My son and I joined a group on Kiritimati the first week in January. If you have never been, I don’t recommend going unless you plan to make a habit of it. I don’t think it is possible to go and not want to go back!
We stayed at Sunset Horizon Lodge and fished with Christmas Island Outfitters – they are a combo package. I don’t think you can fish with their guides without staying at the lodge. We were extremely pleased with the guides and the food/accommodations exceeded expectations. CXI is not a luxury trip, but we found the room more than adequate. Don’t expect hot showers and try to get room 5 and avoid 6 (5/6 are kind of a suite – 6 being the kids’ room). Back to the food. We brought a lot of snacks as recommended – a friend of a friend went in December ’23 and was hungry a lot of the time. I am not sure where she stayed, but we hardly touched our snacks. I won’t tell you not to bring them as who knows what they will be able to get each week. Items on the menu included toast, egg, and bacon for breakfast. Ham and cheese or PB&J for lunch. Beef, shrimp or sausage stir fry, chicken, some kind of pumpkin/squash that I really enjoyed, fish, lobster and always rice in the evening. Not to mention ice cream for dessert every night.
Due to boat motor trouble, 8 of the 12 of us got on the trucks and headed to the Korean Wreck on the first fishing day. I tried to remember to map our adventure by turning on Strava each day. You can see the Wreck is a 50 mile trip. The 7+ hour time on the screen capture is moving time – we were gone for 11 hours and 15 minutes. I would say about 5 hours of that was driving. The trucks don’t have much of a suspension and the road is rough. A good bit of the elevation change recorded by Strava was bouncing in the truck! I highly recommend bringing a foam stadium seat or taking the pillow off the flight.
The drive is worth it! The Wreck was the most interesting place we fished. If you want to bring home some shells, pick them up here – there are no interesting ones in the lagoon. The water is a rocky/coral flat inside of a barrier reef of sorts.
The species diversity and overall fish count are both high. Christmas Island Outfitters is two people per guide. The guide started with my son and recommended I follow them down the beach blind casting. I quickly figured out the triggerfish are easy to see and are magnets for other fish. It is difficult to hook a trigger here as any fly that lands close to one is almost certainly going to get eaten by a trevally or bonefish. My son actually hooked a big trigger in the afternoon and got wrecked.
I hoped to get double digit species count here but had to “settle” for 7. My son caught a couple I didn’t so our count together was close to double digits. I kinda hate my son for catching the sweetlips. That one was high on my list and his was the only one hooked by our group. It did poke him in the finger and it got infected (bring some Cipro) – karma! I had my only shot at a bigger GT that afternoon. We saw a pack of a dozen or so 30’ off the beach. The guide gave me the 12 and I ran down the beach to get ahead of them. Lead them by about 20’ as they were moving fairly fast. As soon as I moved the fly I got a reaction so I started stripping as fast as I could. I didn’t miss a strip, but after a few zig-zags behind the fly, the fish left. I was so bummed I didn’t even think to try to get back in front of them for another shot.
One guy in the group did some blind casting outside of the reef (apparently a very good way to lose a fly line) and hooked a 30+ pound GT. Hard to say how big cause he only landed the head after getting sharked!
Some sample picks from the island and fish pics from the Wreck.
There were 5 of these fish processing boats anchored off shore - can't imagine how many fish they are catching each day.
We stayed at Sunset Horizon Lodge and fished with Christmas Island Outfitters – they are a combo package. I don’t think you can fish with their guides without staying at the lodge. We were extremely pleased with the guides and the food/accommodations exceeded expectations. CXI is not a luxury trip, but we found the room more than adequate. Don’t expect hot showers and try to get room 5 and avoid 6 (5/6 are kind of a suite – 6 being the kids’ room). Back to the food. We brought a lot of snacks as recommended – a friend of a friend went in December ’23 and was hungry a lot of the time. I am not sure where she stayed, but we hardly touched our snacks. I won’t tell you not to bring them as who knows what they will be able to get each week. Items on the menu included toast, egg, and bacon for breakfast. Ham and cheese or PB&J for lunch. Beef, shrimp or sausage stir fry, chicken, some kind of pumpkin/squash that I really enjoyed, fish, lobster and always rice in the evening. Not to mention ice cream for dessert every night.
Due to boat motor trouble, 8 of the 12 of us got on the trucks and headed to the Korean Wreck on the first fishing day. I tried to remember to map our adventure by turning on Strava each day. You can see the Wreck is a 50 mile trip. The 7+ hour time on the screen capture is moving time – we were gone for 11 hours and 15 minutes. I would say about 5 hours of that was driving. The trucks don’t have much of a suspension and the road is rough. A good bit of the elevation change recorded by Strava was bouncing in the truck! I highly recommend bringing a foam stadium seat or taking the pillow off the flight.
The drive is worth it! The Wreck was the most interesting place we fished. If you want to bring home some shells, pick them up here – there are no interesting ones in the lagoon. The water is a rocky/coral flat inside of a barrier reef of sorts.
The species diversity and overall fish count are both high. Christmas Island Outfitters is two people per guide. The guide started with my son and recommended I follow them down the beach blind casting. I quickly figured out the triggerfish are easy to see and are magnets for other fish. It is difficult to hook a trigger here as any fly that lands close to one is almost certainly going to get eaten by a trevally or bonefish. My son actually hooked a big trigger in the afternoon and got wrecked.
I hoped to get double digit species count here but had to “settle” for 7. My son caught a couple I didn’t so our count together was close to double digits. I kinda hate my son for catching the sweetlips. That one was high on my list and his was the only one hooked by our group. It did poke him in the finger and it got infected (bring some Cipro) – karma! I had my only shot at a bigger GT that afternoon. We saw a pack of a dozen or so 30’ off the beach. The guide gave me the 12 and I ran down the beach to get ahead of them. Lead them by about 20’ as they were moving fairly fast. As soon as I moved the fly I got a reaction so I started stripping as fast as I could. I didn’t miss a strip, but after a few zig-zags behind the fly, the fish left. I was so bummed I didn’t even think to try to get back in front of them for another shot.
One guy in the group did some blind casting outside of the reef (apparently a very good way to lose a fly line) and hooked a 30+ pound GT. Hard to say how big cause he only landed the head after getting sharked!
Some sample picks from the island and fish pics from the Wreck.
There were 5 of these fish processing boats anchored off shore - can't imagine how many fish they are catching each day.
. There was also an island in the lagoon that had tons of birds. Our boat partners fished it, but we didn't get a chance. Next time I will request we fish the flat around that island so I can explore it a bit.
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