St Brandon Blog: 21 – 31 May 2024

We start the penultimate week of our season, welcoming three new guests and our good friend Terry doing his third week with us on the atoll. As we move from springs into neap tides the water temperature has remained nice and cool, an encouraging sign as we can expect to see more fish up on the flats tailing and feeding. There were some big squalls which came through during the first couple of days with high southerly winds blowing between 25 and 35 knots. This made casting a bit more of a challenge initially. However as the week progressed the skies cleared and the wind calmed, leading to some great fishing.

The cooler temperatures meant that there was a vast improvement in the Bonefishing compared to the previous week. There were many fish seen cruising happily over the flats and feeding in ankle deep water making for some exciting eats as the anglers managed to get into some good numbers of fish. This week we definitely saw more fish on the flats swimming in small pods of 2-4 fish with some large singles also spotted. The average size fish this week was between 5lb-7lb with a couple of 8.5lb and 9lb Bones caught by our anglers. On the last day of the week, Dale hooked into to a beautiful skinny water bone weighing in just over the 9.5lb mark making it the biggest for the week

The guests experienced some great shots at the Atolls Permit this week with everyone getting numerous shots everyday. There were very good numbers of Permit seen around the flats, ridges and islands. Earlier in the week we saw multiple happy fish as they tailed and fed in calf to knee deep water, making for some exciting moments for our anglers. Terry landed yet another beautiful permit of 9lb on the first day of the week. As the week progressed there were many more good opportunities presented to our anglers, and on the last afternoon of the trip Terry managed to end off his stay with a fin perfect 3 lb fish caught on the shallow sand flat.

The Trevally fishing continued to be slow this week although there were some big Bluefin seen around the islands and coral ridges. The guests put in some great shots but unfortunately there were no fish landed. There were also very few GT’s seen around the atoll this week.

We end our 8th week of the season on a high with an action packed last day and happy anglers. The cool wind continues to blow steadily from the east and the water temperatures are down. We move from neap tides into springs for the final week of the season and we expect to spend more time around the islands and higher ridges. Lets see what our last week of the season holds…

Our catch tally for the week: