St Brandon:11-23 April 2018

St Brandons Blog 11-23 April 2018

Calm conditions greeted the first group of guests for the 2018 April – June St Brandon’s season. With some warm water around at the start of the week the Bone fishing proved to be quite tough yet the guests still managed to land some great fish during their trip. The conditions improved as the week went on and thanks to some windier days and mid morning lows there was some phenomenal skinny water Bone fishing enjoyed later in the week with a solid 6.5lb average coming to hand. Rich had a great trip catching his largest ever Bonefish with 2 8.5lb fish. John and Eugenie got stuck into some really big fish, landing a 9lb and 9.5lb fish respectively. The Bonefish of the week has to go to Shaun who after landing 23 fish in a single session managed to get an absolute beast Bonefish and the first 10lb-er of the season.

During the week the guests enjoyed many shots at the Atoll’s famed Indo Pacific Permit and by day four 7 had been hooked but the fish had the final say. It was not all doom and gloom as 3 Permit were landed during the week. Rich continued his hot streak with his first ever Indo Pacific Permit of 3lbs. Brian got in on the Permit action too, landing a respectable 5lb fish that was tailing on a marl ridge around an island in the north. There are good numbers of Permit seen on Raphael island every season and Dave managed to land an 8lb fish right next to where the fisherman moor their boats behind the island.

The warmer conditions meant that there were many of the Atoll’s Trevally around and the guests enjoyed some amazing fishing. Many large GTs were around, harassing baitfish and bonefish alike. Brian Noyes managed to hook one of these brutes on the very first day only for the hook to pull mid fight, tough luck Brian! We have been seeing large numbers of Golden Trevally tailing aggressively amongst schools of Bonefish and John took full advantage when he hooked and landed a beast 14lb Golden while fishing to a very large Bone fish. Shaun had a cracking week and added a 12lb and 15lb Golden to his double digit Bone from earlier in the week. The Bluefin Trevally on St Brandons were ever present and although there weren’t many landed during the first week there were some notable catches from Rich who landed a 69cm fish that was hunting in a pack behind a Nurse Shark in a coral garden at the edge of a flat. Dave landed the largest Trevally of the week when he hooked an aggressive 78cm Bluefin that was terrorizing baitfish in a lagoon. The fish smashed the fly and proceeded to tear off into the distance taking many metres of backing with it.