Bonefish and all that relates (maybe a bit about tarpon too).

I didn’t know Jose Wejebe, but I certainly knew of him.  When he passed away I was in Cuba and one of the folks on the trip did know him and vouched for his solidness.  Thought I’d put a post out the pay homage.

I had something happen in Cuba that I’ve never had happen before. I know it happens and it has happened plenty of times to plenty of people.  I had a bonefish bit in half on the line by a barracuda.

I didn’t see the cuda around before I hooked the fish. I didn’t think the bonefish was acting weird or wild before the fish hit. I had the bone on and then, all of a sudden, the cuda was there, chewing on the bonefish.  When I pulled in the fish, I was left with the front 1/3 or so of the bonefish.

I got to hold it him my hand and look it in the eye.

It was a weird moment. It underscored that this is a blood sport, even when we don’t intend it to be.

Thanks for the pull. Sorry it didn't work out.

While I got a few things wrong, I did make some good decisions and had some of the right stuff with me.

Flies:

• Having some of the super hair chartreuse flies for cudas was a really good call.
• I had enough Gotchas in different sizes that I could have fished for bones for another three weeks.
• The tarpon bunnies were good patterns and if I had them in a 3/0 I would likely have been feeding tarpon with them.

Leaders:

• The leaders I tied were effective and worked for bonefish and for tarpon.  The 80 pound shock tippet was perfect on even the big fish and the bimini twists I tied didn’t fail.  I didn’t have a single leader fail or a single knot fail.

Reels:

• The reels I primarily used were the Ross F1 for the 8 wt, the Orvis Mirage for the 10 wt and the Redington Delta for the 11. I had along a Ross CLA and a Ross Momentum, but they had on specific lines that didn’t get selected by the guides.

Lines:

• The textured saltwater line for the 8 was a great line.
• The Orvis line was different… it sounded like a textured line and it cast very well.
• I cast a Rio clear sink tip for the 11 and the guides liked it, preferring it to the full floating line each time.

Rods:

• Both of the 8 weights were lovely rods. The Sage One is light and responsive and did all I asked of it. The prototype was just as lovely and I’d be glad to have either one as my go-to 8.
• The 10, the Orvis Helios was a great rod. I’ve had that one before and I really like it.  It might have been a little heavy for Permit, but it would have worked well for that and it was a good rod to have rigged for barracuda.
• The 11 Redington… it was heavy, but when it came time to do the business it got it done. That feels like a pretty important thing to judge by.

Something right got me that fish.

I’ll start by laying blame for this right where it should go.  It’s all my own. I made some assumptions that were wrong and for that I ended up a little bit off on what I had with me.  Now, I wasn’t WAY off, just a tad.  Here’s what I got wrong and why on my recent trip down to Cuba with Yellow Dog and Avalon.

Flies:

For bonefish, I tied a few #6′s and a lot of #4′s and #2′s. That was the wrong order of things.  I should have tied mostly #6′s, maybe some #8′s and a few #4′s. The Peterson’s spawning shrimp was a favorite for the guides as well as the most basic and plain gotcha’s in my box.

For tarpon I tied many 1/0′s and not too many 3/0′s. I also crimped my barbs and at least one guide really didn’t like that move.

For permit I should have tied some of the Avalon flies in a #6 instead of the #2′s and #4′s that I had tied them in.

For barracudas I just should have had MORE of them.  I had three super hair flies and while they were very effective they were very ineffective once they were all gone, which happened faster than I would have liked.

Rods:

I brought 2 8′s, a 10 and an 11.

I vastly underestimated the size of the tarpon.  I thought I’d see a couple big tarpon and mostly be throwing at the little guys.  Well, the fish were much, much bigger than I had planned on. The Orvis Helios 10 wt. fell back to permit rod and the 11 came to the fore. The 11 was the Redington Predator.  It’s a decent stick.  Workman like. It’s a damn hard stick to blind cast for a few hours though and that was on the program a bit. That said, the 11 wt. did the job. I cast to and landed my 80 pound tarpon on that Redington. Clearly, the Redington did the job.

I should have brought one 8 wt., a 9 for permit and then focused on the 11 and maybe a 12 for my main focus rods.

Backing:

Yeah… um… bad call on my part. I had a last-minute snafu on getting the right backing and ended up having 20 pound on my tarpon rod… the big one. Now, I managed to land the big girl, but I was left a little shaken and didn’t really trust the big stick much after that.  I had no idea the power of those fish and I could hear the tension on the backing.  I’ll just go ahead and say I’ve never experienced a fish like that before.

So, to recap… 30 pound backing, smaller bonefish and permit flies, larger tarpon flies, more cuda flies, up the 11/12 weight for BIG tarpon and bring a 9 for permit.

I made some gear errors... but it still worked out.

Tomorrow… what I did right.

I didn’t see much of Cuba. On the way out to Jardines de la Reina it was dark and I was passed out. On the boat, we just saw the staff and the boat and the miles and miles of pristine habitat. On the way back to Havana at the end of the trip I got to see Cuba in the daylight. I wanted to share some of my thoughts from this very brief glimpse at a country most of us haven’t been to.

• At night the city of Havana is about 1/20th as bright as other big cities. They just don’t have the power or light bulbs to sparkle.
• Cuba must have the most rocking chairs per capita of any country out there. It seemed every little house in the little towns had a rocking chair on the front patio, usually with someone in it.
• It is a good thing Cuba is built on the land, else it might fall into the sea. There is a sense of general disrepair. The highways are rough and sometimes way too narrow. You have to slow down for bikes and horse-drawn carts and this is done within inches.
• You will see a lot of people walking around to get to point B.
• There are the old American cars like you’ve heard, but there are also newer cars. I saw an Audi A4 and a Benz suv, to name a couple.
• Some of the shacks out in the countryside are simply that. Tiny, wooden and lived in.
• In Havana there are places that are just waiting to fall over or fall in. It is like certain floors or buildings passed through some very selective apocalypse.
• Everyone seems to have something to sell or some racket to pitch.
• The colors of the buildings is pretty cool.
• The old American cars spew black exhaust. This is not a place for asthmatics.
• The architecture of Havana is really cool, but it all looks at risk.
• Everyone seems to smoke, even the well dressed women at the nice place for dinner.
• There isn’t as much propaganda as I thought there would be.
• No one wants to talk politics.
• Things in Havana are way more expensive than it seems like they should. You can have a $50 dinner, while the average official salary for a Cuban is something like $20/month.
• The economy seems to be mostly black-market. Everything has a cost and everyone is selling. It seems to be the way they make things work .
• Going through the country side you really get a sense of a very agricultural economy at work. Horses and cows seemed to be everywhere outside the towns (and in some cases in them).
• Saw a little boy on a horse that looked straight out of Montana or Wyoming or old-time Mexico.

Cuba seems to be coming to a crossroads. What I saw looked pretty unsustainable. The buildings are old, the roads are old, the railroad is old and nothing seems to be getting fixed or built. It seems to be a slow burn to some finality.

I have to say, I LIKE fishing for cudas.  They are mean, aggressive, pull really hard and are faster than is reasonable.  They also have big, pointy teeth, smash flies and leap feat out of the water.

Oh, and they get huge.

What’s not to like?

I wanted to land a nice cuda down in Cuba with Avalon and the Yellow Dog crew and I even set out to do that on a couple of days.

In the end I went 0/3 on the big cudas. I had one accidental cuda to the side of the boat before it ate through 80 pound shock tippet. When we searched for them we used wire.  Here’s a re-cap of the main failures.

1. In the Mangroves.  I was just not going to be able to pull a 15-25 pound cuda out of the mangroves.  Busted me off at the wire.

2. Teammate. I had a really nice cuda take a chartreuse super hair tarpon fly about 10 feet from the boat. Great species. Then, as it was hanging out and getting ready to make a blistering run ANOTHER cuda came by and BIT THE LEADER! I had no idea that happened, but evidently it does. Still amazing to me.

3. Rod error. I hooked up a nice Cuda on a very similar chartreuse fly and I had not checked to make sure the rod ferrells were tightly together and POP, the top 3/4′s of the rod left the bottom 1/4. No harm to the rod, but the cuda was broken off, again. We recovered the top 3/4 of the rod and got on our way.

Next time I’ll tie WAY more cuda flies and I’ll bring way more wire. I needed to be better equipped for the cudas and I wasn’t.  Next time I will be!

The cudas down there were big, powerful and every bit the worthy gamefish, despite the biting in half of my bonefish.

Top predators are a sign of a healthy ecosystem and this is certainly that.

Today I told the guide I didn’t want to pick up my tarpon rod and I ended up not doing that at all. What was in store was a really fun day of bonefishing with Chris Santella and guide TiTi. We also managed to tangle with a few jacks and cudas.

The bones first.  They were larger today than I had expected with the average bumping up toward 4 pounds. On one flat I spotted a dorsal and asked the guide if it was a bonefish. He said “No, shark……………… BONEFISH! BONEFISH! BONEFISH!” Had to be 10 pounds, plus. Didn’t get a cast in to it, but it was very exciting nonetheless.

The guide has two ways of finding bonefish. Looking for them and not looking for them. We went in search of Jacks a few times and almost every time we found bonefish. I didn’t mind at all.

That said… sometimes we weren’t the only ones to find the bones.

One bone got munched in half by a cuda.  First time that has happened to me. Odd experience to reel in half a bonefish.

Those cudas… man… they are devious. Hooked up on a cuda and a second cuda bit the line, freeing his brother.  BASTARDS!

All said a good day.  Saw some really great and beautiful country today and had a very good time. Pics to follow when the frigging internet is fast enough!

Now, on to drinks on my last night on the Tortuga.

Today we tried to explore a bit.  We tried to go places that hadn’t been fished much and that was what we got.  60% was probably tarpon fishing and the fish just weren’t in.  40% was bonefishing and it was really interesting.

The highlight of the day was probably a fish I didn’t even land.

We were going back country deep into the mangroves.  Now, this wasn’t a channel of mangroves, this was mangroves. We were in the thick of them and it was kind of awesome.

We pulled into an inland lake and up popped a tail.  It was huge.  I thought it was a permit it was so big, but it wasn’t black.  Bonefish.  I conjured a cast from some unnamed fishing god and put the fly right on the head of the fish. It chased down the fly and chowed. The fish tore off and I lifted the rod tip high.  I thought I had it, but it turned left around a mangrove and the hook came off (a little bent). Damn. I felt very fortunate to get the fish on the hook though.

I landed two bones today, but it was still a good day. We were trying new water and it was sufficiently difficult.

The last fish I cast to was the last in a series of 15 or 20 casts I made at a school of bonefish. The last cast was a beauty.  It was 60 feet at least and the fish ate on the first or second strip. I needed that fish. I worked hard for it.  Glad I got it.

Tomorrow is the last full day of guiding.  Hoping to do bonefish for most of the day. We’ll see how it goes!

Another case of Cuban redemption

The crossing over the pass at Boca Grande is rough.  There is a lot of slamming down of the boat and spraying of the face with saltwater.  The run is about 40 minutes and the reason you go there is because there are schools and schools of big, massive tarpon pouring through.

But sometimes, they don’t.

Today… not so much.

We went across the pass and staked out waiting for the tarpon waves to show, but they just didn’t. We had 2 singles to cast to, which we did with no results. It was a lot of sitting around, but I was fishing with Chris Santella and we had some good conversations and the time was certainly not wasted.

We eventually left the tarpon grounds and looked for bonefish. The first flat was just beautiful, but totally devoid of bones. It was picture perfect. Really, I couldn’t have imagined a more perfect flat, but the fish just were not home.

The second flat I was on the bow and I looked over and said, “Man, that looks just like a bunch of bonefish over there.” The guide agreed.  It was redemption time.  We traded off picking off the bones from that and another school of bonefish for a while and the day was very much saved. The final fish was on a 70 foot cast where the fish ate on the first strip.  It felt awesome.

The guide (Leonardo) tagged several of the bonefish, which really underscores the conservation ethic that they have here.

Back at the boat it was Cuba Libres and a great dinner.  A good, if challenging day.  A good reminder that this stuff isn’t easy and that the fish just don’t give it up, even in a place like this where hardly anyone gets to go. This stuff is hard and challenging and that is why it is rewarding.

Redemption Fish

Today was the day of the 80-85 pound tarpon. Wow. That was pretty much one of the most amazing tings I’ve encountered.

A fish like this makes you realize the game-stepping up that a big tarpon requires.  Things like you backing knot all of a sudden become really important.  You start to think about exactly how hard you can crank that drag. You start to really, really regret having 20 pound backing because you couldn’t get to the fly shop before you left and you thought the fish would be… smaller.

Photo by Jim Klug, Tarpon by Cuba

This was the only tarpon landed by me today. I fed 4, jumped 2, landed 1. It was pretty frigging amazing.

For some reason I can’t connect to the internet anymore on my computer, so I’m using another guest’s computer, so I’ll give more photos and more details when I can.

Also caught a couple of bones today, but this tarpon is clearly the highlight of the day (trip?).

Pretty frigging happy right now.