Trip to Paradise

[wessel]

Just came back from a very short long weekend sanity break in the maldives.

First picture does justice to the name of the place - Paradise Island. Only thing is that fishing is illegal on the island, or on any other island which has a hotel on it. This is a good thing from an environmental perspective, but a bad thing if you are a mad keen fly fisho who just "happen" to have packed a fly rod for the trip.

The only thing I could do was to sneek out of the room at half past dark-o-clock and walk around to a quiet part of the island, away from curious law abiding eyes, every morning and fish until 7 when the normal tourists start to do their morning beach walk. This was the second morning where my wife came with, she wanted to see the sunrise.

The hotel do arrange for short little tourist fishing trips on one of their local style boats. Basically, you go out to the "house reef" and do a bit of handline fishing for two hours. The captain gave permission for me to try my luck of the back of their little boat. No luck, but the crew just watched in amazement the antics of this crazy foreigner. In their opinion, they have seen knitting needles thicker than my rod. There was a bunch of Brits on the same trip, who was amazed that it is even possible to flyfish in the ocean. Theyw ere of the opinion that you only flyfish for trout in the Scottish Highlands.
On the hand lines my wife got smoked by something with big teeth.....

On the last morning we went out on this charter boat. They plowed around for a few hours with no success, when I asked if they mind drifting over a few reefs while I try my luck on the fly rod. Not much luck there either unfortunately and we could not hang around for too long or we will miss our flight out of there......

The most memorable fish of the trip was a 1.5 kg blue spot trevally. Awesome little street fighters those...
Let us just say that I am already daydreaming about the next trip....

Wessel

[flyfisho]

Wessel,
Great report mate, what a shame you had to hide under the cover of darkness, it would have been an awsome place to polaroid some of those flats or dredge for palegics. Bet you heard the line "there's no trout there mate (quiet snigger)' a few times from the poms ?
The Treva sounded alright mate

[crazy charlie]

I'd could do with a long weekend in the Maldives you lucky @#%%@@@%

Mustve got the heart racing on the mornings flicking your flies around. Just gettin away with it wouldve have been heartstoppin, if you actually caught something might have brought on a coronary