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I've been lucky enough to travel twice to New Caledonia to challenge the big bonefish that live in the turquoise waters of this splendid island.
On these same flats, beautiful jacks come to feed and offer great sight-fishing action, just like bonefish.
Equipped with a power 9 rod, floating line and good-sized shrimp, these jacks can be fished with bonefish tackle.
Discovering speckled jacks
What a surprise when I first saw a large Papuan or speckled trevally ( caranx papuensis ) arrive on one of the flats on Ile des Pins where we were looking for the very big Caledonian bonefish!
These fish, which look like GTs or Giant trevally (carangue ignobilis) in reduced size, swim past on the flats or in the vicinity, at high speed. They feed on small fish, but don't shy away from other prey such as crabs and shrimps.
If you're quick enough to set off a long cast to intercept their trajectory with our bonefish flies, often shrimp imitations, they're often interested, and refusals are rare.
We often use large, weighted shrimp mounted on strong iron hooks in size 2 or 1/0. As a result, opportunistic jacks are not averse to these XL shrimp imitations.
You need to quickly animate the fly so that the jacks, which are often solitary, detect our imitation. If they do, they often come rushing at you with their flippers.
Bonefish are hooked with silk, as their mouths are cartilaginous, and the silk must be kept taut to make the hook penetrate the slightly harder mouths of these fish.
The first rush is very violent and you have to be very careful with the first few starts, as the risk of breakage is high if you're not used to getting more than 100 metres of backing on the first rush! Once this run is over, the trevally come back to us and try to make a second start, which is easier to counter than for bonefish. But if they exceed 5 kg, the second rush is just as long and powerful.
Fights last several minutes with these hardy fish, which are as fast and lively as their Caribbean cousins, the jacks.
They often weigh between 2 and 7/8 kg, although smaller specimens sometimes pass through, so they're great fish to catch on the fly.
Golden on the flats!
Some days the golden trevally ( gnathanodon speciosus ), also feed on these same flats. Unlike speckled trevally, they move more slowly and really look for crabs, shrimps and invertebrates, in the same way as bonefish, due to their lack of teeth. This gives us time to position the fly on the trajectory of the fish as it moves forward, looking towards the bottom for its prey.
Like permit or carp, these fish lean gently towards the bottom to catch their prey and thus our imitations. The hooking is also done with silk, but more gently as these jacks have soft and fragile lips. You have to wait for them to take hold before hooking, as long as you don't hook them in the right place.
The rush isn't as violent as their sisters or bonefish, but it's still quite respectable! Large specimens are not rare in New Caledonian waters.
They're pretty fish and often of good size on big bonefish flats.
This species is found on Australian flats and in some parts of the Indian Ocean.
My first carangue ignobilis
On a second trip to New Caledonia, we fished other flats on the main island. In search of bonefish, which were becoming scarce, I came across a fish moving briskly between two waters. Not knowing what species I was dealing with, I cast my fly a few meters ahead and waited for the fish to approach my fly before animating it to see if it reacted. From the very first strips, the fish accelerated and took my shrimp imitation in stride.
The rush surprised me because this fish was of modest size. Even close to me, the fish wouldn't surrender. As it turned out, I had my first ignobilis trevally in my hands! A new species, validated even though these trevally are getting very big, up to over a metre, also known as the Giant Trevally. This one is just a juvenile, but a caranx ignobilis nonetheless. A nice surprise and a pleasing capture all the same!
