LCO x Christmas Island 2025

What do you want to catch today?

By Lost Coast Outfitters

February 14^th, 2025

To ensure 2025 started off on the right track, LCO hosted back-to-back weeks at Christmas Island Lodge last month. What could be more enjoyable than a week marooned in the middle of the Pacific Ocean on the world’s largest coral atoll? After two weeks of pissed-off GTs, pinchy triggerfish, endless bonefish flats, and fresh yellowfin tuna, the answer is not much.

Christmas Island is about as far-flung as you can get on this “ever-shrinking” planet, yet easy to travel to from the West Coast. All it requires is an overnight flight to Honolulu—which no one has ever complained about—and a 3-hour flight to the island from there. Part of the country of Kiribati (Kir-i-boss), Kiritimati (Kris-i-miss, or Christmas) is home to around 6000 people and a warm and welcoming culture.

Christmas Island is famous for its enormous inner lagoon, studded with dozens of white sand flats. The Korean Wreck, at the southeastern corner, is a holy site for saltwater anglers. The backcountry and Huff Dam are an otherworldly maze of coral-lined channels and lagoons. Lastly, this might be the only place where you can wade fish for bonefish and then drive the boat 15 minutes into blue water and catch a yellowfin tuna. The variety of terrain and fish species on Christmas Island is truly unique and a big draw for the fly angler.

Sunny, windy, cloudy, rainy, or all of the above

On our first week, hosted by Old Man Winter, AKA LCO’s own Brett Wedeking, along with nine enterprising anglers, we experienced a week of good fishing interspersed with challenging weather. Defying the clouds and rain showers, the group caught almost every species available on the island.

The highlight of highlights was Lee L. landing a milkfish while wading at the Korean Wreck. Milkfish are easy to see but incredibly difficult to catch, and almost always that happens in bluewater, not on the flats. Milkfish eat algae, so you must carefully fish a pattern that is essentially an olive blob and hope that a milkfish casually opens its mouth on your fly—which sounds simple but is decidedly not.

When the sun shone, the fishing was solid to excellent. Many hungry bonefish were on the flats, and numerous triggerfish were caught daily. Triggerfish often tail when feeding and can be easy to spot in lower-light conditions. However, they are always tricky to hook and land. The challenge is what keeps us going.

The trevally were present throughout the week. Everyone thinks all trevally are 80-lb GTs. While that is always a possibility, smaller GTs, bluefin, striped, and golden trevally, stalk the flats, reefs, and channels of Christmas Island. In the right conditions, they provide hours of fun and are perfect targets for an 8wt or 9wt setup. And I (Brett) would argue that bluefin trevally are the most stunningly colored fish in the ocean. Change my mind!

The second week of our stint on CXI was hosted by our good friend Derek Hutton, who operates Hutton Fly Travel alongside LCO’s Owen Murray. The week consisted of heavy winds and sporadic cloud cover each day, but when anglers had bright sun, they were able to get the job done.

The Hutton Fly x LCO Crew consisted of eight anglers who caught plenty of bonefish and juvenile trevally. A few lucky and resolute anglers got on some triggerfish, with one angler completing the Christmas Island triggerfish slam (peach face trigger, titan trigger, and a Picasso trigger). Owen hooked two large GTs; one reefed him at Korean Wreck. Fortunately, he landed the second GT he hooked, which he spotted moving quickly in shallow water.

Owen’s guide, Rotati, estimated the fish to be 45 pounds or so. A locked-down Galvan Grip 12 with a Helios 11wt broke the fish’s spirit pretty quickly.

While wading the inner lagoon is enough to satisfy any angler for an entire week of fishing, our anglers were jonesing to get to the Korean Wreck at the island's southeast end—and it feels like the end of the world. A harsh and hot environment, this is not somewhere you want to get stuck or lost. The namesake shipwreck is long gone, as is the nuclear radiation (see below), but the fishing is fantastic, and the terrain is like nothing I’ve seen anywhere else.

The “flats” are a series of coral and sand stretches bound by a steep coral beach on one side and waves breaking on the reef on the other. Along the entire reef are deep water passageways that become highways for fish to enter and exit the flats. The tide heavily dictates where and how you fish the Wreck and changes drastically throughout the day. The Wreck has everything from casting off the reef into crashing waves for GTs to sight fishing tailing bonefish inches from the beach. The variety and numbers of reef species are mind-boggling, and some of the largest bonefish in the Pacific cruise these coral flats.

If you want to fill your bucket list with multiple types of snapper, grouper, wrasse, trevally, and more, this is the place! It truly has to be experienced in person to be fully appreciated. On this trip, I fished the Wreck on three different days, and it fished differently each time.

As if all that wasn’t enough, in Kiritimati, the bluewater begins merely a couple hundred yards off the beach, outside the main lagoon entrance. That means big pelagic fish cruise right up to within easy striking distances, and fly anglers have excellent opportunities at yellowfish and skipjack tuna, wahoo, big GTs, big snappers, dorado, sailfish, and more. This is truly big game country, and you’d better pack a reel with a LOT of backing. While the bluewater is conditions dependent—like anything—having that option so close with an easy commute makes this island fishery more unique.

History isn’t history

Fly fishing travel isn’t always about the fish; in many ways, it’s a vehicle to experience new and wonderful places and cultures that most people never do. We are among a fortunate few to get to go to these incredible places. Sometimes, these destinations harbor a darker past. Whether it’s the Caribbean slave trade or Native boarding schools in Canada, education about the people who live in the places we go to fish informs our worldview. It enriches our understanding of history and why the world above the bonefish flat looks the way it does.

On Kiritimati, that dark history is nuclear testing. Between 1957 and 1962, the US and British conducted a series of nuclear tests on and adjacent to Christmas Island. You can even drive down the enormous asphalt runway they built for the thousands of military personnel to fly in and out. Now, the runway appears out of the brush in the far reaches of the island on the way to the Korean Wreck fishing area. Seemingly an untouched paradise, history records something more profound, with impacts that last today. Both service members stationed on the island during the tests and i-Kiribati locals have shown high rates of cancer, reproductive problems, thyroid issues, and other multi-generational health problems caused by the fallout from the nuclear testing and lack of protective measures.

One report told a story of dumping radioactive waste into the ocean off the town of London. No compensation has ever come to the locals or military personnel exposed to the blasts, and still today, survivors of the testing are invisibly scarred by the experiences.

In 2025, Kiritimati is a peaceful island with a gentle and inviting populace and an ocean brimming with life. Recent testing shows no sign of increased radiation anywhere on the island, including the famed Korean Wreck, where much of the testing took place.

Island Life

Lodging and food on Christmas Island have historically been challenging, with the atoll geographically isolated. Despite only landing one flight a week at CXI, accommodations and food are much improved. You’ll eat fresh seafood throughout the week, with treats like Argentine oven-baked empanadas and coconut-crusted shrimp in the mix, too. Anglers stay in simple but comfortable bungalows, with waves crashing on the reef to lull them to sleep. This is a fish camp—there are no luxury accommodations on CXI—but a comfortable fish camp, which is the perfect base camp for a week of wading the flats of the South Pacific. Bonus: the lodge has Starlink internet. So, it’s not too rustic.

One more note: like many destinations, the water is undrinkable. While bottled water (and plenty of beer) is provided, do your best not to let tap water get in your mouth or eyes while showering, brushing your teeth, or doing anything else. Trust me, it’s easy to get a stomach bug that will take you out for a day or two.

Gear we fished

Saltwater fishing is hard on gear, and since there are no fly shops on CXI, you need to be prepared. We enjoyed fishing the new Winston Air 2 Max rods from 8wt - 10wt and found them to be laser-accurate at multiple distances, even in the wind. The old standard Tibor Everglades and Gulfstream reels performed admirably, as you’d expect from a company with such a legacy. The new Bauer SLT is a beautiful reel with a stout and smooth drag, able to slow down fish after fish after fish. Our favorite lines were the SA Amplitude Smooth Grand Slam taper for everything on the flats, top to bottom, and it loads almost every rod well. The Rio Flats Pro is a super smooth caster that turns over well at a distance and works on various rods.

Owen’s group tested other gear and found additional standout rods, reels, and lines. The new Helios D rods from 9wt - 11wt performed incredibly well, with Owen’s favorite being the 11wt. The Sage Maverick in both the 8wt and 9wt sizes stood out as a rod that punches well above its price point. The Maverick claimed loads of bonefish and multiple triggers, and its fast action helped anglers cut casts through the wind. Owen’s group fished various reels, and the fan favorite was The Galvan Grip. This reel has been a long-time staple at LCO and has defended itself as one of the best-value saltwater reels on the market. Regarding fly lines, the new SA Magnitude Grand Slam Clear Tip impressed folks who wanted the stealthiest option available. It includes the same taper as the Amplitude Grand Slam, with a 10’ precise tip that didn’t seem to throw a shadow over shallow bonefish on subpar casts.

If you want to visit Christmas Island and experience this magical place, contact us at the shop. We’ll provide you with all the information you need and assist you in booking the saltwater trip of your dreams.