St Brandon Blog: 2 – 12 April 2024

Welcome to the start of our April – June ‘24 season on St Brandon’s Atoll. We welcomed our first group on Raphael island and it was great to see a couple of familiar faces returning to this special fishery. This group was staying with us for two weeks as part of our back to back fishing package and everyone was excited to see what the next 14 days of fishing would have in store as they would in essence be fishing half of a lunar tidal cycle.

The week consisted of fishing over the neap tides, which meant that we could fish certain areas of the atoll for a longer period of time compared to the springs. The weather decided to turn on us for the first couple of days with very high winds as well as severe rain coming through in the early mornings and evenings. This made the visibility a bit tough but the guests still made the best of the testing conditions.

The anglers enjoyed multiple opportunities at classic St Brandon’s skinny water bonefish, tailing and feeding happily along the sand and turtle grass sections of our main flat. The neap tides allowed us to spend extended periods in this area and there were multiple bones caught ranging from an impressive 7-9 pounds throughout the week. Peter was the first angler to land a double digit bone for the season with a beautiful 10.5lb bonefish that fell for a well-placed spawning shrimp.

The first week also saw the guests have numerous opportunities at the atoll’s famous Indo-Pacific Permit with many fish seen around the islands and on the flats. Mark managed to connect with a beautiful 8.5 lb Indo-Pacific Permit on his second day. The fish was feeding along a slight sandy depression with 3 fish of similar size. Mark made a great presentation and with one strip the fish tailed hard on his fly as his line went tight. A lifelong dream finally became a reality for Mark, your first Permit is always a special one, well done ! On the 3rd day of the trip Rich also got in on the Permit action, hooking and landing a beautiful fin perfect 5.5lb fish. Peter who was already having a great week carried on with his good form, landing two Permit in two days. Both fish tipping the scales between the 5 – 6lb mark.

The trevally fishing started picking up later in the week as we entered spring tides. The increase in current and higher tides led to the bluefin trevally showing up in good numbers, with the guests having shots at some absolute cracking fish in the surf zones of the atoll’s eastern edge. The Biggest Bluefin for the week was landed by Hunter who put in a pinpoint cast to fool his 70cm fish. During the week we ran into a couple of monster GT’s that call St Brandon’s home but were unfortunately not lucky enough to connect with these Apex predators.

The first week of the season definitely gave us all a positive outlook on what to expect for the rest of the season and that the Atoll was in a healthy state with many fish seen for the week. We look forward to seeing what the next week will bring on the best bonefishing destination on earth.

Our catch tally for the week: