Sind Halfbeaks get active

Things have been quiet in the water by the beach since October with the surface predators such as Needle fish and Sind Halfbeaks disappearing until a couple of weeks ago with the onset of warmer water and hotter air temperatures.

The take.

I have been wading out the last two Fridays and had one half beak on the 17th and lost one, plus today 24th  landed 2 (largest 14" and smaller 10").  There were many lunges and takes but given the smooth, hard beak its tough to get the hook to lock in.

Played out

Given the activity, I was pretty much kept busy for the 1.5hrs I was in the water on the "little dip" low tide, the full low coming at about 10pm tonight.  Its quite windy today and I timed the visit to coincide with the lowest winds of the day (12-14km/h).

About to be unhooked and released

At time of fishing; humidity was 51%, Wind S & 10km/h, with 1008 millibar pressure

Shores of Mangaf - Kuwait

This is the first site I have looked at for fly fishing in Kuwait.  Access to the beach is via a alley cut through at N29 05.670 E48 08.254 near a lay-by for taxis/buses. The Sea Club is on the right of the picture (south end of the beach).  I took the picture at low tide to discover underwater obstacles that would disappear as the tide came in.  The picture was taken from a concrete platform in front of the building shown below.

The building has now been demolished and currently (Oct 2014) is the pile of twisted metal and rubble shown below.

The platform affords casting possibilities into the rising waters either side of the bollard above the word "Sea" in the first image, depending on the wind direction.  The sand on the beach itself south of the platform is quite steep above the water line, so casting directly out from the water's edge becomes problematic.
When I did try fishing from the platform the first cast  produced this Sind Half-Beak which was returned to the water.

This was caught on an orange floating fry with a flying treble.  Another Half-Beak was hooked later on in the afternoon as high tide was due at 5pm.  Sunset was to follow fairly closely and as I watched the beach from a nearby apartment as night fell, I noticed divers with tridents and lights entering the water to spear larger fish.  This may explain the paucity of the fishing during the day.  A couple of small Houndfish did launch attacks on the flies, so maybe there is hope yet of something larger.

Today (7-10-14) I caught this Sind halfbeak near the large hulk (Hamek) of an old ferry opposite the demolished building beside the Sea Club premises.

The fly was a red booby with its white polystyrene eyes. 

On Friday 3-10-14 off the beach between these points, I caught a small queen fish on a white streamer fly. 

 

Saltwater Flies and Lures

The images on this post show the selection of flies and lures I have used in the Arabian Gulf.

They have each performed with varying degrees of success, though by far the most successful in terms of numbers of fish, are the orange trout poppers followed by the white floating fry (of which I have none of the originals left).  The white fry shown tried to combine the qualities of the red and white poppers and fry and worked well until the flying treble was lost along with most of the tail to a toothy critter.  In the pictures, the more successful a fly has been, the less legs it has remaining attached.  The attachment of a flying treble also seems to improve the rate of hook-ups and this I attribute to the hardness of many of the fish species' mouth areas.

I have used bit detectors to construct my own popper variants as often it is difficult to get the appropriate materials in UAE, Qatar or Kuwait.  Fore example, I was unable to get olive wool for the Arno's Milky Dream fly so used some chartreuse material and white marabou and, at the time, had no internet access, so had to go off a verbal description of the fly scribbled on a piece of hotel note paper.

Some trout poppers ended up being so chewed up they disintegrated.  The one mentioned in the picture is the last of the three originally purchased.

Some of the flies are sea trout trebles and salmon doubles which are too heavy to cast from the shore or while wading with my 9'  rod with 8 wt line, and so are used  trailing from a boat, or flicked into deep water from a pier and allowed to sink and drift before being retrieved.