Week 2 at Los Roques Venezuela the 2nd Week of March 2011
by Peter, 25 March 2011

Our second week at Los Roques saw guests coming in from Portland Oregon, Southern Ontario and as far away a Lausanne Switzerland. It was a smaller group of only 6 of us and the pace of our second week was decidedly slower than the week before when there were 12 guests fishing. Hani Ghali brought his wife Monique who relaxed on the beach all week and daughter Stephanie who fished with him. A wonderful family and it was a real pleasure to finally meet them. Gerald Hunt pretty much hammered bonefish to the tune of about 15 per day, to the point where he started to wear out his arm. And Jeff Long spent a lot of his time targeting bonefish on the beaches with the all mighty Gummy Minnow.

Ian Davis from Yellowdog was at Los Roques with a group the same time we were and it was nice to see him in such a laid back environment. We shared some industry stories and his guys were having every bit as much fun as our guests were. The pancake flats were getting a little busy for my liking during week 2 and so I chose to head out down south to some of the remote beaches. The isolation was just what I hoped for and the guides knew some great out of the way places that were full of fish. Ozzie, Carlos and Howard were all able to make recommendations as to where to spend the day which meant that even though there were 10 flats boats flats fishing the atoll during week 2, I never saw any other boats until I got back to the Gran Roques harbor at the end of each day.

The beaches the second week provided some great action and and all of our guests were very happy with the size and number of fish they caught throughout the week. After scarcely fishing the beaches the first week it was amazing to me that I could fish a completely different type of environment and that it was as equally productive as the pancake flats had been the week before. This really is a Top 5 flats fishing destination and an absolute must do on every destination anglers ‘bucket list”. There were no cold front to worry about as there often are at this time of year further north in places like Mexico, Belize or the Bahamas. The temps were about 85 every day and during the course of our 2 weeks, we had only one day of overcast skies.

On my last day of fishing I was invited by the owner and founder of Pez Raton, Alex Gonzalez, to come back to the mainland to do a day of deep sea fishing with him from a Viking 58 Sportfish. After two weeks on the flats I was ready for a little change and I gladly accepted. I had not seen Alex in about 6 months and figured that the change of pace would be a great way to spend some time with him and to possibly catch something a little bigger than I had been while out at Los Roques. At about 10 am on Friday March 11th, a tuna hit my ballyhoo on a stand up rod we had been using to catch 30 pound dorado. It took just under 3 hours to land this 187 pound yellow fin tuna. And I have to say that never in my life have I been beaten up by a fish the way that this fish did. My rod was loaded with 30 pound test and I was so undergunned that I didn’t really think that I’d be able to land it. Even though I landed the fish it pretty much got the better of me as I was sore and could barley move for the next 4 days. BUt move I had to as I was due to fly abck to Cuba the floowing day to go out and fish the north shore and Cayo Coco.

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