far out fishing
the travel blog for faroutfishingtrips.com (and other spiffy fishing stories)
Archive for May, 2009
May 28, 2009 at 4:14 am · Filed under Mexico Fishing
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….
May 25, 2009 at 3:10 am · Filed under Mexico Fishing
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!
May 25, 2009 at 2:55 am · Filed under Mexico Fishing
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…
(photos by Danny Canale and Lars Munsen)
May 1, 2009 at 2:30 am · Filed under Bahamas Fishing
ok, guys. just got back from Abaco last week. spent a few days over there after Andros, basically to check out the new lodge they are building there, getting ready for opening day (April 20th). it’s done in conjunction with Nervous Waters, a sister lodge to Bair’s if you will. i didn’t get to do a whole lot of hard-core fishing, as this was a scouting mission for me as a booking agent, but did get to go out one day with head guide David…and one day by myself. we were blessed with decent (yet) windy weather on the first day. Abaco Lodge sits right on the Marls of Abaco, 6 miles north of Marsh Harbour. within minutes, there are countless cays which have endless shorelines, creeks and lagoons.
everywhere we went we found bonefish. most averaging around 2-3 pounds. in the outer cays there are slightly bigger fish in the 4-5 pound range. most of the big fish in Abaco are on the oceanside (west side), which we didn’t have time to go see. this is also where the better wading is, as the Marls side is muddy bottom in many places, so fishing is done mostly out of the boat.
my day with David was pretty spectacular. a veteran guide from Grand Bahama who moved to Abaco, David was great at boat positioning and spotting fish. i hooked 10+ fish in a matter of hours. by late afternoon when the wind picked up and the clouds rolled in, we headed back to the lodge. i convinced David to stop in this small lagoon because i had been putting off looking for tailing bonefish all week in Andros, and i needed to get some tailing fish shots before i went back home to Argentina.
wading into this lagoon while David waited for me in the boat, i soon spotted a couple of tailing bonefish. the wind was blowing 20+ mph and it was cloudy, so it was next to impossible to see them. and these fish weren’t tailing in one spot, just kind of cruising and popping their tails up intermittently. here are the results, after about an hour of patience (me patiently waiting for a shot, and David patiently waiting in the boat for me to quit jerking off).
my last day in Abaco, i took the boat out myself and found a couple schools of tailing fish in super wind, but at least some sunlight. i’ll post those in the future, they look about the same as these, but i kind of like these better. i didn’t get too many good lodge shots because they were still putting finishing touches on it, so everything was still a mess. the lodge is quite nice, it sits on a beautiful 3.5 acres right on the Marls. 8 single rooms all with king-sized beds, a great main lodge and dining area with a great indoor/outdoor bar (very important!). anyway, enjoy the photos…cheers. (photos © Joey Lin 2009)
