Milkfish Mayhem

“It’s gone,” Toby said with a melancholy look on his face. We had been well and truly defeated. “Did we make the wrong call on which way to go around the coral head?” I asked. The answer was there in the expression on his face. Toby had just hooked and, thirty minutes later, lost his first milkfish. Veteran guide Wayne …

Alphonse comes of age…

I have a long history with Alphonse Island. I wish I had known what we have all learned over the past 20+ years about fishing the extraordinary atoll when we were bobbing about living on the catamaran Tam Tam before any hotel had been built. When I was there recently, a small part of their presentation was about how much …

Considering Cosmoledo…

Let’s address what might be the elephant in the room right from the start. There has been much talk in the press about tourism in remote places. We have to travel further and further, and deeper and deeper into the wilderness to experience proper wildness. Cosmoledo might be a case in point for such a debate. A very remote atoll …

Farquhar Atoll Adventure…Seychelles April 2018

What do a couple of Lincolnshire farmers, a retired Colonel, a retired banker, a tailor, a diamond dealer, a film critic, a retirement home owner and, finally, a tackle shop owner, have in common? The clue is in the last occupation – a love of fly fishing. And so, it was with great ease that my team settled down to …

Astove Atoll, Seychelles February 2018

How many fly-fishing spots do you know that have become mythical or legendary in the past decade? Rivers like the Ponoi in Russia have risen to greatness in the modern era but over the past 20+ years. Lake Thingvallavatn in Iceland has had a meteoric rise to fame for its extraordinary trout but there are not many… however Astove is …

Providence Atoll, Seychelles, 4th to 11th April 2017

Let’s get some details straight before we start this adventure. We were a party of three, all paying our way. This was a business trip for me but there was no obligation to be complimentary and, to be honest, if somewhere I visit is poor, I simply do not write about it. Our first team member was Dom Quinlan, a …