We followed our friends Marcus and Diana on Allora to a beautiful anchorage in the northern part of the Gambiers, where their friend Eric owns a pearl farm. Marcus and Diana have been in French Polynesia for two years and really made some wonderful friends with some locals, including Eric and his family.
We took the dinghies over to Eric’s place which has a huge sand flat out front where Mike and Marcus were going to do some fly fishing. Around the side of the island is what is called a “false pass.” A false pass is a break in the reef that heads out to the open ocean, but it is not deep enough for a boat to be able to pass through across the reef. But, the false pass made for a great snorkeling location.
Diana and I left the boys in the flats and headed to the pass with our snorkel gear. We had to almost crawl across very shallow coral to get to these large caverns or bowls of deeper water cut into the reef. It was a spectacular site. Diana and I each started exploring the area, diving down to look in little crevasses under the coral and getting great pictures of all kinds of colorful reef fish. We saw several species of huge grouper lumbering around and even had a couple schools of bluefin trevally swim by.
After swimming for a little while, several whitetip reef sharks appeared. The whitetips have been the most curious sharks in my experience. Most of the other reef sharks won’t get that close to you, but the whitetips don’t seem to have much fear. They are usually in the 4-5 foot range, so they are big enough to be substantial but not usually frightening. A couple of times I would turn around to see one only a foot or two next to me just staring at me. It was starting to get a bit annoying, because I then became distracted constantly looking around me.
At one point I was at the surface and turned to find one shark heading straight for me at an angle from below quite quickly. At the same time, there were two or three others swimming nearby me. It was a little unnerving. I faced the shark heading toward me. As I had my fins out toward the shark, he came up and bumped my fins. I kicked him to get him to move away from me, which didn’t really do much in terms of a deterrent effect. Finally, he moved away a bit as I looked over at Diana. She asked me, “Did he bump you?” When I said yes, we decided to move out of the area. Some locals had told Diana that the sharks will bump you before they decide to take a bite.
Neither of us wanted to be shark bait, so we swam to a shallower area where the sharks didn’t follow us. The whitetip reef sharks aren’t known for being aggressive or dangerous, so we don’t know if these particular sharks were just curious or being territorial, or what. Whatever it was, we didn’t really stick around long enough to find out. Luckily, the sharks didn’t bother us the rest of the afternoon as we snorkeled around the shallows and headed back in toward where the boys were fly fishing.
As I’m sure you all know by now, Mike loves to fish. But, he had done mostly deep sea fishing and had not tried his hand at fly fishing. Marcus is a huge fly fisherman and inspired Mike to try it. So, when we were back in the States, Mike bought himself a fly fishing rod. The sport of fly fishing is really fascinating to watch. The technique used to try to catch a fish on the fly is really an art and quite graceful.
We’d heard tales from Marcus about the fascinating fish that he had caught fly fishing. But, by far one of his favorites is bonefish. These beautiful, slender, silvery fish dart around in the shallow, sandy areas eating little things they pick up on the sand. In order to catch one, you have to see it first, then present the fly just in front of it and then be able to hook it and reel it in. Once they are on the hook, they like to fight, giving the fisherman a bit of fun.
Mike had now been trying to catch one of these elusive bonefish ever since we arrived in the Gambiers, with no luck. But, just as Diana and I were coming out of the water from our snorkel, we saw Mike in the distance hook up. We all ran over to see the action as we hoped Mike would be able to score his first bonefish. It was fun to see him quickly stripping the line and reeling it in to get that fish, and we were all there to see it! Mike was beaming and having so much fun. He is definitely hooked on fly fishing!
The next night we were invited aboard Allora for dinner with Eric and his son (also Eric) and had a wonderful time with a fantastic meal and great company. It was a great end to our time in the Gambiers. After a quick stop in Rikitea, we were off to the Tuamotus.
~katie