Every now and then I get a series of images from a trip that just knock me out in terms of how good the shots are. The shots above and below were taken at Cayo Romano Cuba the last week of April by my good friend KP. The first image is probably the best photo I have ever seen of a fish and angler. The clarity is exceptional and you could probably try to set this shot up a 1000 times and not get it again. I also really like the second photo. The bonefish was a big one at about 6-7 pounds and we were lucky that the fish was positioned at just the right angle when the shot was taken. A beautiful photo that has the ability to transport the person looking at it right into the environment where the image was shot, is a true work of art. KP has that ability and guys like O’Keefe and Atkinson better look out because there is a new dog biting at their heels!!!
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Ken Collins the owner of Grand River Troutfitters in Southern Ontario brought down his guys for their annual trip the last week of May. Ken changed it up a bit this year opting to fish in late May rather than his more traditional February time frame. Ken and his people were looking at increasing their odds of catching some larger tarpon and snook, aside from the ridiculous numbers of bonefish they always catch when doing their yearly Zapata trip. As an added bonus the Grand River group were lucky enough to encounter one of the most incredible migrations in the world. During their week millions of land crabs were migrating from the forest to the saltwater to lay their eggs. It is hard to fathom an entire road covered with crabs from as far as the eye can see. The photo above was shot at the beginning of the migration. I have seen it when you cannot see the road its so thick with crabs. On of Ken’s guests, fireman Scott Flear had an epic day out at the Bocas, where he landed this beautiful snook. This is no easy feat because a fish of this size will usually get back into the mangroves and bust off. It ate a Puglusi Minnow with a black tail and this same fly also landed a nice yellowtail jack of about 10 pounds and a tarpon of about 25 pounds. This was Scott’s first trip to the Zapata with Ken. Someone who has been with Ken on many of these trips is Gianni Biral. Gianni landed this beautiful tarpon on his day out in the Bocas, along with several other smaller poons that day. There were many many bones caught by Ken and his group for the week and Ken estimated that his group saw several thousand bonefish during their week. Not too shabby. The river was fishing OK with roughly 4-5 tarpon in the 5-15 pound range landed by each guest.
The lodge was packed to the rafters with a full complement of 16 guests in total for the week. This included 8 guests form the Pacific Angler in Vancouver BC and the film crew from Fly nation that was down for our final week to shoot an hour long TV show, which will air this fall. Also on board were 4 Americans, a couple of which had traveled all the way from California to be some of the first from the US to wade and fish this wonderful flats ecosystem. The weather could not have been better for the entire week and as a result, the fishing was outstanding. The tarpon started to show up early in the week and I managed to land one of about 60 pounds on day 3. These fish are not leader shy in the least. I say this because I was fishing for big cudas and had a wire leader attached to a red and white Deceiver. When I saw the tarpon laying up in a mangrove hole I actually thought it was an enormous cuda. When I made the cast I thought it was a cuda. When it took the fly we all thought it was a cuda. When the season 2 premier of Fly Nation airs you will see why. Tim Myers the excellent lead videographer of the series, shot the whole thing in high def so the footage should be pretty good. The other host of the show was my friend Josh Nugent from Calgary. He got into the action early on day one and was slamming big bones from the get go. Josh was the only angler during our 3 weeks to land a double digit bone and I think it’s safe to say that he had never experienced the kind of bonefishing that we got into while the film crew was there. In all my years of saltwater fishing I don’t think that I have ever seen an angler as fluid and quick as Josh is. The guides we were filming with for the week were calling him Maestro by the end of the second day. It’s a beautiful site to watch someone who uses a fly rod the way Wayne Gretsky does a hockey stick. All week were were getting into good sized mutton snappers on the flats and in the mangroves. There were lots of god sized snappers landed during the week and we had several 4-6 pounders eaten by 40 pound Cubera snappers. Its an incredible site in 2 feet of gin clear water to see your fish getting eaten by a monster. On our last day of fishing and filming Josh managed to land his first Grand Slam. His bonefish and permit were beautiful and he managed to pick the permit right off the back of a ray in about 3 feet of water. I won’t tell you about the tarpon though. For that you will have to watch the show when it airs in early November. I’ll be sending out an email blast later this summer to let everyone know when it’s going to air this fall.
Week 2 at Romano brought a much bigger group of guests, stiff winds and lots of shot a permit. We had guests from Norway, Canada, England, Thailand and the US and everyone was excited with the dramatically increased number of permit from the previous week. The first two days were particularly challenging due to the wind but everyone seemed to make the best of it. At Romano there are a lot of places where you can get out of the wind and the guides worked really hard to get us out of the wind as much as they could. The permit were eating green Mantis Shrimp and we had 3 landed on this fly or a variation on it. Long time friend and guest Tom Boag from Calgary landed his first permit on day 3. he still has not emailed me with a picture so I can’t show off his fish. In total there 5 permit landed fore the week. The wind tapered off for the last few days of the week and the big bonefish came out to play. The flats at Romano are beautiful and I was constantly amazed by the pristine condition of the entire area. Every new flat we’d hit we would run into bonefish almost immediately. They were tailing and cruising and we were usually just seeing singles and doubles during the course of the day. I landed two fish that hit 8 pounds and there another 4-6 caught during the week that were in the same range. Many many 6 pounders. The most productive flies were the Tailer Beware and the Gotcha size 4. As in all places where there are good numbers of bonefish, there are big barracudas lurking near by. What I really like about fishing Romano is that many of these barracudas will readily eat a fly. I don’t know of too many places where you can land 3 or 4 15 pound plus fish in a day. Los Roques comes to mind but that’s about it. Randal Glaholt from Bangkok got into a nice sized tarpon of about 80 pounds on day 4. It was the first hook up of the week on tarpon and he managed to get it to the boat before guide error (we’re not going to talk about this) cost him a photo op. Randal took it all in stride and was a great sport about the lost fish. Back at the lodge he poured a stiff rum, fired up a beautiful Hoyo de Monterrey cigar and said, “Shit happens”. I could learn a lot from Randal’s laid back attitude!
The last week of April I headed up to the North Shore of Cubas vast coastline to start the first of 3 back to back weeks with guests at Cayo Romano. It was a small group of only 5 guests but we were all eager to get out onto the virgin flats and see what this newest of Cubas flats fisheries had in store for us. I had not been to Romano since last July where I spent 4 days there and I was chomping at the bit to see what a full week of fishing would be like. We had guests from Canada, England and the US and there was lots of good camaraderie within the group. A couple of the guys stayed up very late each night enjoying the bar and cigars and I marveled at how they could be ready to go for breakfast at 6 am each morning. For such a remote and unusual location the bar at the lodge is surprisingly well stocked and is open 24 hours. The bonefishing for the week was absolutely stellar and we had one boat land over a 100 fish in 5 days. My first day on the flats I hooked into a Cubera Snapper that weighed about 45 pounds. I fought the fish for about an hour before he found a hole on the bottom of the flat and we could not get him out. Had to break the line. I landed about 15 bones the first day, with 4 or 5 coming close to 7 pounds. I also booked into a beast of a cuda that broke me off right at the boat after a good 15 minute fight. The wire leader just broke! What can you do? I was using a Tailer Beware size 4 and I had very few refusals during the week with this fly. Eric Rogers was down from Toronto for his 50th birthday with his father Joseph. Eric was the only spin fisherman for the the week and he certainly landed his share of fish, especially the large barracudas that could not refuse his noisy surface plugs. There were a lot of big Cudas around for the week and they were very eager to take a fly. I was successful with cudas using a red and white deceiver size 3/0. Surprisingly we did not see many permit or tarpon during the course of this week. It just goes to show you how the ocean is a very fickle mistress.