Morrison Files: Great Christmas Island trip

"We caught lots of doubles"

A Great Christmas Island trip

Hi Travis,

We came home last Tuesday but turned around and one day later we were camping, whew. It about wears a guy out.

OK, on to the cool stuff, the fishing was actually really good this time. The best day Jeanette and I had was the last, I caught 31 she caught 21. She just happened to catch the biggest fish out of four of us for the trip, they figured it was 9 lbs, I caught one just minutes later that was 8 lbs. When they get that big they really are fun, huge long runs, almost get them in and they take off again. One of the pictures is Jeanette with her big fish just as it decides to leave and go straight in the air, the guide got the picture.

One of the things I learned this time was never look at weather.com before you go on a trip. I was looking for weeks leading up to the trip and all I saw was thunder storms, wind and pretty much terrible weather. When we got there it was heavy overcast and we figured the forecast was pretty much spot on, even the first day of fishing I don’t think we saw much sun but from that point on it was beautiful. Tom one of my really close friends keeps a tally of everything we catch and at the end of six days of fishing we caught 350 plus bone fish between four of us. We didn’t keep track of the small trevally, goat fish, yellow snapper, blue trevally, small grouper, trigger fish, puffer fish and whatever else might take a small fly. We had one guide between us and if he was with Jeanette I would just blind cast to anywhere it looked like there might be a fish, she did better than that one day she caught 17 and spotted every one, the guides got a kick of it.

Michael - Our Guide

Michael, the guide we had on the last day, a really good guy. Jeanette was getting tired of casting into the wind and handed him her rod, on the second cast he got a really nice bonefish, 8wt Sage Method, Nautilus reel, with the Bonefish Quick shooter line, great combo. That’s it for now. Thanks again for getting me the line on short notice.

Morrison

Morrison Files: Summer Edition

Morrison Files (File #061714)

Christmas Island

Hi Lyndsey,

Well we're back from trip #2 to Christmas Island. Here are a few pictures that Jeanette forwarded to me.

Fit for a Queen

The trip as a whole was way better than the first one, I think we just knew what to expect and could also spot the fish much easier this time. Another thing, the first time we were there they were in the middle of a two year drought, I think it's over. It rained so hard that it was just waterfalls coming off roofs. That was at night, during the day when we were out on the flats you could see it coming from miles away and when it hit it just poured. Even with that the fishing was really pretty good. We were catching anywhere from 15 to 25 bones per day along with all the other aquarium type of fish. I had two great shot at big GT's and both times I must have gotten buck fever and instead of pulling the
fly line to set the hook I would raise the rod like I was fishing for trout or salmon and remove the hook from its mouth. Tom, a close friend that was with us caught one that was something over 50#'s, a really nice fish. There were four of us from the US and six from Australia, great folks and it just made the trip that much more fun.

All Smiles

Next week Jeanette and I are going down to fish the McKenzie river for a couple of days and a week from Saturday Craig, our son, and I are going back to the Waterfall Resort on Prince of Wales Island in Alaska. The magazine guys we know have invited us to go back again this year and we both felt it be rude to say no. It isn't fly fishing but on this trip it doesn't matter because it's a chance to catch some big kings, halibut and other bottom fish.

I didn't mean to drag this on like this but now you know it all. Hope
all is well and business is good. 

I'll talk to you later,
Morrison

"Fly Fish the World with Us"