Fly Rods Down Under
Australian Fly Fishing Adventure, Follow the yellow brick road to the Land of Oz
by E. Donnall Thomas Jr.
As we cut power and drifted downwind through the pelting rain, the water ahead could have been the setting for one of those vintage Japanese black and white monster classics. If Godzilla’s head had poked up from the churning froth, it would not have looked out of place. Waves of panicked baitfish erupted from the surface in desperate attempts to flee predators attacking from below. Vortices of keening seabirds circled overhead. Shark fins sliced the water like knives cutting through apple pie. Gamefish boiled and disappeared, but rain and flat light made identification impossible. What were they?
The answer, which evolved over the two remaining hours of daylight, turned out to be: just about everything.
My first cast into the chaos produced a wrist-jarring strike followed by a long run into my backing that evoked every screaming-reel cliché ever put to paper. Ten minutes later, a 15-pound longtail tuna came over the gunwale, destined for a sashimi platter back aboard the mother ship, Eclipse, later that evening. Before I could even check my leader for abrasions, Lori was fast to another something big, but her fish ran downward instead of laterally. She eventually used every bit of muscle in her 9-weight to pump a big golden trevally to the surface.
Several longtails later, something even bigger and stronger tagged my now-bedraggled streamer and threatened to spool me as it tore off toward parts unknown. We eventually proved that I had lip-hooked a big Spanish mackerel (actually a narrow-barred Spanish mackerel, Scomberomorus commeson) just far enough outside its maw to keep its conical teeth away from my monofilament. Shortly thereafter, Montana neighbor Frank Thompson, fishing beside us in a second skiff, did me one better by accomplishing the same trick with a barracuda that would have been a nice one in the Caribbean, let alone the South Pacific.
