guys, ok…internet connection here at Casa Blanca was down for the last couple of days, but here’s a quick update. fishing is bad-ass…
SWINE FLU is a joke, the only pigs i’m seeing are the ones at the END OF OUR FISHING LINES!!! i fished with Danny Canale yesterday with guide Eladio. got 2 permit. jumped a tarpon about 4 times and the hook popped out. if i was more careful, i could have attempted a grand slam, but who gives a crap, right? i’d rather just go after more permit or tarpon than comply with some arbitrary human construct or invention as a ‘grand slam’. WTF is that anyway? so we go and find some 6 ounce bonefish just to complete the ‘grand slam’?? but the point is that you COULD get one here if you really wanted to, cuz the fishing here rocks…
Danny’s permit was the second ‘lunch time’ permit caught this week, meaning it was caught wading while we were stopped and eating lunch. today (day 4), John Howe got his first permit ever, wade fishing near Xhobon. he’s not a permit virgin any more. although there are much worse types of virgins to be than a permit virgin. all in all, we have 9 permit landed for the week so far, which is pretty good considering not everyone is looking for them, even though they should.
tradition here at Casa Blanca and Playa Blanca says that those who catch their first permit on fly MUST eat a tequila-soaked scorpion. i’ve caught many permit and eaten exactly 2 scorpions, none of which corresponded to the other, but hey…go with the flow. pictured here is Chris Canale who was way over due with his scorpion dessert….ok, we look retarded here. but we’re drunk and HAVING FUN, so cut us some slack.
ok, i’m getting the hell out of here and going to bed. talk at you guys later. oh, photos by Joey Lin, Danny Canale and JOE (i’ll get your last name here when i find out what it is). laterz….
so, John Howe and i set out to fish in Xhobon with guide Jose from Casa Blanca Lodge. after an unsuccessful morning of snook fishing, we decided to look for permit. we crossed the bay around noon. the sky was perfectly clear with maybe a 12 mph wind. we parked the boat on a sand bar at Vigia Grande to eat lunch. inside this sandbar was a small flat of very shallow water, the perfect bonefishing depth. within 2 minutes of sitting to eat lunch, Jose spots a large permit tailing.
i immediately grabbed my Sage 890-4 XP (best damn 8-weight ever built), and ran over into the flat barefoot. we lost the fish for a moment. i asked Jose “hey, is there anything in here that can hurt my feet, like shell or stingrays?”, and Jose says “yeah, like that stingray right there”, 10 feet in front of me, hahaha! so i peel a bunch of line out, and the permit pops up over to the right. i swear it looks like a small shark, the water couldn’t have been even knee deep.
so i make a total of 3 casts. the first one is short. Jose is going nuts. this fish is hauling ass looking for food, moving around sporadically. my second cast is about 55 feet and the shadow from the line spooks the fish. he bolts, but turns back around, seems he was startle for a split second, but resumed feeding. my third cast was a hail mary. about a 60+ foot cast landing the fly 2 feet in front of the fish who was moving from right to left. one long slow strip and he went straight for the fly (Squimp) and before i knew it, i was hooked up.
this fish took me a good 30+ minutes to fight, i was completely out of control wading with 100+ yards of backing and the full weight of the fly line dragging. at one moment, a frigate bird slammed into my fly line in the air, i thought disaster was imminent. we estimate this fish conservatively at 20 pounds, but i’m guessing somewhere around the 22+ range. i can put my fist almost in his mouth, and the girth of this fish was impressive.
i have to say, this is the first time i’ve waded to a permit. i love casting in this shallow water situation, but fighting a large fish while stationary sucks. i much prefer fighting them from a boat where i can gather the line and really put pressure and beat the fish quickly. (photos by John Howe). cheers!
guys, i’m with a group of super cool dudes here at Casa Blanca Lodge. no SWINE FLU and lots of fish.
this is our first day of what looks to be a successful week. these photos are of Christopher Canale who fished with his father today and guide Eladio in Esperanza. they had 17 shots at permit, and Chris got a Grand Slam with 2 PERMIT and a 60 pound tarpon, all on fly. the other boats fared well, also. snook, tarpon, permit and bonefish were all hooked today…seems that a few boats in our group had grand slam possibilities…here’s a photo of a nice barracuda caught by Richard Fitzgerald on a spinning rod.
who says Casa Blanca and Ascension Bay don’t fish well any more? this is as good as it gets…
September 12, 2008 at 3:41 am · Filed under Mexico Fishing
hi, everyone. it’s been a long time since i posted. the reason was that i have been in Argentina most of the winter (june, july, august), and there really isn’t much fishing. and i’m trying to keep a certain level of quality to my blog, so i’m not going to post crap just to post crap.
anyhow, i just got back into Austin about a month ago, but only spent a few days here before i headed down to Mexico to fish the Yucatán for baby tarpon. i took a small group of anglers down there where we spent 3 days at Tarpon Caye Lodge, which is run out of a quaint little hotel in the fishing village of San Felipe…then we transferred over to Isla Arena on the western side of the Yucatán and fished the virgin coastline north of Campeche. we had flown into Merida to avoid the super touristy bullshit that is Cancun.
the tarpon fishing experience was pretty spectacular. over at Tarpon Caye, we fished a mix of off-shore (1/4 to 1/2 mile out) in 12 feet or so of water for bigger tarpon. we all hooked fish in the 20-50+ pound range, a couple guys even hooked fish up to 90 pounds or so. this was, however, primarily a baby tarpon fishing trip. the rest of the time we targeted fish in the 10-20 pound range, which we found in abundance.
the rest of the first three days consisted of waking up super early (5 a.m.) to take breakfast and head out with the guides in small pangas. on some days we started in the mornings and cast to rolling tarpon in 2 feet of super clear water. later in the day, we’d head out to fish some of the mangrove creeks that line the shores and drain springs and rainwater from the main land. this was super cool fishing. San Felipe was a cool little town of maybe 1500 people (??). primarily a fishing village, and this time of year, octopus fishing was what was in season. octopus ceviche, by the way, is pretty bad ass if you’ve never tried it.
because of the super low tides and strange wind from Hurricane Gustav approaching the Gulf of Mexico, we’d quit around mid afternoon and head back to the lodge…usually there was some sort of awesome ceviche and beers waiting for us there. it was hotter than hell for those days we were there. 2 hours without a shirt on and i peeled for weeks.
afterwards, we headed back to Merida (2.5 hours), did some shopping for supplies with our outfitter, then we headed over to Isla Arena to fish with their outfit (called Isla del Sabalo). this is a remote corner (northwest corner to be exact) of the Yucatán. this small little island was our base. the lodging was quite interesting, nice little clean bungalows and a mini family-run restaurant that would serve us our meals and margaritas each day. for 40 miles south to Campeche, we had nothing but VIRGIN tarpon water. miles and miles of mangrove creeks that drained springs…and lagoons. all the tarpon fishing was done in shallow gin-clear water, poling over turtle grass flats and sight fishing to 10-20 pound fish rolling and cruising in pods. we did quite a bit of sightfishing.
it’s really creepy to see the Gulf of Mexico in the mornings here, dead calm and flat as far as the eye can see. unfortunately, we had some strange wind (from the northwest) and super high tides towards the end of the trip, so our outside (Gulf side) fishing was limited due to chop on the water. the tarpon got a little difficult to find in the afternoons with the high tide as they went so far up the creeks that the boats couldn’t get in there. but we had our fair share of spectacular days. on one day, one of my boat partners John Erskine and i hooked 20+ tarpon, sight fishing to many of them. really reminded me of Texas coast redfishing in a lot of ways
i did a pretty horrible job of NOT taking photos of any of the creek fishing, i just got pretty lazy, but it was really neat, except hotter than hell with no wind, so many times we couldn’t stand too much of it before we had to go run the boat for some A/C. i don’t want to get too long winded about this post, you get the point. oh, and we used Sage’s new (not so new any more) Largemouth Bass Rod, which by the way is a perfect boat/mangrove rod for this purpose.
October 29, 2007 at 11:05 pm · Filed under Mexico Fishing
hey, guys. thought i’d post this video from our last trip to Casa Blanca Lodge. we took the whole place, June 16-23, 2007. 20 of us, mostly from Austin. here’s a list of every one that was there: mark blackburn, blake erskine, rock onsted, ryan krebs, charlie grant, greg gremmel, jeff clarkson, freddy lynch, ed parsons, bill leech, jt van zandt, david escobedo, michael hsu, bryan sperry, paul bardagjy, barney adams, dave cutherell, gary reissig, bret benjamin…and of course, me…joey lin.
this video was kindly compiled by dave cutherell with whatever footage and photos we could get our hands on, and put together by ed parson who runs 1080, inc… enjoy! …joey…
August 31, 2007 at 12:03 am · Filed under Mexico Fishing
yo, everyone…a quick update. just spoke to Ludwig, the ex-veteran pilot for Casa Blanca Lodge, about the status of the lodge and the effects of Hurricane Dean. He said that there was a lot of clean-up necessary to the lodge, but that it was mostly debris from vegetation and sand. water had gotten into the lodges (Playa Blanca also), but structurally there was no damage, as the concrete buildings withstood any threat from the hurricane. there wasn’t significant water damage as none of it was standing water, just tons of sand, and maybe some repairs to any wiring or anything electrical. the thatch roofs need repair and a lot of clean-up from downed trees, branches, etc…and washed up junk, but they will be up and ready to go for opening of the season in October. maybe the fishing will be awesome. cheers. (p.s., sorry about the puke-green photo border color)
August 21, 2007 at 12:24 pm · Filed under Mexico Fishing
hey, all…sorry about the lack of posts. rain screwed up some rivers again and haven’t been out fishing this past week. here is the water vapor image of Hurricane Dean as it slammed the Yucatán Peninsula, just south of Casa Blanca and Playa Blanca Lodges. pretty much a straight shot at Chetumal or around Espiritu Santo Bay. supposedly it was a strong category 5 hurricane when it hit, let’s hope nothing happened to the lodges. i know some of the shacks of the local lobster fishermen along the coast there had to have been hammered. i’m sure i’ll get a report this next week. cheers.
ok, here are some more photos from Casa Blanca…of note are David Escobedo’s first bonefish (2nd salt water trip ever!!!!) congrats! he put in the time to learn to fly fish, taking casting lessons, etc. also, my 10 pound snook caught with Pedro. then here’s a picture on the dock with JT and our masseuse, Eufro. next, are photos from the tarpon lagoon with Ed and Bill (and of Bill’s finger). photos by: JT, Bret, Bill and Ed.
ok, so here’s the deal. we are a group of 20. some guys are content to fish whatever, but a lot of guys want permit. with permit fishing, you have to commit to lots of poling and seeing nothing, at least that’s how it is in Ascension Bay. we had good sunlight for most mornings til early afternoon, but would cloud up later. and the wind kept the back part of the bay mucked up…and with all the rain from last week, all the areas like Esperanza were with too much freshwater, so snook and tarpon fishing weren’t consistent.
i made a move to send some boats down to Espiritu Santo Bay to the south, where Playa Blanca Lodge fishes, but it had been closed for 3 weeks, so i figured we had nothing to lose. we didn’t see much, but i got a 10 pound snook (photo later), and Jeff and Freddy fishing with Carlos got into a bunch of permit on fly (crab patterns). they hooked four and got 2 to the boat, one of them being over 30 pounds. congrats, Jeff!! JT got a huge barracuda on fly that bottomed out his 30 pound boga grip!
hey, everyone! it’s day 3 here at Casa Blanca. the wind is blowing, but for the most part, our weather is good.
weird things happened today. first of all, i got to fish with my good friend JT Van Zandt here in Ascension Bay. JT and i started fly fishing some time back in the early 90’s, and ended up guiding and working together at the Austin Angler, so this was a special time.
today, we went out with Don Pedro, who took us way the hell back past Xhobon, to the furthest we could go north into Ascension Bay. the tide was slack and the water was murky. we didn’t see too many fish, but the one that counted, we caught. we spotted a nice permit, around 20 pounds, tailing by himself. Pedro did a great job poling upwind to get JT a good cast. JT made 2 casts, the crab landed, and the permit charged and tailed on the fly. here is a photo.
the other photo is Mark Blackburn with a 20+ pound tarpon from the tarpon lagoon, with guide Pato. they hooked 8 fish and landed 3. overall, a good day, everyone is having fun. talk to you soon.
