Hat Trick: Part Two.

When I lived in the Seychelles I regularly took a day out with my friend and neighbour, Richard Mancienne who had a sport-fishing boat. Sometimes I went as a non fishing passenger when he had clients.

My house was up the hill from his, overlooking Beauvallon Bay from where we could see two islands on the horizon. To the right was North Island (named after Marianne North, the botanist and illustrator), while the larger Silhouette Island rose to about 2000 feet straight from the ocean. It could look quite intimidating when lit from behind, but with the sun on it, it was fascinating. Hardly anyone went there and there was only one landing place, on the mysterious other side of the island. It was top of my list of places to visit.

My brother Alex and I had the opportunity to go there one day with Richard. We were dropped ashore for an afternoon while he took clients off to troll for big barracudas in the deep water below the cliffs. His crew prepared a meal for their return and we set about exploring the beach area and fly-fishing.

The landing place consisted of a stone pier at one end of a pristine white beach where a passage had been dynamited through the reef to let boats come in to collect copra and coconuts.

The old coconut plantations were abandoned but the island was still inhabited, though we saw no-one. We explored the small plateau area behind the beach and some ruined buildings, then went snorkeling in the warm, clear water to see what fish we might catch.

A few weeks previously, off the beach below my house, I had caught a small bonefish on a piece of bread intended for a mullet. This beach on Silhouette looked perfect for banan (the Creol name for bonefish) so I was really keen to have a look, especially along any passages and chutes where there were breaks in the surrounding reef. I found them about 3 meters down on the rubble-strewn bottom of the channel that flowed out to sea alongside the pier. I reckoned that we could pick them off from there, so we set up.

There wasn't room for both of us on the dock, so we took it in turns. One of us would fish the surf along the beach while the other had a go at the channel.

Our flies were snatched by eager silver-fish as soon as they hit the water. We both caught a lot of juvenile pompanos and trevallies but could not get beneath them to reach the bonefish. As the tide fell, the entire bay drained out of the reef through the passage and so the current picked up. It was like fishing down a Scottish salmon river, except I wasn't wearing layers of warm clothes and thick waders; just shorts, a shirt and a new, wide-brimmed, straw hat.


Actually it was a plantation owner's hat, made of the leaves from a rare palm tree, and it was quite expensive. The ladies on Praslin Island made them on sewing machines to be sold in aid of the Seychelles Island Foundation. The money was used to conserve Aldabra Atoll, hundreds of miles to the west. That hat was bought for a good cause and it was my pride and joy.

A gust of wind blew down from the high mountain behind me and whisked away my hat. Of course I just jumped in after it. Within seconds I had it in my hands and turned back to the pier. The current had certainly picked up since my earlier snorkeling session, but I soon reached the pier. The problem now was that I couldn't get a good grip and was swept off again. I just swam back and tried again, and again, but each time I became more tired. Any way, there was no way I could climb up the sheer rock and I couldn't work my way back to shore against the current.

Fortunately my brother saw me in the water and came over to see what I was "playing at". I needed a life-line and the only thing to hand was my fly-rod. He cast a very straight line beyond me and I grabbed it first time. The reel sang beautifully as the current bore me off. I was the biggest thing that rod had ever hooked, (except perhaps the jogger that I hooked on the back-cast on Beauvallon Beach). Alex got a bit worried about breaking my rod so he grabbed the line and used it as a rope to pull me in.

Standing on the dock, it was easy to see what I should have done. If I had let the current take me out of the pass, I could have swum out of the current and come back to shore further up the beach, none the worse for wear.

Thankfully I'm, still here and I still have that hat. It's far too good to wear for fishing, but still not worth drowning for.