SPAGHETTI ALLA SUDAN NO STRANGER TO BIG FISH, WHEN MEREDITH MCCORD VISITED THE F L AT S O F S U DA N S H E WA S O N T H E H U N T FO R T R I G G E R F I S H , B LU E F I N T R E VA L LY A N D G T S . W H AT S H E D I D N ’ T EX P EC T WA S T H E S PAG H E T T I W O R M . N O O N E EX P EC T S T H E S PAG H E T T I W O R M . Written by Meredith McCord Photos. Tim Leppan
“What is that?” I asked, awe-struck, as I stood looking in front of the three of us just twenty feet off the shoreline. The light was still low on the water and Kayla, Tim and I had just started our day walking and stalking the sandy beach and flats of a small island called Talla-Talla Kebir. We were looking for triggerfish or anything else we might cast a fly to. We all stopped and stared hard, willing our eyes to see through the silver roof of the water’s surface to whatever was cutting its way parallel to the beach and coming towards us. “I don’t know what it is,” said Tim quickly. “Just cast!” Before I could even think about what I was doing, what fly I was tossing, or how light the tippet was on my 9-weight Hardy, I cast my tan Spaghetti (worm) fly a few feet directly in the path of this “thing”. I had just
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begun to strip my line when a huge silver forehead, followed by a big white upper lip, slowly emerged from the surface of the water and literally sipped in my tiny #2 fly like a brown trout. It was as if it was saying, with ease and grace, ”Thank you, I will take that tasty little Italian morsel of a treat.” Our first four days of fly fishing the Red Sea’s crystalclear waters in southern Sudan had already been a great success. Our group of six was made up of a newly engaged couple from Boston (Simon romantically proposed to Kayla on the white sand flats of Abu’Isa on our second day, right after Kayla landed her first trigger of the morning, and our guide/photographer Tim was prepped and ready with his camera to capture it all); long time fly angler Susan from Michigan; Uncle “Big Fish” Bill from Seattle; and Traveling Charlie and me from Texas.
W W W. T H E M I S S I O N F LY M A G . C O M
