The fish is released and we make a short walk to the entrance of the lagoon. We carefully scan the water. It is a darker bottom here and a little bit more difficult to make out a fish but Mark suggests I make a blind cast into the area with the pencil popper I have tied on to my 8wt.
I make a long cast and rip the fly back. The take is a hard and confident one but the fight different to the one I have just watched Mark have with the bone. The rod is wrenched down as the fish takes off but the run isn’t as long; this is more of a back street bare knuckle fight with the fish not wanting to give any ground rather than a Marquis of Queensbury gloved fight of a bonefish.
It is my first bluefin trevally and I think I might be smitten.
We fish more, making shots mainly at bluefin. I am learning on my feet with them and have already realised they are not the aggressive, brutish thug of the flat I thought they might be. Far from it in fact, they are a lot more spooky that I had thought and there isn’t a definitive pattern that seems to tick all of the boxes. I am learning that it pays to be flexible. I thought that they would hit any fly cast into their path but they don’t.
As the light is starting to go we fish the side of the resort that is made up mainly from coral. We carefully work our way through football sized rocks out into the knee deep surf looking for giant trevally. The ground is flat here and the GTs come right in looking for food. The secret is to cast in- between the breaking waves and strip fast. We fish close to each other and there are miles to fish but this is a favourite spot of Mark’s.
We both spot the dorsal fin at the same time and it is unmistakable. It is a permit. I do what anyone would do on someone’s last day and offer Mark the shot. As he changed leader and flies it feels like the clock might be ticking away from us but there is little point in casting a short leader of 80lb at a permit. As I watch the fish while Mark is changing flies I see another tail and then another. When he is set we count five trailers, all good fish. The cast is a good one and right on target, landing right where the fish are feeding, so is the next but Indo permit are like their Caribbean cousins, equally as fickle, and disappear as quickly as they appeared.
That evening we meet Mark for a drink as he is leaving first thing the next morning. Tomorrow I am alone.
I start the next morning on the flat at the end of the resort. The water is falling away and it allows me to walk out a long way. I turn my back and get the sun behind me so that I can scan the horizon for fish. I have a vast expanse of water all to myself. I walk slowly holding my fly, a clouser, and have 50 feet of fly line trailing behind me.
I see the bluefin and cast. It is moving at speed across the flat.This time it is just a couple of pulls and there is none of the indecision or nervousness we encountered yesterday, no, it takes the fly and runs. The same thing happens some 40 minutes later but the response couldn’t be more different. It looks like the movement of the fly has been enough to scare the fish off of the flat.
I change fly, look at my watch and realise I need to start heading back to meet Emma for lunch. I walk of the flat and along the sand spit towards the resort. I watch the water and from my slightly higher position see a shape coming towards me. I had an idea what it might be and made a cast ahead of where the fish was heading. Instead of the fast strips I’d been making I made some shorter, slower ones. The tactic paid off and the fish took. I played the fish carefully and after landing it, took a photo and admired my first Indo permit. It is only a small one but it doesn’t bother me at all, it’s a permit!
I really did try my best to disguise the huge grin when I met Emma but couldn’t.
The next eight days I followed a similar pattern. We’d eat an early breakfast, sit on the beach for an hour or two and then I’d head for the flat for a few hours, meet Emma for lunch and then head back to the beach in the afternoon. At 4pm, sometimes a little later, I’d head out for an hour or so in search of GTs. I didn’t get lucky with them, I tried but to be honest I was enjoying the bluefins far too much.