising attempts, managed to make the crossing from the harbour to our violently rolling schooner, anchored off-shore. A tortuous, Dramamine-dosed night on a huge, rolling sea, beset by lightning and gut-wrenching sea-sickness followed, and then, finally, the storm abated, and we watched breathlessly as the sun rose over the cyclone-scarred silhouette of Providence.

No sooner had I jumped out of the tender, onto a pristine white sand-flat just south of Providence’s smaller sister, Cerf Island, than a school of big, sleek bonefish came cruising past within twenty yards of me. All the trials of the last few days were forgotten as I plopped a chartreuse bitters in front of them and watched the entire school race to engulf it. The lead fish pounced voraciously on my fly, I made the strike and suddenly the gelspun backing was hissing away across the wide white sands. We were off to the races.

The following few days were fascinating: the perfect white flats of Cerf & Providence provided an immaculate canvas for the most acute sight-fishing experience. Hordes of big bonefish, some well into double figures, seemed to hover across the flats in the invisibly clear water, while any number of exquisitely jewelled triggerfish grubbed for crabs in the coral lagoons. The drop-offs swarmed with magical, sapphire spangled bluefin trevally, that would buzz your streamers inquisitively, but would fall for a sinking crab pattern every time, while the rising tide brought huge numbers of the near mythical milkfish flooding onto the flats to feed on green algae. We all caught plenty of fish, but one fish seemed notable by its relative absence. Giant Trevally, the biggest and most brutal creatures on the Indian Ocean’s shallow flats, are usually carreering all over places like this, terrorising just about everything that moves, including the odd fly-fisherman. I’d had a few good fish to be sure, but nothing to compare with the monstrous hordes I’d seen at Cosmoledo the previous year. My guide, Arno Mattee had been warned by his partners at Flycastaway about my feverish obsession with Caranx Ignobilis. He assured me that huge Trevally do live in Providence’s vast lagoon, and suggested that with only two days left, we make a concerted effort to seek out a monster.

A word about Arno: One of Flycastaway’s founding members, and surely one of the world’s most forward-thinking fly-fishermen, Arno is the “milkman” – the guy who first pioneered a technique to catch the uncatchable: “chanos chanos” – the milkfish. He’s caught or guided anglers to more of these enigmatic fish than just about everyone else put together, and is a rare and brilliant fisherman. He’s also a treat to fish with – his eyes sparkle with a warm mischevious humour, and he could find you fish in a bath-tub. Over a few beers, his tales of fishing and living in Africa’s dark interior are spell-binding. Only his attempted impression of my cockney accent – a slightly Welsh-sounding Dick van Dyke with a large dollop of Afrikkaans thrown in – lets him down.

Our Trevally hunt started slowly – a long, long walk around the perimeter of the vast lagoon revealed lots of perfect habitat, yet the trevally were strangely absent. My fishing partner, “Clever” Trevor Mennie and I wondered whether the huge hurricane had perhaps affected their normally voracious appetite, or had maybe driven them to seek out their supper in deeper waters. As the sun beat down relentlessly, Arno grinned at our pessimism, and told us to keep the faith. Spotting three huge shapes way, way out in the lagoon, Arno studied them for a long, long time before determining that they were three very large tiger sharks. As Trevor and I let out exaggerated groans of despondency, Arno councilled us to “be cool” – Trevally – fearless and slightly psychotic as they undoubtedly are – will often sit beneath sharks in a deadly symbiosis, waiting for some wretched victim to stumble into their headlights.

Arno and I had spent the evenings drinking Seybrew beer and lampooning each other’s accents, and, with a broad grin, my guide sent the Dick van Dyke show echoing across the windless flat – “Let’s show ‘em the teaser, geezer!!”

With that, he unshouldered a brutish spinning rod, wound it up and sent his hookless teasing plug fizzing way, way out into the lagoon. Those sharks must have been well over 100 metres from us, but the plug landed very close to them, and when it did, an extraordinary thing happened. The water under and around the sharks became a giant black slick. In a second I realised what was happening – Arno was the Pied Piper of Providence, and his simple hookless plug had whistled up every trevally in the Indian Ocean. From every direction they came – a huge storm of freakish great black rats rushing up at that plug with an insane and savage bloodlust. Arno reeled that teasing plug back like a man possessed , and suddenly the whole colossal, demented lynch mob were coming right at us. I shuddered – I felt like a terrified young recruit at Agincourt or Waterloo as this huge waterborne cavalry charge came thundering on – but I did the British thing, and stood my ground. Suddenly they were on us – Arno snatched the teaser away and with the words “Cry God for Harry, England and St George” rattling insanely around my head, I pitched my 6/0 fly into the massed ranks of rabid apocalyptic killers. There were all sizes of fish – long ones, fat ones and some just about as big as your car – but a wretched tiddler of 25 pounds snaffled the fly from under the nose of a fish four times its size and set off back to the blue, with two dozen jealous and very angry big brothers in hot pursuit.

Furious at the impertinence of the thing, I whipped up my own cocktail of brute strength and raw adrenaline, and slammed on the brakes. In less than two minutes, the bewildered creature lay at my feet. Arno quickly but carefully removed the barbless hook, and in seconds we were ready to raise the devil again.

Arno sent his teaser crashing back out into the wide blue yonder, and again, the giant black tornado of malevolent shapes came rocketing at us. Trevor came pirouetting back up the beach, attached to a fish of around forty pounds that was doing its level best to drag him in, and suddenly the mayhem took on a new pitch of fevered craziness as the three huge tiger sharks – all upwards of 3 metres in length – appeared less than two rods away from where Trevor was doing battle. Arno screeched for Trevor to get out of the water, and as he staggered backwards, I skimmed a low cast under his line at a grotesque black shape that was coming straight at me. Upwards of 120 pounds of hideous rage elbowed his lesser brethren out of the ring and crashed onto my fly in a heartbeat. Desperate to stay tight to this oncoming colossus, I hammered in the hook and stripped line furiously, running backwards in a desperate attempt to get the loose fly-line back onto the reel. The fish tipped on its side as it ducked under Trevor’s line and came charging right up onto the shallows, its huge black back clean out of the water. Arno and I gasped at the astonishing size of the fish and then it turned broadside and raced out to the deeps. The line shot up through the rings and in a sickening moment a loop caught around the cleat of my Simms Flats sneakers. Arno made a despairing dive to free it, but then as I started to become dragged bodily into the shark-infested melee, the fly-line came up taught as a bow string and – with a loud pop – snapped.

Too much excitement for one day? Not on your life. Having helped Trevor land his fish, Arno grabbed his radio and called up Chris, the big strong Seychellois lad sitting in the tender way out to sea. As he came skipping across the waves, Arno explained that we were going to hunt the Trevally from the boat.

We sallied forth and after perhaps fifteen minutes of searching, Trevor spotted some muddy water up ahead. ”Stingrays” said Arno, but we knew not to groan this time. ”Oi, geezer!” winked Arno, ”Guess what likes to hang out with rays?” and suddenly there they were again – another squadron of perhaps thirty Giant Trevally was suddenly bulldozing towards us. These fish were smaller – in the 20 to 50 pound class - but Trevor and I weren’t complaining. We both let off short casts into the churning water and were both instantly into decent fish. Mine threw the hook almost immediately, but I reflexively lifted off and put the fly down right in front of the lead fish as it came barrelling across the prow, fully expecting another instant hook-up.

And then, suddenly, the trevally just stopped coming. The whole huge shoal seemed to explode in every direction like a huge underwater firework. Something caught in my peripheral vision, and in a moment of almost cinematic horror, I saw it: the reason that my normally fearless quarry had scattered like a clutch of scalded kittens was that they had been within a whisker of running into the most demonic-looking creature I’ve ever seen –in or out of the water. There, not twenty feet from the boat, lying perfectly still and less than a foot below the surface, was a barracuda from some surreal prehistoric nightmare. Two metres - at least two metres - of more razor-fanged malevolence than I ever care to see at close quarters again.

While Trevor was still gibbering obliviously about his twenty pound trevally, the rest of us all let out a perfectly synchronised profanity – I felt absolutely sure that we were looking at the biggest barracuda on the planet, and the sight was genuinely astounding. And then, with a nonchalant flick of its giant tail, this hideous apparition shot forward…and ate my fly.

Lots of hysterical roller-coaster laughter and screaming ensued, as I ducked underneath Trevor’s rod and watched the line fizz from the spool and tear away across the lagoon. I’d love to show you the pictures: I’m confident that no-one has ever landed a barracuda remotely as big on a fly, or any other tackle for that matter. It wasn’t to be. After around five minutes, the huge sullen beast was skulking ten yards from the boat. You could see its scales and its teeth, and its huge dinner-plate eye fixing us with a deathly stare. I turned to Arno, and was surprised to see that his normal honey-brown palour was now a pale, greenish white. I told him that we were going to be famous, but the cockney impressions had gone out of the window now, as he croaked that it was he that would have to deal with the endgame - unhooking this horror-show of a fish. ”Mind your fingers!” I grinned, and then, to Arno’s ill-concealed relief, the inevitable happened – the barracuda remembered who he was and chomped straight through my 130 pound shock tippet, before gliding slowly down into the depths.

There was more to come:

That afternoon, I got out the camera and watched as Arno showed Pat Ford, an experienced American fly-fisher and fellow photographer, how to catch Milkfish.

Dismissed as impossible to tempt with a fly by many of the world’s great guides, these algae-eating herbivores appear to be the freak bastard love-child of a tarpon and a bonefish, with a dash of giant mullet at the front-end, and an outboard motor for a tail. Arno’s algae-fly – the “milky dream” – dead-drifted nymph-style through a pod of milkfish, can & will catch them, and the reward is reputedly the fastest-running flats fish in the world. Believe it! As I looked on, Pat, after a good hour or so of trying, managed to put a hook in one, and we chased the thing nearly 400 lightning-fast yards across the wide white sands before it finally succumbed. What a fish – close to 20 pounds of solid silver that runs like a giant bonefish on steroids. I shook Pat’s hand and took some pictures, resolving to conquer my Trevally addiction and to have a crack at these incredible fish the following day. As we trudged wearily back to the tender, I splashed over to Arno, clapped him on the back and thanked him – without exaggeration - for the wildest and most eventful day of my fly-fishing life. “We’re not done yet, Geezer!” he grinned, lighting a smoke and nodding towards the distant outline of Providence Island – “the Trevally will be queuing up off that point over there…or have you had enough?”

As we strode across the flats to meet the next rabid horde, I thought of the wise words of my six year old son, Pete Harris: “ I wish it was Christmas every day.” “Here, here, Pete” I thought. “Here, here!”



Contacts:

Keith Rose-Innes, Gerhard Laubscher & Arnold Matthee 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 Arno and his two guides Ryan and Andrew. All three were magnificent: totally committed to helping us make the most of our time on Providence. We stayed on the Sea Pearl, a large, comfortable schooner that anchors close to the atoll and drops anglers off on the flats via tenders. Be warned: there are no skiffs and you’re on the flats all day, so get fit or don’t go.


Flycastaway are represented in the UK by Pete McLeod at www.aardvarkmcleod.com Pete is an excellent fly-fisherman and knows the destinations that he represents: he offers a high level of refreshingly personal and attentive service, in contrast to some of the larger and more corporate operators out there. Give him a call on 01980 840 590 or e-mail mail@aardvarkmcleod.com



Tackle:

Only the best & most robust kit will stand up to this fishing.

For Trevally, I use an old 12 wt Sage RPLXi & it has withstood 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, big bonefish, permit and triggerfish.

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!

The bluewater offers some really huge fish that only remain untouched because of the quality of the flats fishing. If you want to tackle it, talk to your guides about the possibilities before-hand. 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 or two and don’t stop drinking from them.

Apart from the occasional large sharks, one of the few dangers are the deadly cone-shells – wear only heavy-duty, hard-soled wading boots like the Simms Flats sneakers or the Patagonia Marl-walkers. Wera gravel–guards to prevent sand getting in your boots and fly-lines wrapping around your laces.

Flies: Arno 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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