Guided By An Old Tide Like Me..

      
 FRIDAY 11th OCTOBER 3 HRS to Go

The water temperature was hitting 33C as I started a run on the "Drift Of Dreams" (WTFIT), I pretty well knew straight away that the Barra/Salmon would probably have exited the shallows when it was much deeper.
Now this guy had been to Christmas island 5 times and was giving me an earbash about It that would have made Crusty proud.
 I was looking hard, trying to be polite, watching him cast and thinking bonefish must be really easy to catch when three Trevally swum up behind me.
His first cast was all over them,(didn't work 20 yrs. ago still doesn't) they didn't spook just swam off.
The thing I noticed was  the lead fish, not much longer then many big trevally but it looked pretty fat.
Anyway I put it behind me, although I did remind him a few times that it was only 20 ft. away when half an hr. later I saw the bow wave 50m's off and beelining me, like the midget at the urinal I was suddenly on my toes. With some encouragement (lots) I managed to get him to cast into an intercepting point and told him to wait, when I thought it was about right told him to strip fast.

That Trevally nailed Wayne's STC fly (sorry Roger) and made a 100m dash in 2 ft. of water carving a beautiful smoke trail in pursuit of deeper water, the other two were with him all the way.
When that didn't work it came all the way back and got within 5 foot of a tree,I said all you can do is lock him up, he did, it turned and came back looking for a reef off about 150m's.off
With backing still disappearing I did a long circular roundup between the fish and reef,45 mins later on his XI3 8wgt we had it ready to net, suddenly  he high sticked the rod past that point of no return,  it exploded into 3 pieces, I had to grab a piece of it and managed to get a net under.

That Trevally bottomed the Boga's at 30lb,it was heavier then that ,who knows, he reckoned in his experience it was closer to 40lb(Crusty would know for sure)) and was so fat, look at the photo, maybe it was in the family way, anyhow we rested the fish took a few photos and it happily swam away

The real bad luck was all the water was gone on the shallows and I had to go and put up with the "Jelly prawn feeders "for the rest of the run out.