North 40 Fly Shop eMagazine February 2015 | Page 31

After an hour more of fishing blue water
and several big wahoo and tuna later, we
head towards a few GT spots hoping to
find some fish moving around. We grab the
popping rods and make a few casts. This is
my first time GT popping. Two casts into it, I
am watching the popper closely and a huge
boil appears and a large mouth engulfs the
popper. It is my first GT on a popper. A few
GT’s later and we decide to call it a day and
head back to the Ikari House for more tuna,
sashimi and cold drinks.
Over the next few days we fished all over
the island. We hit the outside reefs for two
days and saw some bonefish that looked
like GT’s. These fish were huge, probably
pushing 15 pounds, and were about as
smart as they were big. Refusal after refusal
on large bonefish can make an angler

question himself. Flies started getting
trimmed, flash was getting ripped out, until
finally we found the magic combination
and started hooking fish. The fish on the
outside flats are much stronger than the
fish inside the lagoon. These fish battle
with surf, strong tides, and lots of things
that want to eat them. There are also large
rocks, coral heads, and other things to get
your line wrapped on resulting in several
broken off fish. We saw several schools of
bonefish ranging from 5-8 pounds pushing
in on swells and hanging on the flats just
inside the breakers. Fishing the outside flats
is much like fishing an aquarium: there are
hundreds of different species swimming
around you. Spotted grouper, snapper,
blue trevally, giant trevally, sweet lips, goat
fish, small sharks, and several other types
were all more than willing to eat your fly.