DEAR SANTA…

DEAR SANTA…

Itโ€™s not just us desk-bound schlubs who have dream fish. Even those who live in fishy paradise have bucket list fish they want to tick off. On Christmas Eve, Santa came to visit the Outer Islands of the Seychelles. He paid a visit to Cosmoledo fly fishing guide Cameron Musgrave.

“I have had a guiding career that has spanned ten years in the Seychelles, the majority of which have been spent on Astove and Cosmoledo. Considering that I work at these two destinations that battle it out for the title of โ€˜the GT capital of the world,โ€™ I was starting to develop a monkey on my shoulder so to speak which, as the years passed by, had started to develop into a fully-grown male Orangutan. ย A randy one.

The reason was so basic, so bog-ordinary that, to anyone else, it sounded juvenile.

My biggest GT was only 108cm.

Size matters

Donโ€™t get me wrong, that was an awesome fish and one Iโ€™m extremely grateful for landing. But the size wasnโ€™t quite up there with the PBs set by my fellow guides. Many of them had spent a lot less time on the water than myself. I felt like a respected astronomer, who has seen plenty of shooting stars, but whenever a comet hurtled by Iโ€™d somehow managed to miss it.

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When the Cosmoledo operation received its first push poles for the skiffs, we were very eager to test them out. We knew this could be a game changer for getting close to big fish. So Stu Webb, myself, and my wife Gabby decided that we would go and search for the golden tails of permit. After about two hours of poling with no sighting of a permit and only a decent yellow margin triggerfish to Stuโ€™s name, we started to pole off the flat towards the lagoon and, ultimately, make our way back to camp.

As we reached the edge of the flat, Stu was on the pole and I was on the bow, eyes glued to the water, 12-weight in hand, ready for anything. With Cosmo being Cosmo, that has to be your default setting.”

Catch the rest of Cameron’s account in issue 20 of The Mission for free below:

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