13 minute read
Providence Atoll, Seychelles: “Tiger!” “Tiger!”
You’re wishing you were somewhere on a river in Africa when you scream these words with jolting rod in hand but the adrenalin coursing through your veins is that of a very different kind – its flight, not fight. Now you find yourself standing almost waist deep in saltwater, separated from your guide and the safety of the boat, and out of nowhere a tiger shark has managed to make its appearance and there is no question why it’s there – it’s because you are there.
By FRANCOIS BOTHA
“Stand still!”, the guide yells. “There is a big GT that normally follows that shark”. Cast AT it!”.
You try to make your ‘anti-enthusiasm’ clear to the guide by how you look back at him; “J$%#$s f*&^%ng C*&^%t!” The pounding of your heart confirms the reality of the situation – the larger-than-life shark is now coming straight for you with those deliberate, sweeping strokes of its tail that breaks the water’s surface.
There’s no doubt – it’s a tiger. A mere rod length away the shark turns at the very last moment and too late, you see the massive GT trailing it. You are just happy the ordeal is over and you are about to collapse – somehow when the danger is heading away from you, you wish the shark would return. A sublime moment that you will never forget1
A few months later you’re back in your home town and a person on the make of converts approaches you and asks, “Excuse me sir, do you know God?” And you reply, “Yes, but in a different way you do”. “I spoke to him face-to-face in a place called Providence”.
The “Big Five”
Welcome to the “Big Five” of fly-fishing for GTs; Alphonse, Farquhar, Cosmoledo, Astove and, in many ways, the epitome of the Seychelles’ outer atolls, Providence. It is the last of the uninhabited islands in this pentagon of extreme flats fly-fishing. However, the only thing you should be scared of in the preceding story of danger and religious conversion is that you might never get the chance to experience it.
Undoubtedly the wildest and perhaps the most difficult venues in the world to guide and fish, Providence is the last bastion of the ‘liveaboard’ destinations of the Seychelles that screams “adventure”.
I began guiding on this fascinating archipelago of islands in 2007 and since then, I have caught every desirable species and guided every island in the chain with the exception of catching a milkfish and, of course… I had never seen Providence.
But, this is not only a story of a final quest to complete all that one can in a place where every self-respecting fly-fisherman with a social media account should wish to tread; it’s also a story of friendship and an unbreakable comradery.
A Greenhorn
The first time I met Patrick Sacco I was a “greenhorn” and I had been given the chance of guiding an expedition to Cosmoledo in 2007 for Frontier Fly Fishing (South Africa). My first day on the flats and I was guiding none other than Pat himself. I was just in the process of calling a sea cucumber a bonefish when Pat stopped the show and asked me bluntly, “Dude, have you ever done this before?” to which I sheepishly admitted “No”. In a selfless gesture that would influence the rest of my career as a guide, Pat said, “Take my rod and let me show you what to do”. On my first day of guiding saltwater flats, Pat marched me around the mouth of Astove Atoll and guided me into every species of fish that came before us. Once I had caught more than any client on the trip within hours, he asked, “So, do you know what you are doing now?”
“Yes”, I replied.
“Ok” he said “so give me my rod back and go guide someone!”
Many years later Pat and I ended up fishing almost every destination you could dream of: the Galapagos Islands, Bassas da India, Bolivia, the Amazon and many others in between.
The time had come for the ultimate trip that would further our quest of fishing in some of the most radical waters the earth had to offer – Providence.
Providence Atoll
Our departure for the Seychelles and the ‘smack talk’ on the WhatsApp group had come to a head, but there was an ominous, looming issue. In March of 2020 the coronavirus had reared its ugly head and entire countries were closing down. Thankfully we were fortunate enough to make it to Mahé and onto the charter flight to Farquhar, and from there we would set sail to Providence on an extended eight-day trip at the beginning of the GT season. Defiant until the end, we employed some ‘out-of-the-ordinary’ methods to get to the promised land of the Seychelles with no idea of just how bad the situation would still become.
It was our first evening on the Maya Dugong and we were seated around a satellite map of Providence and its vast unexplored wilderness. In walked a giant of the fly-fishing world, Timothy Babich, a guide with legendary exploits that took planning, hosting and entertaining to the next level. As a fly-fishing guide, one of the first things you learn is the ‘simile of the swan’ – always calm and graceful above the surface but you cannot see how hard it is peddling down below. Possibly the best guide that I have come across, Tim makes the other ‘swans’ look like they are going backwards in anguish, amidst an unforgiving current. Needless to say, the fishing was masterfully planned and executed each day under his watchful eye. But the thing that intrigued me the most over the next few days of convening around that satellite map were his words, “The inner lagoon, yes, none of us have been brave enough to go there”.
Thunderous Squalls and Irregular Winds
Our first few days on the reef of Providence were marred by thunderous squalls and an irregular north westerly wind which really challenged not only the guides, but also the thinking of the captain of the Maya Dugong as to where to set anchor safely. Although the conditions weren’t ideal, my first impression upon setting foot on Providence’s turtle grass flats were: “Triggers for days.
Oh my god, big triggers for days!” But it turned out to be some of the hardest trigger fishing I had ever committed to. However, isn’t that all the trigger fishing you have ever experienced?
It took some sharp adjustment and with only minutes of a pushing tide to spare I ‘pinned’ probably the biggest, and most impressive looking, yellow margin triggerfish of my fly-fishing career. “Look at this f*&^%$g triggerfish!” I exclaimed, moments after Tim netted it. And that’s when it dawned on me.
Colour Enhancement
All the fish on Providence look totally different. The most notable enhancement is the colour variation of almost every species of fish that you think you knew everything about. The triggers are darker in a way that someone gave them more contrast and bumped up the clarity in Photoshop. Damn, they just look so much better!
Even more noteworthy though, are the “Geets”. The first thing Patrick said about the GTs at Providence was, “They have yellow dorsals. Yes, didn’t you know? I’m serious bro, Providence is the only place where they look like this”. Like a Darwinian profession or an Attenborough narration, it is that exotic and different to what you have ever experienced. You have to see it for yourself if you cherish hunting GTs, with all of their anomalies across the world.
It’s probably rarer than a black one that keeps its colour once you land it. But it doesn’t end there! You will be amazed to see that the GTs at Providence tail over rays like permit. At first you don’t believe it when the guide tells you he has just seen a tailing GT, but I was fortunate enough to get some great drone footage of it. It is quite irregular if you know how it should be. What’s more, the significance of the species on the menu at Providence is that if you have ever had the ambition of targeting a bumphead parrotfish, you will get more shots at these alien beasts at Providence than anywhere in the world.
An Ever-Increasing Spring Tide
The whole trip began to spiral upward in a cumulus cloud of greedy, hungry fish on an ever-increasing spring tide. 100cm plus GTs were becoming the norm at the evening prize-giving, but the situation couldn’t have been more unstable.
The celebrations of the victorious guides and guests became subdued by endless visits to the captain’s quarters for updates by sat phone; we all knew there was a bigger storm brewing. Talks of early departure and the significance of the various nationalities and their repatriation chances began to overcome even the most ardent Battle-Juiced-Bull-Shark-Fisherman on the aft of the Maya Dugong. We even consulted with the captain about how long we would be able to sustain ourselves if we refused to go back, which we established would be close to three months. The writing was on the wall. It was time to suck the marrow out of life before the inevitable happened.
Fish with Indiscriminate Appetites
GTS, “bumpees”, permit and even a 150kg shark fell to the indiscriminate appetite of what could very well be the ‘last time we fished for a long time’. In the dying moments of an evening where we explored some of the lesser fished areas, we were far from the mothership and we all knew it was a ‘gun and run’ exercise when we came across a bay that literally looked like a sub-surface volcano erupting. Schools of GTs were covering unthinkable distances between explosions to annihilate panicked masses of baitfish.
There was no telling where they would pop-up next. Even the tuna and rainbow runners, fish normally associated with blue water, had joined in the feast.
The whole situation of running straight at the action and cutting the motors before yelling “Cast” wasn’t working, and fortunately an experienced guide, Brendan Becker, halted the scenario as he scanned the water, while his clients were losing their composure with lines and flies going in every direction. Then he said the magic word “Milkies!”. This is when you realize that a guide’s ability to stop and assess an untenable situation, and then make a clear, concise and surgical decision is what catches you fish. Trust your guide!
Milky Madness
We suddenly began rummaging for different rods and frantically tied on flies from Ziplock bags scattered across the deck. We made a few initial drifts into concentrated masses of surface-pouting-milkfish, but we were rejected each time. It was a situation of just trying to get it into “The Zone” but that didn’t work. Somehow, I managed to take stock of the failed attempts and I realized that we needed a change if we were to stand a chance of hooking one of these elusive fish. I remembered a fly that I had removed from another client’s rod a few days earlier when we were switching between species. It was a standard Milky Dream that had become sparse from tons of ‘castrubation’ and the spoiled tint of rust just made it look more natural.
That’s when I remembered the words of the inventor of the Milky Dream, Arno Matthee, who said, “The new Milky Dreams are too bright and thick”. I just knew that this weathered-down version was the fly for the occasion. A single cast later and against the odds of a setting sun and diminishing activity, I hooked my first “milky”.
It was at that point that Brendan said to me, “Francois, pull this fish as hard as you can or we are sleeping here”. We both knew that wasn’t an option. Less than ten minutes later Brendan netted my fish. It was done. His compliment of having never seen a milky of that size landed in such short a period of time would obviously win me admiration around the drinks’ table that night, but as all stories of one’s own fishing success go around a bottle of Scotch:
Well, nobody really gives a shit. My advice is rather keep your memories to yourself.
Outstanding days of GT Fishing
Our second last day, which would turn out to be our last, was probably one of the most outstanding days of GT fishing that I had ever experienced.
An unexpected sandbar had formed off the point of a normally deep reef and it acted as a dead carcass to unending waves of vulturous GTs. Like a conveyer belt, they came in on the back of the cresting swells and our onslaught was set in a preparatory history of fishing for GTs in our African surf: line management and taking hits from waves without excuses.
In the years of fishing with Pat I have to say I have never seen him miss a shot at a fish. Once he even went into a Superman-Horizontal-Body-Slam-Cast to a striped marlin in the Galapagos, and he didn’t miss a strip as he collided with the aft deck.
This was no different and Pat and his guide, Wesley de Klerk, simply gelled in their approach and no GT was left without a sense of defeat. We could do nothing wrong as Wesley strategically mapped out our advance into that story – the one that gets told first when someone asks you about fishing for GTs. It was textbook carnage with us coming out as victors.
That night the final call came in from the captain’s quarters, we had to leave. It was heartbreaking as we began disassembling our rods. The fishing had just begun to peak and there was no telling what we would have encountered had we stayed for the full length of the trip.
As we felt the heavy anchor chain being reeled in, reverberating through the hull of the mighty Dugong, we stood on the aft deck watching as the sun set on Providence. When would we ever go back?
For more info on visiting Providence over the best tides and times, contact:
