<>Christmas Island 8/28/06 to 9/5/06
Angling Reports fishing program
There is a new fishing lodge on Christmas Island. “The Villages” opened mid-June of this year with the stated objective of providing the best food and accommodations on the island and a good fishing program. Are they succeeding? To find out, I visited The Villages in late August courtesy of Angling Reports Free fishing program.
The Villages is located on the lagoon beach a few miles north of the town of London, the island center of commerce and government. It was built and is owned and operated by one of the communities within Tabwakea Village, the largest village on the island.
Christmas Island is located about 1200 miles south of Honolulu just north of the equator. Weather and fishing are consistent year round. Its official name is Kiritimati, pronounced Christmas (“ti” sounds like “s”), and it is part of the Republic of Kiribati, pronounced Kiribass, headquartered at Tarawa about 1700 miles to the west. The Australian dollar is the official currency, but US dollars are always accepted. The exchange rate varies.
Christmas Island is the largest atoll in the world, encompassing about 250 square miles including the central lagoon, which along with adjacent salt water ponds, occupies about 125 square miles. The lagoon is a maze of deep blue channels and white sand flats popular with the local bonefish. There are also miles of narrow flats and shallow reef zones on the ocean sides of the island that can be waded and fished when the tides are favorable. In addition to bonefish, the flats and channels contain trevally (giant, blue fin and golden), goatfish, puffers and yellow snapper, all of which will grab your bonefish fly if you are not paying attention. Mullet and milkfish are an abundant food source for local netters, most of whom no longer target bonefish or trevally.
When fly fishing for bonefish was started by Frontiers at the venerable Captain Cook Hotel in the early eighties, the island population was about 2000 and according to some reports the bonefish population was similar to California’s budget. Over the years people from adjacent islands moved to Christmas, often with government help, and the official 2005 census shows the population at 5100, but most locals think it is higher. Government sponsored relocation is continuing. Natives and new arrivals netted bonefish for food, and the bonefish population declined over the years. A public campaign including radio announcements urging people to stop netting bonefish was launched, and now everyone with whom I spoke thinks the bonefish population is steadily increasing. I visited Christmas Island earlier this summer and observed no netters, but did see two this trip. They appeared to be targeting mullet. Milkfish are being farmed at the south end of the island to provide a food alternative to bonefish. There is an existing conservation area at the south east side of the lagoon where only anglers with a permit may fish for any species. National legislation to extend the area and prohibit netting bonefish in the entire lagoon has been proposed, but not yet passed.
Air Pacific provides Boeing 737 jet service to Christmas Island one day each week from Honolulu and Fiji. The flight from Honolulu leaves at noon, includes lunch and requires about three hours in the air. Arriving at the Qantas/Air Pacific check-in in Honolulu, I found myself standing in line with Ken Lindsay and his wife Palma. Ken owns the Fisherman’s Spot fly shop in Van Nuys, California. He and Palma were also hosted guests of The Villages. In the waiting area, I met Ron and John, long-time Hawaii residents who have fished Christmas before and, it turns out, were also staying at The Villages. We discovered later that the five of us were the only fishing guests on Christmas Island the entire week. This is in contrast to my trip a few weeks earlier when at least thirty people were fishing, including fifteen Australians who now have easier access with the new flight from Fiji. Even then, I usually walked the flats with no one in sight except the group from our skiff. Christmas is a vast fishery.
After a comfortable flight, we were met at the airport by Teannaki, head guide at The Villages, and driven to Tabwakea Village. Room assignments were made and luggage delivered, giving us about an hour to check out the facility before meeting with Teannaki to discuss the week’s fishing.
The lodge has two duplex bungalows on the sand about 100 feet from the water, accommodating up to eight guests. The buildings have cinder block walls with large, screened louvered windows that may be opened for tropical breeze cooling or closed with the air conditioner running. AC was nice to have for occasional use, but I was quite comfortable without it most of the time. Each of the units has the same layout with two comfortable single beds, a private bath and a refrigerator stocked with bottled water, Coca Cola and VB Australian beer. It is inventoried each day with items consumed charged to guest accounts at rates similar to local store prices.
Island water comes from wells and is not potable unless boiled. Drinkable water is available from the water cooler in the central dining room at no cost, and two 600 ml bottles of water are provided on the boat every day for each fisherman. Each room has a porch with two canvas deck chairs and multiple horizontal rod racks under the eve. A hose bib at the edge of the porch is convenient for rinsing rods, reels and shoes, a much appreciated feature at the end of a long fishing day. Laundry services are available if needed. There is a large outdoor bar, but a license to serve liquor has not yet been granted. The facilities are very nice by Christmas Island standards. For those readers who have not been to Christmas Island, think “fish camp” not “Marriott.”
We met Teannaki on the covered patio adjacent to the central dining room to talk about the week’s fishing and enjoy ahi sashimi and beer which we brought from our rooms. Teannaki explained that we would board the skiff each morning at 6:30 or 7:00 AM, our preference, for transportation to the lagoon flats. All flats fishing is by wading. Normally each skiff takes four fishermen and two guides, but since there were five of us, we would all go in one skiff. The “skiffs” are outrigger boats between thirty and forty feet long which are common to Christmas Island and are used by all of the fishing lodges. Most are independently owned. The skiffs that we used are owned and operated by members of the local community and were well maintained.
The plan was to have Teannaki and one other guide for the five of us. The fishing program normally provides one guide for each two anglers. However, based on my previous experience on Christmas, the fishing day is more productive with a guide for each angler. The Lindsays and I decided to split the cost of an additional guide which was only $60 US per day split two ways. I recommend that most anglers do this regardless of where they stay at Christmas Island. I can see bonefish when conditions are good (clear sky, sun at my back and light colored bottom), but a good guide can see them when it is overcast and can see them farther away, improving chances of a hookup.
So a third guide was added. Ken and Palma would fish together with a guide as would Ron and John, and I would have my own. The three guides would rotate daily. In addition to fishing the lagoon flats, the group decided that we would like to make the 1.5 hour trip by truck to the ocean side flats near the Korean Wreck, so Teannaki set that up for the second fishing day when tides were optimum.
We also wanted to go outside the lagoon one day and fish for wahoo, yellow fin tuna, skipjacks and large trevally. Teannaki said we needed two boats for that and arranged for an additional boat on the third fishing day. The extra guide would not be needed that day.
This flexibility is one advantage of The Villages. With a little advance notice, fishing and non-fishing activities can be customized with additional charges only for out-of-pocket costs such as gasoline to operate an additional boat on the ocean side. When the Lindsays decided mid-week that they wanted to go snorkeling, and Palma asked to do a little shopping, the lodge made all arrangements.
The first morning after a 6:00 AM full American style breakfast, we made our own lunch sandwiches from a spread of lunch meats, tuna or lobster salad, Chinese sausage and the fisherman’s favorite, peanut butter and jelly. At 6:45 AM we pushed the boat off the beach and headed for the first flat. It was nice not to have to drive to the harbor in London to get the boat as required of guests at lodges not on the lagoon or near the harbor.
The head guide and his clients are dropped off first at his chosen location, then the other guides and clients are dropped off where they wish within a few miles. The boatman stays in the area watching for a hat-waving signal to pick up and relocate guides and clients. The guide usually carries a 10 wt. rod rigged with a popper or deceiver to entice big trevally while the angler carries a 6, 7 or 8 wt. for bones. If big trevally are sighted, rods are switched. Often the big brutes are gone before a cast can be made. Small trevally can often be enticed with the bonefish fly, stripping very fast. The guide and I were dropped off on Pancake flat and walked slowly for about ten minutes before spotting the first fish. It was moving casually toward us, an easy cast. And it liked my size 6 Christmas Island Special fly, watching it for two strips then pouncing on it like a cat on a mouse. Strip set, raise the rod and listen to the reel as the bone streaks across the flat. I was fishing with a fourteen year-old Teton reel that has seen a lot of use, but I like the sound it makes when a bonefish runs. One more short run and the three pound fish was released. That morning fish appeared one at a time. Some looked but weren’t fooled by the fly, some spooked when I cast too close or they saw us, but I hooked and landed seven by lunch.
The others in our group had not done as well, getting only one or two fish each. We ate on the boat then fished the falling tide on a different flat in the afternoon. I had few opportunities, catching only two more bones. The others had a productive afternoon, making up for their slow morning, an experience just the opposite of mine. We headed for shore about 4:30 PM.
Kiraren “Key” Tebetanga, manager of The Villages, met the skiff at the beach and introduced himself then joined us at 6:00 for happy hour. Key attended college at the BYU Honolulu campus and in addition to managing The Villages, is director of tourism for Christmas Island. He lives in Tabwakea Village community and explained that The Villages was built entirely by local craftsmen, including most of the furniture.
Dinner was served in the dining room at 7:00 PM. Breakfast and dinner are cooked to order and served at the table by a charming waitress. The staple island food is fish, always one of the dinner menu choices. The seared ahi filets were the best I have ever eaten. Other choices during the week included ham with sweet and sour sauce, roast turkey, roast lamb, stir fry and tender rib eye steaks. Sashimi was served at happy hour each day sometimes along with little grilled skewers and fresh batter-fried fish pieces. The food was delicious by any standard. Dining is casual.
The next morning we boarded a truck for the 1.5 hour ride to Korean Wreck at the south east end of the island. The narrow ocean-side flats are dark and rocky and can only be fished effectively twice each lunar month at neap tide. At other times the flats are too deep to wade at high tide and dry at low tide. We were lucky to be on Christmas at the right time. Unusually heavy surf made fishing difficult, but using Teannaki’s eyes and following his casting instructions I landed sixteen bonefish and lost three others to coral heads, one of which cut my fly line a few inches behind the leader knot. Some of the bones were taken tailing right at the sand beach where they were easy to see, others were on the reef as singles or in small schools. I also landed one small GT (giant trevally) and lost another to a black tip shark. Others in the group concentrated on trevally with a thirty plus pound GT hooked and lost and a four pound golden trevally, rare on Christmas Island, hooked and landed. I caught a golden of similar size the last day on the inside flats. It was a long but happy ride back.
This was the first time that I had fished with Teannaki. He is a world class guide, one of only a handful on Christmas. I look for three essential skills in a Christmas flats guide: knowing where to fish at various tides and times of day, seeing fish under difficult conditions and communicating casting and stripping instructions when I am casting blind to a guide-spotted fish. Teannaki excels in all of these skills plus he is fun to fish with and has a wealth of knowledge about Christmas fishing and its history..
Teannaki has seven guides besides himself who work at The Villages. I fished with three of them on this trip and two more on the previous trip to the Captain Cook. One besides Teannaki was very good and only one was marginal. This mix is similar to that of guides at most of the fishing operations on the island, but competition for the better guides may cause conflicts in the future. Key, the manager, said that he would try to accommodate client requests for a particular guide in advance, but there would be additional charges. Island culture is such that guides do not share information with other guides. If a guide were to tell another something new, the other guide would probably be offended that the first guide thought that he did not already know. It is not likely that guide quality in the island will improve in the near term.
Dinner that night was an outdoor buffet with the usual ahi plus lobsters, octopus, clams, and curry dishes. We were serenaded by a men’s quartet. They were as good as the food. This outdoor buffet was repeated on our last night with a talented young dancer performing three dances for us with traditional and original movements set to modern fast music tempos. Think hula on steroids at warp speed.
On the day that we fished outside the lagoon with two boats, Ken, Palma and I trolled large flies for wahoo and skipjack, then for yellow fin tuna and finally smaller flies for queenfish. Only the queenfish cooperated. We would hook up, and while the fish was played by the lucky rod holder, the others would cast to the school. We caught and kept about thirty one-pound queenfish which Teannaki took home to dinner for the neighborhood. We also made some casts into the surf with Teannaki’s spinning rods rigged with large plugs for trevally. I hooked and landed one GT about twenty pounds. The other boat did better, catching several large fish, and Ken and Palma went outside again the following day and also fooled several large fish on Ken’s 12 wt. fly rod. Teannaki explained that usually the outside fishing is much better than we experienced. Sailfish have been caught within a few hundred yards of shore and big yellow fin schools are always present, but were probably too deep to respond to our flies. Birds feeding on baitfish at the surface are a signal that large game fish are present, but no birds were observed.. We did see a school of acrobatic spinner dolphins that were quite entertaining.
I owe my most productive day on the flats to my guide, Timio, with whom I had fished on the previous trip. He knew where to find fish, and when I didn’t see them, provided clear instructions. Bonefish that day and most other days came in singles and doubles and were not spooky. I saw fewer schools on the lagoon flats than I did the previous trip while fishing the conservation area. Timio and I fished one rocky, ankle-deep flat with a thirty foot wide strip of smooth sand down the middle that seemed to be a bonefish highway. The bones would come up the sand straight at us and were often visible beyond casting range. But they move fast, so the intercepting cast had to be timed to land well in front of the bone. And, yes, I did hit one and tried to get another to eat with his tail. We caught seven as we walked down the strip.
All of the flats fishing that I did on this trip focused on hunting and sight casting to bonefish. My best day produced twenty bones landed with several more lost. The slowest day produced only six. The largest bonefish was close to seven pounds, with several fish between four and five pounds, although the typical bone was closer to three. An alternative, which I did not pursue, is to blind cast into deeper water at the edges of the flats and into the channels that drain water off the flats during falling tides. This technique can at times produce many more fish and fish other than bones, but to me is less appealing.
Christmas Island is an interesting, productive place to fish, with a good supply of friendly bonefish. Clearly The Villages is succeeding in providing some of the best food and accommodations for Christmas Island fly fishing. I plan to return, perhaps more than once. The price for seven nights and six days fishing inclusive of meals, guides, boats is $1,971.00.
<>Does not include the airfare from Honolulu
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The Villages is represented in the US by Kay Mitsuyoshi at FISHABOUT, P.O. Box 1679, Los Gatos, CA 95031, Ph: 800-409-2000, Fax: 408-356-8446. Email kay@fishabout.com or visit www.fishabout.com.
Roger Flynn
by Roger Flynn
