Fishing in Madagascar 2

[Bushpig]

Fishing Madagascar 2

After having been in Madagascar for what seemed like eternity I decided to visit the beautiful and historic island of St. Marie to have a break from the daily grind and hopefully get in some deep sea fishing. The Gods appeared to be smiling down on me for once and my family joined me in Antananarivo after several marathon flights from Brisbane, we then flew to the island. We had managed to book into a small rustic resort on the island of Isle au Natte just off Isle St. Marie and we were all looking forward 10 days of island bliss, unfortunately the weather Gods had other ideas. First impressions of the island are amazing, it’s a tropical island just like one would imagine, palm trees, blue water, clean sand, sunshine and … mosquitos, humidity that would melt the nuts off a lemur and midges.

After a night of overindulgence I woke ready to try fishing from a dugout canoe I had hired from a local, the dugout canoe is arguably the worst fishing platform on the planet. It’s unstable, it continuously leaks, you have to remain seated which really gives your hemorrhoids a wakeup call and you are constantly moving which makes accurate casting impossible. After about two hours of this I’d had more than enough, I managed to hook a few small reef fish, my son, the canoe operator and my left ear. While we were returning to the lodge we noticed an ominous cloud bank forming on the horizon.

During the night I received a call from site stating that a tropical cyclone was approaching and would hit us in the next 24 hours, oh joy. Naturally the wife was ecstatic and I got the ‘you should have known about this before we left’ story. The weather deteriorated rapidly and the winds started picking up and the swell outside the reef took on gigantic proportions. All boats were hurriedly dragged up the beaches and secured, huts were tied down where possible and the wait began. As you can imagine all thoughts of fishing were erased from my brain. We got hammered for four days, the wind, rain and tidal surge ensured that our accommodation was saturated, coco-nuts became missiles and palm fronds, chickens and assorted debris were tossed about the small island. There was nothing else I could do except order several THB’s (local beer) and settle down, in fact I got so settled down that the next two days were permanently erased from memory, I do have a vague recollection of crawling to the bedroom but that is another story.

Boredom became an issue and being Queenslanders we decided not let a little tropical cyclone ruin the fun. During a lull in the weather we managed to get a dugout canoe across to Isle St. Marie where we hired quads for a day of adventure and exploration. Interesting but very wet, I have to congratulate my wife for her fortitude and perseverance during our trip. Sadly that was as close as I got to fishing for the remainder of our stay.