The last edition closed with Mervin`s runner up place in the Trevally tournament, so for a start a bit more info on that. Conditions were pretty much hell for a tournament that requires drift fishing mainly, whether it was jigging or popping. As all fish caught had to be filmed no-one bothered to take fotos, but I managed to get a few stills out of the clips he sent me. Sorry for the subsequently somewhat low image quality. 

Having returned to Seychelles on a more than half empty plane early in July it turned out that the whole month`s visitor figures remained well below the expected. There was little to miss on the fishing side admittedly as strong Southeast did not make it tempting to go out. At best the conditions were really rough, but even impossible at times. The first half of the month offered a few possibilities, but as mentioned there were no guests. Only repeater Slavo went for two trips with Sandro and they even made it to the Drop Off. Jigging was a tough business in those conditions but the trolling worked nicely as you can see. 

Mid month the wind then really picked up, establishing at a steady 25 knots with much stronger gusts for more than a week. No fishing of course and even air traffic was disrupted with domestic flight ops grounded at times and even the big jets had to do several landing attempts or even divert often enough. Only since a few days ago it settled a bit at times. So at least the few who dared could do bits of trolling around the islands.

Or even jig a little, like here with Greg again. Just love these Threadfins.

Poor chap had a real headache with a guest who wanted to do several trips spinning and fly fishing even with kids. Nearly no spot options here for that in these conditions. But he managed to get his guests to some fish in the few protected areas.

And that`s it already for this time. Wind forecast remains the same as far as it reaches. No surprise of course, just the usual at this time of the year.

No good times for the sports fishing community of Praslin and even lesser for your blogger: had to leave for Germany once more early June and am still stuck there. Kept in touch with Mervin and Andre but just learned that I was not missing anything on the fishing side as to their knowledge simply nobody went out due to strong Southeast and the lack of clients. So all I got for you this time is a quick glance at the re-invented Praslin Offshore Tournament as of May 31st. The weigh-in took place at Anse Volbert. 

No jetty there so the boats had to come to the beach to offload the catches which attracted quite a crowd of locals and excited tourists alike.

Initially nearly 20 boats had signed up but more than half did not go due to the hefty weather and the chaps who went had to take lot of that. The conditions also impacted the fishing as such. The drift fishing techniques were very limited or even impossible to conduct at all as the boats were just flying along. On the trolling side the recent scheme of very few fish around the islands persisted and the quality catches pretty much all came from the Drop Off. Was a little surprised that the Yellowfin Tuna were all just in the 25-30kg range at best, so it looks the big ones were just not around. To me the most spectacular fish brought in was that fat Amberjack of 27kg.

All boats each were allowed to bring one Sailfish, and also one Marlin over 120kg but the Billfish bite was rather slow that day, so only one specimen each came to shore. The Sailfish you saw in the album above, and here is the Marlin which weighed at over 160kg. Tourists were mind-blown of course which was the effect the Seychelles Sports Fishing Club wanted to achieve. 

All in all the tournament was well organized with a beach party afterwards and thus a nice thing to have on Praslin after those many years. I hope it will establish itself and a better date with calmer weather can be found as end of May and then June mean strong Southeast in most years unless one is really lucky. This was not the case this year and as mentioned above fishing has been off since, apart from Saturday`s Trevally Tournament. I received this pic from Mervin so know he must have done well with the LadyC team. 

We spoke briefly but I will try to gather more information and hopefully some footage to feed you with in the next edition.

For the preceeding reports check the archive.