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!
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