The Seychelles: Alphonse Island “Jeets”, Airflo Fly Lines

Posted under fly fishing reports by Dave Teper

Travis Rummel was nice enough to introduce us to some of his friends this September out in Denver.  One of those friends, Gareth Jones from Airflo Fly Lines sent us this report of a recent trip to the Seychelles.  He also sent us a bunch of lines.  Guess what we will be fishing with this year…thats right…AIRFLO.

Flying into this remote atoll it was easy to see why Alphonse is without doubt one of the greatest bonefish destinations discovered to date.  Miles and miles of brilliant white sand flats and clouds (I kid you not) of bonefish eager to take the fly - as long as it hit the deck, these fish don’t look up.  To say I hooked 50 bonefish in the first morning is no exaggeration, I needed to get it out of my system and laughed with my Dad as we weaved in and out of each others lines with double hook up after double hook up. Needless to say, with that craziness out of the way, it was time to move onto something else - GT’s or JEETS as the locals call them, regularly cross the finger flats as they head from one area of blue water to another.  There are no push poles here, instead the guide’s idle you gently along the edge of the flat searching for the tell tale black shape of a big GT.  Once located it’s out of the boat with the 12# ready to cast large black or tan Sempher patterns tied on 6/0 Gamakatsu’s.  The set-up is pretty fierce - 100lb straight fluorocarbon directly to the fly, the line - an Airflo GT’ special with a 50lb test core, loaded on a Hatch 12Plus with enough backing to make a your own personal driftnet should the conventional approach fail… The flies are not flashy by any means and provided they were cast with a decent 6′ lead, they were seized upon with some serious aggression - GT’s are in my limited experience, the most aggressive things I’ve ever cast flies at - including Hippos, buts that’s another story.  The pursuing fights were incredible - our party landed fish during the week up to 100lbs - that fish was an absolute bus, but larger were hooked during the week including one estimated at 140lb… GT’s weren’t the only company on the flats, the legendary Milkfish would regularly put in an appearance - some in the 30lb class - and were certainly not interested in taking my stuff, and needless to say I’ll be back.  What did surprise me were the amounts of Permit we ran into, even more surprising was the numbers of bonefish they lived with - usually they had they own personal ‘force field’ of bonefish that would happily test out my crab before the Permit could get an eyeful.  Alphonse is without doubt one of the greatest saltwater fly fishing lodges on the planet, from the sultry voice on the other end of your wake up call, to the exquisite food freshly prepared each evening - Alphonse is 5 star.