A Cranky Crab

April 16

Madagascar – Day 17

Granny thought we had another rat in our room last night (We had one last week – forgot to mention that). She awoke me to some scratching noise. I recognized the sound immediately. It was a crab. And I don’t mean some small ocean crab; it was a monster land crab. I heard his legs scratching our cement floor and it sounded as if his huge shell-head was stuck. It was. He was lodged between the wall and a piece of furniture in our room. I whipped on my headlamp and grabbed a plastic coat hanger. My plan was escort him out of our room.

I was suspicious of the clamoring from behind the furniture a couple times this week. Now was my chance to eliminate the noise altogether. The first thing I needed to do was get the crab unstuck. I’m sure he could have got out of his predicament but it was easier for me to just pull out the furniture. When I did, the crab ran for our bed with both claws clapping to threaten us. I steered him from the bed with my coat hanger and he then ran to the bathroom where I cornered him under our sink. I was laughing quite hard while Granny cranked out the photo. Finally he attacked the hanger hard enough that I was able to drag him to our door and he ran out with his friends. It’s been a good vacation for room guests and I must say I love it.

I snuck out to the nearby point at 6 AM and nailed my fish for the day. It was a monster (ha ha) 12” pickhandle barracuda. The pressure was off to catch my fish a day for the day early. After breakfast Granny and I and our South African family did a full day of snorkeling with the guys I fished with the other afternoon, Florio and Herman. We took two pirogues and they poled us to a nice snorkeling place. We snorkeled around for about an hour here. It was ok. We saw more fish than I expected including a few neat ones such as trumpet fish and pipe fish. After our snorkel we headed around Isle Aux Nattes to a cool lunch spot Florio and Herman knew about. The entire way I sat up front of Herman’s boat and chucked my 8-weight Ross with a Chili Pepper, a favorite Christmas Island bonefish fly. All I did was roll a few baby needlefish.

The lunch spot was basically another beach hotel on our island. The menu looked great but no one was real hungry so we just had some fries and beers. This Three Horse Beer, the most popular of Madagascar, is starting to taste boring. One of the first things I plan to do when I get home is relish in some of the Victor, Idaho home brews. From there we continued around our island and stopped at one more snorkeling spot. It was really shallow so Granny loved it. I did too as my snorkel is busted and I constantly have to adjust. Here we could just stand up. And despite being shallow, there were a few nice fish to see. Of note I found a gorgeous boxfish hiding in a coral cave and chased a unique looking triggerfish. I’d really like to find some triggers tailing on the reef but its way too dangerous for them to do that here with all the local fishers that will net anything they see.

After our second snorkel I casted all the way home and finally got a fish. It was a very tiny and finely speckled grouper that I will have too look up. He might be the one our guide George caught two weeks back while we were in Nosy Be. A pretty little guy nonetheless. That about sizes up our day. We just finished up another great dinner and now at only 9 PM Granny and I can hardly keep our eyes open.

Jeff Currier Global Fly Fishing Website