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A fly fishing angler hoists a giant trevally caught on the hard sand flats surrounding the remote Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean. The island attracts fly fishermen from all over the world.
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Outdoors: Christmas Island offers local anglers ultimate fly fishing holiday

Dylan Rose/Fly Water Travel

Outdoors: Christmas Island offers local anglers ultimate fly fishing holiday

If you are a fly fisherman and Christmas Island is not at the top of your lifetime bucket list, then it might be time to tear up that inventory of your dream trips and just start over.

With its endless hard sand flats that allow the fly fisherman to stalk, entice, and battle bonefish and giant trevally while wading out to the horizon in knee-deep water, Christmas Island offers a unique setting, in a very remote tropical location. Under brilliant blue skies and an often blazing sun, anglers scan the ultra-clear water and sight fish for the nervous bonefish and the marauding trevally.

“You just can’t compare anything else to it,” said Keith Burwell, an avid fly fisherman and president of the Toledo Community Foundation who has organized a trip to this oasis in the Indian Ocean.

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“There might be one or two other places around the world on the same list, but Christmas Island is really something special. There’s not a lot there but the fishing, but it can be some of the best saltwater fly fishing you will find anywhere.”

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Burwell, who is a member of the local North Branch Boys Fly Fishing Club and the Fallen Timbers Trout Unlimited chapter, said the group of anglers will depart for the remote atoll at the end of March next spring for a week of fishing. It will take the better part of two days to reach the island, with an overnight in Hawaii along the way.

Burwell arranged the trip through a friend who operates a fly fishing guide service on the island, and the adventure is timed to match tidal changes and moon phases that should offer optimum fishing.

Experience tells the anglers that in the period three days before and after a full moon, large bonefish will school and move into the shallows to feed. The giant trevally then follow, to feed on the bonefish. The flats also offer the opportunity to fly fish for triggerfish, milkfish, bluefin trevally and golden trevally.

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The Toledo-area fly fishing group has the Sunset Horizon Lodge on Christmas Island reserved for the first week of April, which should coincide with an ideal moon period, and allow the anglers to experience “both the highest of low tides and the lowest of low tides” while visiting Christmas Island.

Dylan Rose from Oregon-based Fly Water Travel, said the lure of Christmas Island is its fabulous fishery and its extremely rare layout.

“This is probably the best place in the world where saltwater fly fishermen can wade on hard sand flats and sight fish all day, day after day,” said Rose, whose company is helping arrange the trip.

“You are looking at fins and tails all day,” Burwell said about the opportunity Christmas Island presents.

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Christmas Island has the largest raised coral atoll in the world. Rose said the sand flats often extend to the horizon, with one stretching nine miles long.

“It is a rarity to be able to do that much wading in saltwater and all sight fishing, so that is what people go there for. It is sort of saltwater flats fishing in its purest form. In some ways, it is more like hunting.”

The Toledo-area anglers will work with native guides, Rose said, most of who were born on the island and have rarely been away from Christmas Island.

“These are fish-addicted people, and the fishing guides have one of the most prestigious positions on the island,” he said.

Burwell said the trip can accommodate 12 anglers, and as of mid-week, he had 10 places secured with deposits. The cost is about $2,500 per angler, plus airfare. Burwell said that as Christmas Island’s reputation has grown as a saltwater fly fishing mecca, he expects the opportunities to fish there to be limited in the near future.

“At some point, this small island just won’t be able to carry anymore, so it makes sense to go now, before the whole world decides to go there,” he said. “The pressure will build to start putting a limit on the number of fishermen that can visit there.”

First Published October 4, 2019, 1:00 p.m.

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A fly fishing angler hoists a giant trevally caught on the hard sand flats surrounding the remote Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean. The island attracts fly fishermen from all over the world.  (Dylan Rose/Fly Water Travel)
Fly fishing the flats off Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean.  (DYLAN ROSE/FLY WATER TRAVEL)
A bonefish caught by a fly fisherman on the flats off Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean.  (DYLAN ROSE/FLY WATER TRAVEL)
Fly fishing the flats off Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean.  (DYLAN ROSE/FLY WATER TRAVEL)
Fly fishermen working the sand flats of Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean, south of Java, Indonesia. A local trout club is taking a fly fishing trip there in 2020.  (Fly Water Travel)
Dylan Rose/Fly Water Travel
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