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…
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).
guys….i’m in Abaco right now with my friend Oliver who is starting a new lodge here in conjunction with Nervous Waters which will be called Abaco Lodge. The fishing here is outstanding, but more on that later.
i just finished a great week of fishing in South Andros at Bair’s Lodge. it had been 5 years or so since the last time i was here. i was long overdue for a visit since the lodge had been expanded from 6 to take up to 12 anglers. overall, things didn’t change much. still great hospitality as always, and great guides…and great company, as i was with my friends John Erskine and Bret Benjamin and his dad Bob. there were also some super fun people at the lodge as well during our week (easter holiday).
this year, our fishing was quite mixed. we spent most of the time fishing the west side of andros looking for bigger fish. during the week, most fish we hooked averaged in the 2-4 pound range, but had some good days on the west side for some 5-6 pounders (with a couple shots at fish up to 8+ pounds). several barracudas were caught. bret and bob saw and casted to a school of baby tarpon, and we ran into a big school of permit, but i didn’t have enough line out for the 2 seconds that they showed up and left before i could get a real shot at them.
we also had quite a bit of wind and clouds, so visibility was limited. and during mid week, a weird front came and stalled out on us, doing crazy things with the atmospheric pressure, so the fish were a bit finicky at times. of course, the weather got better on exit day…made me sick to my stomach to see calm flats and sun just when we had to leave. oh, well, you win some and lose some.
otherwise, it was about as classic as bonefishing gets. a good mix of boat fishing and wade fishing, with shots at singles and doubles, which is what i like to do. due to lack of rain (we were told), the bones weren’t really tailing all that much, like i saw here 5 years ago. every so often you would find one tailing in shallow water if it wasn’t too windy. most of the fish were eating tan flies with rubber legs. i used a SQUIMP most of the week, or some oddball fly i’d tie out of whatever materials were available. those fish don’t care and neither do i.
we had good fishing on the west side (going WAYYYY west), the south side around Curly Cut Cays, Grassy Creek and Deep Creek. we fished a little on the last day in Little Creek casting to cruising bones in super skinny water in some hidden muddy lagoons, but had a hard time with the visibility…but we had fun anyway.
and needless to say, as is with most Nervous Waters lodges, the food and accommodations were outstanding. and i liked the newer guides at the lodge. in addition to the old standby’s of Nat, Leslie and Tee…we were introduced to the newer guides Gary, Chip and Harley, who were all wonderful. and the new hosts Ray and Ann are great. they remind me of the old days when Hal and Laura ran the place. and the new chef Lee did a fabulous job with the lamb, the grouper and everything else. all in all, nothing has been lost with the expansion of the lodge.
hey, guys. i wanted to share some photos from 2 weeks ago. Bert Horn and Cole Eslyn came down to fish for Dorados in Yahapé and the upper Rio Paraná for about 10 days. Here are some Dorados from La Zona, below Salto Grande on the Rio Uruguay, fishing with Enzo. These are 33 and 24 pounds respectively. Lots of fish were caught near the rocks in shallow water with poppers. Argentina is still experiencing drought conditions all over…hopefully this ends soon! (photo’s by Cole Eslyn and Bert Horn, respectively).
on another note, i’m on my way this monday to spend 2 weeks in the Bahamas. first i’m going to Bair’s Lodge for a week, then going out to check out their sister lodge in Abaco, which will be opening on April 19th! i’ll be sure and post from there, so stay tuned! cheers - Joey
hey, everyone. been a long time since posts. i’ve been busy with work and re-organizing everything on my computer, including emails, work stuff and most of all, PHOTOS…i now have a much more efficient work-flow, so hopefully that means i’ll get back to posting here.
this photo is from last month (photo by Fernando Correa Urquiza), my good friend Santiago Seeber was in Los Roques fishing for tarpon when they ran into lots of these parrot fish. freaky looking buggers. this one topped out a 30 pound boga grip!! ok, talk to you guys soon. more photos coming from recent fishing here in Argentina. cheers. - Joey
hey, guys…been a while. i took a break from hectic office work here in Buenos Aires and went to Patagonia to visit some friends this past week. right now we are in the beginning of the fishing season here in Argentina, so there’s a lot of paperwork and preparation. for everyone out there who’s wondering, we have good water levels this year in Patagonia, at least up north in the Aluminé area. maybe a bit below average, but more water than last year for sure.
October 19, 2008 at 3:32 am · Filed under Texas Fishing
hi, everyone. here is some footage of tailing redfish from the texas coast a few weekends ago. this is a crappy edit of some shaky footage, hard to keep small cameras still while zoomed all the way in.
you guys will need to download quicktime if you haven’t done so already. hopefully the plug-in will detect if you have quicktime, otherwise go HERE to download it (it’s free). yeah, i know that FLASH video is more standard these days, but i’m not a technician and i haven’t figured out how to make good looking compressed videos for FLASH yet, that’s my next project. so for the time being, just download QT from the Apple site (click HERE), install it, and refresh. email me if you have problems seeing the video.
