DIY fishing Cuba- Part 1 of 3 -Cayo Largo

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scuro
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DIY fishing Cuba- Part 1 of 3 -Cayo Largo

Post by scuro »

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Here's a mid-winter type of post -highly detailed and not everyone's cup of tea. Part 1 of 3 is a story about learning how to DIY fish the island south of Cuba called Cayo Largo starting about 2004. Fishing saltwater is very different from fishing fresh so this is more a story of trying to find good spots. All I had as a guide was reading online articles and the now defunct site Cubamanics. What was great about this island was that it had 25 km of uninterrupted beaches on the south side with 2/3rds of it totally in the wild.

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The pigflats can be seen center right. This was the spot that you heard frequently mentioned, and at least from my perspective not a great spot. I knew nothing really about fishing the flats. At the end of the week I had road rash wiping my moped out in the sand and had water damaged my camera as I sunk into some gunky flats waist deep. I had walked miles of shoreline and came only in direct contact with a mammoth stingray in chest deep water as it unknowingly swam towards me.

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As I realized later they are far more dangerous hidden in the sand where they frequently stick their spike in those who step on them. This foreign environment was handing me my hat. Only on the last morning was there remediable fishing with about a dozen bass sized snapper caught in the weeds blind casting at sunrise on a windy day to make the trip .

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The trip was a huge hit with the rest of my young family so we came back. Armed with new online help my plan was to catch bonefish based on what I thought would be good spots. They come in with the tide and leave with the tide feeding of any flat holding the right sort of forage. I reasoned any flat off of the deep man made channels should have bonefish on them.

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That huge shallow bay in the center of the pic had to have a lot of water draining twice daily from it. My plan was to check the choke points of the islands nearest the man made channel. It looked like one could wade out to these islands and indeed with my height it was possible. A large current went through in the direction of both arrows. The outgoing tide produced a classic ambush spot where the a deep current cut a channel, as can barely be seen above the lower red arrow. Current went around both sides of the small island to the right of that channel.

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When conditions were right the drop off from the flat to the channel had dozens of Barracudas waiting for current based dinner delivery. At times it was a Cuda per cast. Not big ones but a lot of fun. This pic is one of the larger ones.

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I explored around the bigger island above the red font "incoming current" in the pic 2 above, and the sand was "hard" around the southern and west end. Things looked promising around the back NW but there was only limited activity there every time I checked it. The east end flat once scouted was the travel way for bonefish and once discovered it didn't take long to catch bonefish. The spot wasn't fished at all.

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To the right of the upper red arrows were two other productive flats.

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Bonefishing ended up not being my particular favorite style of fishing and almost all of the accessible fishing spots as I knew them then were conducive to bonefishing. Having never caught one, I had Tarpon and other species on the brain. So while I did fish the old spots more time was spent looking for new opportunities. From the same google image above I walked some good distances exploring all the inner pools on the right of the google image above. These spots were generally unproductive.

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Then I looked for any access point on the "developed" half of the island and found some Cuban spots

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...and also Cubans for the first time. Cubans avoided fishing touristy fishing spots unlike other spots.

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New to me also was how relentlessly Cubans fished for protein...spearfishing

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So my goal was to get to the northern skanky side of the island that was only fished by an Italian fishing company whose rates were way beyond my means. The goal were the large bays that would have had to have excellent currents on the tides. This long narrow island had a road that paralleled the beach surely there must of been a way to other side.

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The first attempt was to use the cut roads as seen in the pic above. I still don't know what the original purpose of these roads were. I believe there were three that cut north and the one "big" one that cut parallel to the beach. What was common about all of them was that about 1/2 way a navigable road usually changed into into an unnavigable road by moped. Like the famed Northwest Passage I was looking for easy access to fishing nirvana. In all instances you had to leave your moped and hike in. I did try that once but you are walking through an unkempt trail through a jungle and with no idea how far it was to the northern coast. After about an hour I turned around and tried another road. No northern road had easy access.

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The following year I decided to hike the east-west road. It was about 6k to the narrowest part of the island so the plan was to start at dawn and I brought along two large bottles of water because I would be marching at a good clip through the hottest part of the day. The path was not so hairy and soon turned into two narrow sand paths were a road had been. At the narrowest point I looked across and there I could see water on the north coast but there was no way I was going to venture through that thicket.

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So I went a little farther to a chain of inland pools hitting them at approximately 11am. My first cast into the largest pool got hit hard. I couldn't turn or move the fish. I tried walking backwards and with that the fish headed straight for the mangroves on the right. I pulling as hard as I could away from there but the fish did what it wanted to do. As soon as it hit the mangroves and had soon leverage it was over and I never got to see that fish. I casted for about another hour but nothing. So ended another year.

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Then in about 2008 the Cubamaniacs went nuts with all sorts of posts about the end of DIY fishing on the island because of that rat-poo poo Italian fishing company. So ended our trips to Cayo Largo and we were off the next year to the northern chain of islands which included Cayo Coco.
...anything to bend the rod
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Re: DIY fishing Cuba- Part 1 of 3 -Cayo Largo

Post by Nyarlathotep »

Excellent info. Thanks for posting this!
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Re: DIY fishing Cuba- Part 1 of 3 -Cayo Largo

Post by Moosebunk »

It was about 6k to the narrowest part of the island so the plan was to start at dawn and I brought along two large bottles of water because I would be marching at a good clip through the hottest part of the day.........

Then in about 2008 the Cubamaniacs went nuts with all sorts of posts about the end of DIY fishing on the island because of that rat-poo poo Italian fishing company. So ended our trips to Cayo Largo and we were off the next year to the northern chain of islands which included Cayo Coco.


Laying around on the beach or in a pool all day Chris? DON'T THINK SO!!! :shock:

Just a great example of making the best of your time and chasing after the fish of your dreams.

Looking forward to the next installment.
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Re: DIY fishing Cuba- Part 1 of 3 -Cayo Largo

Post by Tip-up »

Enjoyed reading that after todays dumping :)
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Re: DIY fishing Cuba- Part 1 of 3 -Cayo Largo

Post by Superdad »

Thanks for your Cuban report. I tired fishing near JIbacoa and fished for about 30 minutes when a wave knocked me off balance and I fell into the eater and hit the coral.

CORAL WINS!!!!!!!!! A cut knee, scratches on the other and a couple urchin spikes in my finger. The doctor at the resort was great nd treated my knee with five outer stitches and a prescription for antibiotics. Isn't that great!!!!!!! An all inclusive resort and no drinking for a week. Thankfully we were there for two weeks.

But my fishing was curbed and completed.

Perhaps the next time I'll bring a fly rod.

Adios Hombres

David aka Superdad
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Re: DIY fishing Cuba- Part 1 of 3 -Cayo Largo

Post by Pewit »

Thank you for the amazing post!

FYI there are lots of barracudas and tarpons in the golf ponds. No one forbids fishing there, especially in the morning. Here are a few vids. Russian guy looks funny but he somehow knows what he's doing freaking well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjTgRirwG8s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w275VazaD9w
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Re: DIY fishing Cuba- Part 1 of 3 -Cayo Largo

Post by scuro »

Pewit wrote:Thank you for the amazing post!

FYI there are lots of barracudas and tarpons in the golf ponds. No one forbids fishing there, especially in the morning. Here are a few vids. Russian guy looks funny but he somehow knows what he's doing freaking well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjTgRirwG8s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w275VazaD9w
It looks like nice spot but it's not Cayo Largo Cuba. Cayo Largo doesn't have a golf course nor manicured lawns and bushes. Cayo Largo beyond the center core is very wild, probably not much different then it was 10,000 years ago.
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Re: DIY fishing Cuba- Part 1 of 3 -Cayo Largo

Post by Pewit »

scuro wrote:very wild, probably not much different then it was 10,000 years ago.
I would prefer that rather than golf ponds.
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