An angler named Thomas Paulsen pulled off an extremely uncommon feat within the fly-fishing world final week. While fishing a reef in a distant nook of the Indian Ocean, Paulsen sight-casted to a swordfish with a fly rod and landed it with out the assistance of a ship or a gaff.
In a Facebook publish he made after the catch, Paulsen known as it a “one in a million” achievement. This may sound like an exaggeration, but it surely isn’t far off. Few anglers have ever landed a swordfish on the fly, and the overwhelming majority of these fish are hooked from a ship whereas trolling in deep water. Sight-casting to a swordfish on the flats or from the seaside is sort of remarkable. (It’s occurred a few times, in accordance to a couple on-line boards, however there are not any data to talk of.) And as Paulsen now is aware of, efficiently touchdown a swordfish on foot with a 12-weight fly rod is a exceptional achievement for any angler.
Sticking a Swordfish on the Fly
The 48-year-old fly fisherman relies within the Maldives, a multi-island nation within the Indian Ocean southwest of Sri Lanka. He runs GT Fly Fishing, a information service that primarily targets large trevally, that are a worthy quarry in their very own proper. GT’s are in the identical household as jack crevalle, however they develop a lot bigger (upward of 150 kilos). The saltwater brutes take flies aggressively in shallow water. They even have a fame for punishing fly anglers and destroying sort out.
Originally from Copenhagen, Paulsen tells Outdoor Life that he moved to the Maldives eight years in the past particularly to chase GT’s. And that’s exactly what he was doing early within the day on Feb. 13, as he waded a coral reef within the surf zone along with his information buddy Hassan Niyas. Paulsen was in a position to sight-cast to an enormous GT that morning, however he misplaced the fish inside 5 minutes when it wrapped the chief round a coral head and broke him off.
“Angry and frustrated, I kept on wading along the reef,” Paulsen tells Outdoor Life. “About an hour passed when I suddenly saw water splashing further out [on the reef]. I thought it was dolphins hunting, but after a minute or two the splashing increased, and I saw a bill come out of the water.”
At first, Paulsen although it was a sailfish chasing bait, which wouldn’t have been too far out of the bizarre. He explains that the reef wall he and Niyas had been on drops off to hundreds of toes deep, making it a perfect ambush level for billfish and different apex predators.
“I started moving toward the fish as fast as I could in waist-deep water,” Paulsen says. “The fish was angry, and [it was] hunting something in shallow water.”
Still considering his goal was a sailfish, he watched it work towards him as he stood on the jagged coral. Once it received to 100 yards or so, Paulsen waded out to his chest and began casting a inexperienced and black streamer tied on an 8/0 hook.
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“After three or four 70-foot casts, the fish came at high speed right towards my fly,” he says. “Before I could even think to set the hook, my reel started screaming. The fish went right down alongside the reef for about 200 to 300 yards before it turned towards the reef.”
Paulsen’s 9-foot, 12-weight Winston Air was bent double because the backing peeled off his reel. But the fluorocarbon chief held quick and in some way the fish stayed hooked.
“It went crazy between some coral rocks, splashing and rolling around, before it beached itself in less than a foot of water. But the drama was far from over.”
Thrashing on the Reef
The fish thrashed and rolled within the rocky shallows, the place it received tangled in Paulsen’s chief. He ran towards the fish, cranking on the reel and gaining again line as rapidly as he might.
“When I was about 20 yards away, I realized it was not a sailfish, but a swordfish,” Paulsen says.
Niyas, who had seen the commotion, got here operating. Paulsen yelled at him to seize the fish’s tail, however as quickly as Niyas received shut, the swordfish lashed out with its invoice. He needed to leap backward to keep away from getting speared. Paulsen acknowledged the hazard they had been in, and as a lot as he needed to get his fingers on the fish, he knew it will be too dangerous to attempt to wrangle a pissed-off swordfish because it flailed on the reef.
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So, the 2 anglers watched because the fish thrashed itself to dying on the sharp rocks. Then they loaded it into the small skiff they’d used to achieve the coral reef and made the 30-minute run again to their island headquarters. They measured the fish at slightly below 8 toes lengthy, and it tipped the scales round 102 kilos.
With that weight, Paulsen’s swordfish simply falls into the world-record class. The heaviest fly-caught swordfish, in line with the International Game Fish Association, is a 77-pound, 14-ounce fish caught in 2001. Because Paulsen was utilizing 130-pound take a look at tippet, the fish shouldn’t be eligible for an IGFA document. But for a lifelong fly fisherman, that doesn’t make the accomplishment any much less significant.
“This is without question the most insane thing I’ve ever experienced in my 40 years of fishing,” he says. “I am so grateful, and I can hardly believe what happened in front of me and my friend.”