Alphonse Island: A Tropical Fishing Paradise In The Seychelles

The Seychelles is an archipelago located North of Madagascar, and it mainly consists of small coral islands, atolls and reefs. The Seychelles is known for its beautiful palm beaches, but it is also home to some of the best and most diverse tropical saltwater fly fishing in the world. 

 

- Rasmus Ovesen

I’M BEWILDERED and overwhelmed. Dizzy and languid, like a boxer who has just left the ring - humiliated and defeated. The scenes from a full week of hysterically exciting tropical fly fishing flickers before my feverish eyes, while my gazing eyes emptily skirts across the shimmering blue water, which the catamaran transects with surgical precision.

We’re in the middle of the Indian Ocean on our way to our resort on Alphonse Island in the Seychelles. The shiny white flats, the moonscape-like coral formations and the riveting tidal currents, which - in combination with vast elongated, subaqueous meadows of turtle grass and toothy, weather-beaten outer reefs - constitute the heart and soul of the St. Francois Atoll and its hunting grounds, now unobtrusively fade away behind us – like a bittersweet diminuendo that quietly yields to total silence.

All of it stings relentlessly inside the depths of my soul and, as I cast one last glance behind me and take in the scenery for the last time, I suddenly realize that I’ve never been so sad having to pack up and leave a fishing destination as I am now. It’s a veritable tragedy!

”ETERNALLY OWNED IS BUT WHAT’S LOST”, sounds a trite, old proverb, which – unfortunately – makes too good sense now that everything is over. In this very moment I feel as if it might as well have been the title of the bizarre Film Noir-like drama that I’ve just been through: An anti-climactic drama – hopeless and dark, where I have had close encounters of the third degree with the full St. Francois Atoll villain cast; bonefish, triggerfish, milkfish, permit and giant trevally, and where - in a morass of nerves, failed technique, and misfortunate circumstances I’ve lost everything!