Fly Fishing Blog by Alphonse Fishing Co™

ALPHONSE ISLAND FISHING NEWS | 7 – 14 JANUARY 2023

The second week of the new year has been a trophy week here on St Francois!

The week started off as usual with plenty of bones coming to the net with a couple of geets caught off mudding rays here and there, it seemed like it would be a hard week with strong winds and a decent amount of rain, but the anglers stayed optimistic and it paid off!

St Francois’s head guide, Warren, and angler James headed out together midweek in search of a milkfish first thing in the morning, it didn’t take long to find them as they were all over the eastern side of St Francois on the dropping tide and soon James had hooked into one of them. They managed to land a 95 cm milkfish, thereafter they went for a couple of bones to set them up to search for a GT to complete a Flats Slam in the afternoon. Warren decided to fish Petite Le Pass, one of the channels, as the tide turned and started pushing. A beast came up on James’s second cast into the channel and ate the fly. After its first run well onto the backing, they both knew it was a big fish. Warren quickly got the engine going and followed the fish to make sure they stayed on top of it to avoid being cut off by any coral, the fish fought hard and stayed deep for long, they hadn’t even gotten a glimpse of the fish until the end of the fight. Eventually, the geet came up and Warren jump off the skiff to net the fish. So far, the biggest fish of the Alphonse season, this GT measured 130 cm, the fish of a lifetime that will go down as one of the biggest fish ever caught on St Francois!

Excitingly, that wasn’t the only trophy for the week. Guide Jason Carstens and angler Jim managed to land a 68 cm permit on the drop, the biggest permit of the season so far!

As the week progressed the atoll started firing, on Friday morning the guides arrived on the mother ship soon to realise there was bait inside the lagoon, waiting patiently for the geets to catch on, we followed the bait and hung around but nothing seemed to happen just yet.

On Saturday, only two skiffs went out to fish, the bait was still there but something had changed. The geets had caught onto it… Guide Alex and his guest JT, landed a total of seven GTs for the day with the biggest measuring over 80 cm! David arrived on Saturday and headed out for the afternoon, a bit late to the frenzy but also managed to get a GT of 74 cm and a bluefin of 70 cm, so by the end of the day 8 GTs were landed. The atoll is alive and the guides are, as always, looking forward to next week to see what it holds!

Stay tuned for next week’s report.

Tight lines,
Alphonse Fishing Co. on Alphonse Island

TOTAL CATCH STATS THIS WEEK:
Bonefish 173
Giant trevally 13
Permit 1
Milkfish 2

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