Seychelles report

[J Paulson]

Recently fished the Seychelles (Alphonse Island). Been something I've wanted to do for a while and this is a short report about my trip.   The destination was great, though I'm not sure it was worth the grueling trip to get there. I spent over 40 hours in the air on this trip (business class worth it). Mahe is rocky and hilly and there were two bridges washed out by the tsunami. Didn't see much of the main island. Alphonse is a 1 1/2 hour plane ride away and is a typical flat reef island with no cars on it. It's so small the runway cuts the island in half. You rode bicycles everywhere and that was pretty cool. The island also had giant tortoises on it. Rooms were great (especially the outside showers), but the resort is rather empty and I hear it's pretty much always that way. I really enjoyed Paris and Amsterdam as I passed through on this trip. Didn't have time to do any part of the Louve, but did see the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam.   Here's a recap of the fishing:   Each day we took a (very slow) catamaran boat out to St. Francois to the fishing grounds. The flats boats are moored there and all the fishing is done around this lagoon. Some really big pet trevally hang around the catamaran and you have to be careful not to put your hand in the water! The flats are nice -- easy wading and sharks are rare and not generally aggressive. The guides are a mixture of S. African, Seychelles natives, and Americans. They are all great and know the water intimately. They spend 9 months on this small island with only shorts trips to Mahe for breaks!   Bonefish: Lots of bones during tidal flow! All my weird flies worked, including a new one (D2 Worm) that really had the guides shaking their heads (I chuckled for two days after this fly worked). Nothing big, but had some fun fishing really skinny water when I got bored with the plethora of bonefish deeper. Biggest bone around 5 pounds. The "Da Worm" worked well in skinny water and the "JF Crab" kicked butt as well. (Note: these are all bonefish patterns I am developing. If you're interested, I will have a website up soon.)   Milkfish: They fed strong two days while we were there. I hooked 4 and never landed one. Lani got one and one other guy kinda landed one. Pretty amazing to watch them feed and man are they big!!!!!!!!!!!!   Great Trevally: Caught two notables, one about 12 and one about 25. Lani got a real big one between 30-40 pounds. Caught them on a squid fly tied by the guide Dan (an American). We generally took the boat outside the surfline to look for GTs.   Other species: Caught lots of weird stuff casting outside the surf.   The place is very beautiful, but the mindset is to milk you of every euro you have on you. I don't mind paying for a great trip, but it did get ridiculous, especially in Mahe. The exchange rate with the dollar down against the euro also adds greatly to the cost of this trip.   All in all, I'm glad I went, but I think I'll just scratch it off my list as "I've done that" and not go back anytime soon.   Jay Paulson