Oddities

The last week has been rather strange in terms of what my flies have been attracting. Went to Rhodes with Branden and Byron on seperate days. These outings proved fruitless, with nothing more than a couple of ók'sized Bream and one tiny flathead to round up the two days.

My new rod came on Friday and I decided to take it out for a 'test fish' at Rhodes. Given the Preceding days' performances, I wasn't looking forward to landing anything substantial.This is where things started to get weird. After having a good time casting, I was happily surprised when I saw the fly line go taunt. Thinking that it was a small tailor or flat head, I just 'stripped the fly line. To my shock/horror/at least i caught something... I pulled up what has to be the smallest Bream ever caught on fly. I did snap a photo just to preserve the moment.



What followed next was just next to impossible. I cast out my line and was just letting it sink while I entertained a phone call. Having ended the call, I proceeded to retrive and thought that the fly was snagged on the mangrove. I turned to the tried and oft practiced 'my fly is snagged and I'm trying to not spoil my fly line' ritual of strip and tug. The fly line yielded and I felt some weight as I continued the retrive. My thoughts at this moment were focused on how to remove a mangrove root from the end of my fly without damaging any gear or getting dirty. You could say that I was really surprised when my "mangrove root"started tugging. After a short fight, I landed my first mud crab on fly. I repeated my eariler action after releasing the crab-sinking the clouser and waiting for the line to load up- and was rewarded with another.


If you thought 2 crabs on fly were weird. wait till you hear what happened today......


I was invited to fish with my girl's uncle and was introduced to his secret rock ledge. Let me say I was scared all the way there. Even If I told you where this was, I would highly recommend that you not go there unless you're a moutain goat.


To cut the long story short, I lost a whole bunch of bait rigs to the waves, wash, rocks and weed. I was honestly giving up and thought I'd salvage the day by having a bit of a cast in what I thought was a fishless patch of coast. I tied on one of my new epoxy experiments and began casting.
I was surpried to feel little tugs at the line. I persisted, now knowing that there was at least life down there. after about two hours, my fly was unmistakenably hit by a fish. I was down to the backing (current helping the fishie??)and palming even before I could swap over to a more comfortable ledge to fight the fish. But fight I did and the fish began to tire. I guided the still unknown fish to the ledge and used the wash to aid me in lifting it up. On the first unsuccessful attempt, I thought I had hooked a cobia or a really big flathead. Then remembering the cobia aren't supposed to show up here and a flat head's tail didn't really look like what I saw, I did my best to land the fish to have a better look.

upon landing, I was really surprised to see a blind shark(yes, that's its real name) lying there on the ledge! at this point the fish was still a ledge below me and the shark managed to break my 20lb tippet. My Girl's uncle was luckily on hand to pick up the fish for the obligatory photos.


This is a really special catch for me. According to my research this shark is in the adult phase of its life cycle (their maximum recorded length is about a meter odd). What struck me as odd was that this shark's diet comprised mainly of crustaseans. My first land based shark was a bottom feeder that took a bait fish immitation. However, I'm stoked that my first shark was as big as its species could come and am hoping that my captures on the fly would continue to be as intriguing exciting and fun.