Mid April in Cuba on the South Shore
by Richard French, 07 June 2011

I spent a week down the the Zapata with some guests from the US and we had a spectacular time. There were a lot of fish up on the flats during the week and we had light winds and plenty of sunshine. We were seeing a lot of tailing bonefish during the first half of the week and the specially modified flats skiffs were ideal for getting us in tight to the mangroves where the bones were feeding.These unusual fiberglass skiffs only draw about 4 inches of water and if you don’t have any back or knee issues, they are fantastic to fish from. I was using a Gotcha size 6 early in the morning while the water was still cool and as the day progressed and got warmer, I went to a size 4 Gotcha. The average sized fish for the week was about 4 pounds and we had several in the 7-8 pound range.

One of the highlights for my week was tagging my first tarpon for the Tarpon and Bonefish Trust. I have tagged many bonefish during the past 6 months but never a tarpon. The fish only weighed about 5 pounds but I certainly did not mind. The river in general fished very well the day we were there and there were a lot of tarpon in the 5-20 pound class. The heaviest of thre day was about 20 pounds and it must have jumped at least 6 times before tiring out. I went exclusively with a Purple Bunny Strip fly and I find that when fishing tea stained water, that purple and black are definitely the top producing colours. We were all using a heavy grain sinking line to get the flies down to where the tarpon were feeding. 

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