Fishing the flats first, we realized that trigger fishing takes more skill than casting a fly at a fish you see in the water. They spook at the slightest sound of a missplaced or wrongly presented fly, frustration can set in quickly after a few bad casts into the wind with a 12# sticking out above your shoulder. A couple of misses and dropped fish and we struck gold, a double up. Jaco hooked into his first trigger and seconds later I got a Bluefin kingie. Don’t under estimate these triggers, that funny looking fish will take you right in to your backing on the 9 # each and every time. Even the small ones!
42 SeriousFun@JFFC SEPT 2018
The mornings were spent targeting triggers while the sun was high and you can see them feed on the flats , in the afternoons we fished drop-offs for kingies, Bohar snappers and the elusive GT”s . There were also some by-catches like Garfish, Peacock groupers and Daniel’s Puffer fish. Although the fishing was tough and we had to work to get some fish it was very rewarding to land those triggers and blue fins. With less coral on the flats you have some space to fight the fish so we use thinner tippet (16lb) and you can loosen your drag a bit. That said Jaco hooked into a good size trigger and had to replace his fly line after that Antonio (nick name for a big trigger) ran him on to the edge of the flat and into the coral.
Ray the "permanator" hooked a fish that swam in to a hole on one of its runs and the skipper of the skiff had to get his snorkeling gear to get that trigger out of the hole without losing a finger. These Triggers have a good set of dentures on them, they bite through a saltwater hook like a side cutter through copper wire. So make sure you keep the fingers out of the way when handling them and always use pliers to remove a hook.