scuro2

Oh I'm going...without a boat I'll be fishing within range of a 1 hr kayak paddle and will probably explore all of that water within two weeks!

Yeah we drove by there last time had ice cream at the variety store. That is a good idea. We are on the north end of Eagle so not too far away...ty

Having been barred from DIY fishing in the southern Cuban island of Cayo Largo... http://ontariofishingcommunity.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=83848&hl= ...we went to the northern Cayo Coco island chain the following year. That first year up "north" I fished the main channel on the right, and that will be in my last report on bridge fishing. This is the Kayak report. On a kinda whim, after having decided that we were not the cottage/boat type of family, I bought an inflatable Hobbie pedal kayak. The kayak weighed in at the limit of one suitcase. The paddle and the mechanical pedal probably another 15 pounds. This was something that could be taken to any travel destination and Cuba was an ideal spot. Boats are rare in Cuba, there are Cuban tourist boats and the odd fishing boat, but that's it. For $10 dollars a taxi will take you and your gear to any isolated part of the island and also pick you up whenever you wanted as long as it was by 5 pm. This meant you could almost always fish the high tide. On the Hobbie's maiden fishing voyage there was a great sense of urgency to inflate and put everything all together. You rush and then you are out there really not knowing what you are doing. As I got deeper and deeper two things became immediately apparent, the mechanics of trolling on a Kayak is a skill in itself, and two, that this inflatable would not be good offshore. Even minor swells gave me problems. With this Kayak I could pedal and troll but I didn't have my "feet" underneath me yet and was missing fish. In the distance I spotted the sunken boat and naturally I wanted to explore and switch up to jigging. No fish. Still, it was Christmas Eve day and dazzling vivid rays of colours were penetrating my core. The sounds, the sun, the abundant wildlife...it was all beyond anything I imagined. The trip, the trouble, it was already worth it. Back in 2009 Google earth wasn't so detailed. Now the detail is so much more obvious and you can probably guess where I successfully fished...all the spots that are darker brilliant turquoise green. The first spot ended up being the best which was the channel following the shoreline as you go down that landmass from the top left of the picture. It was a good little channel that you could initially troll and where you could also pitch. Some of the bends had nicely dug out groves. This is where I spent day 1. On day two I bee-lined out 2k to the long forked channel on the bottom left of the google earth pic above. While there was some action there it wasn't enough to hold me there. As I came backwards I encountered deep holes on flats, and then the minor channel between the islands. All impressive looking structure but little action. I ended the day pitching jigs into the mangroves in the channel I fished yesterday. The action was steady enough to keep me here for the remainder of the tide. With four days of fishing left I had to at least try a bigger channel on the opposite side of the island. Day three saw me in that bigger channel. Off the main highway is a parking lot ( see blue "start" on google earth photo above) There is some sort of ramshackle building there and concrete steps into the water. Why a parking lot there I do not know. In Cuba it is not uncommon to see evidence of the labours and dreams of the Revolution that are not sustained. This was a truly impressive channel in every regard with deep cuts, flats, channels, huge inner bays, and best of all a strong current and fish. The view to the channel looking from the parking lot. The distance in the photo is distorted by the lens but one can see the path of the channel on the far shore. The swift strong current made me wonder once down this channel would I be spit out into the ocean and not be able to get past that outer choke point. Damn the torpedoes-and out I shot. The pic was taken where the main channel empties out into the ocean a bit past H1. The Hobbie allows for paddling and pedaling so it could handle stronger current if I did both at the same time. Here was fishing where you could catch two on one troll going from the parking lot to the bottom of the channel. Catching larger Snapper in the current was quite a hoot. The larger fish had the ability to move the boat as if you were on a leash. You would have to fight not only the current and wind but also the fish. Allowing the fish to get to the mangroves was to always be avoided. I had a good 8 ft road so could get an awesome bend in the rod in my pitched battles against those gill breathers. One hand maintaining the bend in the rod and the other hand sometimes slashing straight arm and holding deep with the paddle to stop the forward movement of these large snappers. My ride. Looking down on the seat of the hobbie you can see the pedal mechanism at the top of the picture. There was all my gear. Water in the heat is so important. A plastic bag with lunch. And three small fishing boxes. One contained snaps, rings, and small tools. The green one was for lures that hadn't been used yet, the see through one for lures that had. The action was always best with the heavy current moving in or out. Sometimes I'd lie low in wait pre-fish. At off times like this you could paddle into the mangroves and eat lunch or tune gear and just enjoy the surroundings. Certain spots coughed up some big ones. H4 was a bend with choke point. Along the north shore was a ledge and then cut channel. All the bigger fish were usually caught further down the channel except this spot. It was that type of honey hole that paints that smile on your face with it's consistency. Each day the taxi driver would ask where the fish were. I would gesture to the size of the fish and he'd mockingly smile back at me...I was showing him the true size, so the fish above was taken back for dinner and he looked a bit shocked. This whole area had a lot of smaller channels to explore. This pic comes from the yellow marked channel on the google earth pic. The channel opens up into a large inner bay and the last few feet are blocked by mangroves. It was a spot so narrow that only a kayak could get through and you were left wondering if anyone else had gone down this tiny water way and seen the beauty of this. Further up off the main channel were also several smaller channels (marked in yellow ) and than a big interior bay. While the smaller channels did produce fish that main channel was just too good to ignore for any length of time. My final day on the channel saw me fishing till 5pm. Snapper after snapper and then late in the day I start running into Jack after Jack. A blessed week ended with me jumping on the bus back home as soon as I got to the hotel. That was a memory that could hold me three months until March, but it ended up being one of my most memorable weeks of fishing ever. When I came back three months later I brought my good friend Dan along and immediately we hit THE channel. We had some success day one but the volume of fish was missing. We were working for what we caught. I did catch this beaut but when we got back to the parking lot the Cuban police were waiting for us. It had been ten years in Cuba and finally I met a truly unpleasant and FAT Cuban. Somehow he believed we had motors on the back of our kayaks and it got to the point where he was looking in the bushes for the motor and not believing what we told him. After about a 1/2 hour of interrogation he left in his vintage 50's police car with the vintage big fat police light on top. For two years I had been eyeing the biggest channel of this island group. Now here was structure of complexity that would generate huge current in certain areas. I couldn't justify fishing it alone to my wife. My enthusiasm about kayak fishing must have been palpitate enough by email that my good friend Dan decided to buy his own inflatable. Officer Lardo was all the inspiration we needed to move on to the next channel. On our first day fishing the giant structure we came at from the top left. We knew that the military had a checkpoint at the top right end so we thought we would try to avoid any contact with them. Coming into the first available channel it started out small and got bigger. As we were working our way up the channel we could hear Cubans who were obviously fishing in the channel next to ours. There were indications that the whole "delta" was not pristine. Still once away from that group you couldn't help but be enchanted by the whole experience. A MASSIVE web like water structure with fish in it? Who wouldn't want to explore that? Where do you fish? Do you fish against the mangroves or troll down the middle? And if you troll which fork do you take? We were like kids in a candy store. Unfortunately the fish were not so large and the channel was fished by the Cubans. Next day we drove up to the top of the channel which had a bridge going over it. At the other end were the Cuban soldiers we were apprehensive about. We had done 4 km of paddling yesterday and there was no way to access much of the "delta" without doing 20 km of paddling unless we put in sight of the soldiers. We approached the soldiers who were fishing. They were young lands bored out of there minds protecting a desolate island that needed no protection. They were fascinated by the kayaks and highly encouraging. We gave them some basic gear and they showed us around their barracks. Our trip down from the top ended up being a 15km paddle. This was one large massive delta like structure but it didn't have the deep cut grooves. One species I had no problem catching here was bonefish on the troll. This huge channel had few deep spots and lots flats. They loved the gold and red bottomed Yo. At times I was catching one every 10 minutes or so hoping for something else! Meanwhile Dan had a plug that floated and he caught a Seagull. At the bar our wives and I were killing ourselves as Dan described how he started reeling in and his line went up in the air like a kit string. Gull on a rope. When he got the bird to the boat it was not cooperative at all so there was no way Dan could get the lure out of it's mouth. Our girls loved his imitation of the sound the Seagull made underwater so that he could remove the hooks. A pic of me on the Hobbie on a bad gravity day. As we finished up our last day we tried fishing around the bridge that goes over this big channel. I can't remember catching anything. That was it, twice and I never went back with my kayak and never will. I heard stories the MY channel was now being fished in tourist boats and they keep everything they catch. Had they already impacted the channel in the 3 months while I was away? We came up to some big dates with our 25th wedding anniversary and then the year after my wife's 50th. A "fishing" trip to Cuba was the last thing she wanted to do so it was several years before I had the opportunity again. The final nail in the coffin was that all sorts of limitations began to pop up for luggage. Now there was no way I could have an extra piece of sports equipment at 50 pounds for free! This year carry on weight limits were cut in half...5 kilos only. I just can't see going back again but I'm happy I hit it right for those two times...I was blessed to have had that experience.

Great title for a thread!

I'll be heading up to Eagle lake in the second half of August. First, if anyone has a cottage up there and would like to do some fishing on their boat, I'd gladly pay for gas. Second, I know in the general area there are some muskie lakes so I'd be willing to pay for guiding. Please PM me. Finally, is there a Marina on the lake? My mom loves the pontoon boat rides

Those places you dreamed about fishing near Cayo Coco...I did DIY with an inflatable kayak. That will be in the next report. No I got to all my spots hiking or with the moped. I did hear about those fresh water lakes and heard at one time they were something special. I did a lot of flats and wading too always testing if I could get to that island or this sand bar. Stingrays generally get out of your way...I was a little more worried about Cuban Crocs!

Snook looks fun...thanks for sharing!

Looks like you found a good spot in Jamaica with decent fish. Enjoyed watching you fish. You were hoping to bring in a large Cuda without a leader?

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. 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. 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 . 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. 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. 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. 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. To the right of the upper red arrows were two other productive flats. 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. Then I looked for any access point on the "developed" half of the island and found some Cuban spots ...and also Cubans for the first time. Cubans avoided fishing touristy fishing spots unlike other spots. New to me also was how relentlessly Cubans fished for protein...spearfishing 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. 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. 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. 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. 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-bugger 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.

I've been a long suffering leafs fan...missed the last time they hoisted the stanley cup because I was too young and I thought there was a game 7. lol This brand of hockey is highly entertaining and more what you want with 8 rookies. Let them get confidence in playing their offensive game together even if you lose a few. We are not winning the Stanley Cup this year. These are good teams they are playing against..no shame. Next year as they shed hefty contracts of nonplaying players they can afford a top Dman.

Yeah...but I'm from the south and when you fish the big lakes and a lot of the other water on the south end of the province it only reminds you of what nature should be like. The water is never as it should be...these waters have become an environment that has adapted to mankind. There still is a thrill to be on a lake where the influence of man is next to nil.

Beautiful documentation...makes me want to be there fishing!

There is a definite drop off in bites as soon as you use anything but fluoro leaders. To date have only had one clear cut bite off over 100 pound fluoro. I've had the braided cut above the fluoro...like the pike attacks at a foot above the lure...been making longer fluoro leaders too

It all depends on the pike...under 30 inches it doesn't really matter. The opportunities you have at trophy pike are limited. So you remember the fails. Swivels are the number one weak spot probably because the pike sometimes bites right on the swivel. I've had them opened several times. I use braided usually under 20 pounds. Occasionally it gives or is broken off. Good braided used right is just so consistently dependable and a pleasure to use. Mono? uhuh...especially as you get into the thicker mono needed. I'd fish with nothing less then 15 pound mono for trophies...you get up into the 20s and higher and it just does not have a good feel malfunctions with heavy use on spinning. Now the leader...wire will decrease the bite #s. Fluro 100 pounds usually does the trick but had an instant bite off on 125 pound good fluro this summer. Like a knife went right through it, clean cut edge. I'm rethinking leaders.

Many southern lardarses won't go beyond the Sudbury Northbay line. Just too "far" a drive. I on the other hand won't look for a spot south of that line. I'm sure there are some great places but I'd rather be in the north proper. Americans on the other hand don't consider a drive too far until you hit the 24 hour mark. I once came upon an American with three small children sitting at the side of the road, I thought I'd offer assistance. His children needed to be fed...he'd only driven 18 hrs and was disappointed with his time. They are so hardcore that way. I've got my eye set on the big lakes of the NW and that will happen with retirement where you have the time to drive and fish. It's a time thing...the NW really requires some time and that isn't always possible with work and family. In the past when I looked at flying, BC wasn't much more then Winnipeg and it's a little more exotic...or if you are flying to Winnipeg it's hard not to get tempted going into northern Manitoba.

Ice conditions at the north and south poles are way beyond normal conditions in our era. Me thinks that these two incidents are not pure chance unrelated coincidences. Where I live in southern ontario we will have had what looks to be 4 cold days in Jan. Most daily averages are above zero and the ground is not hard while the grass is green. Unheard of...

Political threads never fit in, they separated members and drove people away. Worse it wasn't even good political discussion, a good chunk of it was "all politicians are corrupt and all government was bad". In short anarchists were in charge and at one point I just had enough and decided anything related to global warming would be my line in the sand. I had to wade through schools of climate DENIERS. Something was wrong here, no where on earth could you find so many climate DENIERS congregated in one place. I love fishing but enough was enough because some things matter, and so for the most part my posts became political. I'm really happy this decision was made. It will draw people back. In celebration I am posting a recent catch pick and am working up a report on a decade of fishing in Cuba.

It's broke and has been so for many a year.

I see things totally differently. This isn't some tax increase for a "noble goal" that should have been done a long time ago like increasimg Veterans Funding for the treatment of PTSD..... this is an absolutely necessary change that we must make or civilization as we know it will end. Yup doom and gloom. This is not my opinion this is the opinion of the experts of the world in the field of climate change. Quiz these experts and 97% of them agree. Quiz experts about the theory of evolution, or the theory that the world is round, and you have about the same percentage of agreement. Do we have 97% of the members of this board agreeing with the experts? Nope. Unfortunately this is not an issue you can happily be ignorant about and no cares. The earth is our one shared ride in this universe so it's your RESPONSIBILITY to become truly educated on this topic. Just as if you had to share a ride to work and a fellow passenger told you the car is leaking lots of braking fluid...you can happily ignore him and the car will continue to exist in one form or the other but you have a responsibility to the people who are in that car. Therefore, when fellow members obviously post images and bogus assertions from DENIER websites to create doubt I have no problem calling those images and assertions. I do so in a visual way because there is no better way to do that then with expert graphs. If you don't like all the graphs all I can say is toughtitties. If you truly think that I and 97% of the experts in the field are wrong, by all means enlighten us Hedfish. If I am wrong I'll gladly apologize. Once a large majority of the members understand that this is a hucking fuge problem that we must tackle I'll gladly talk taxes. Obviously based on our conversations here... any form voluntary individual reduction in carbon use is not going to work.

It's an incredible story on how they measure this with ice core samples from the poles. People have dedicated their life so that "doubting Thomas'" like Mister G can easily visualize what happened climate wise in the past. Start at about 1:15

A sensible response and well reasoned response and criticism! Lord have mercy!

It's all related HF. PPM (parts per million) of C02 is directly related to world temperature increase. To climate scientists it couldn't be more obvious, but hey they love studying problems. Those clever scientists have determined that a 2 degree increase of global world temperatures would be bad-bad-bad for everyone. That is the point where doing nothing, as you suggest, becomes a lot more more costly then doing something. We are close to breaching that level...which is about 500 ppm If you are with me so far then the Carbon tax was Canada's solution to live up to our responsibilities of the Paris accord, where incredibly all the countries of the world came together and agreed how to solve this problem. When you can get the worlds biggest polluter to agree and make major changes to lower it's ppm you have accomplished something, especially when that country is China. So no, I completely disagree with you, this is a big Damn deal and it will have a huge impact on C02 levels and global warming. You can whine all you want about how Wynne and Trudeau IMPLEMENT things and cost you more tax dollars then necessary, and I wouldn't disagree with you there, but their goal to work with the rest of the world on this problem is intelligent and responsible. If you want those two leaders out of office it would be important to be cognizant of the biggest problem facing the world today and more importantly, have a better solution. One way I could see the Liberals staying in power would be for the PCs to continue to be ignorant on the issue, with no policy or plan. As climate events become more extreme reasonable people will never vote for a party that is clueless on this issue.

In a scientists world thoughtfulness and dedication to an issue over decades is a good thing! And Glen, don't worry....he's got help!!! :) :)

That's just it Dave....scientists don't deal with sullbhit, it's against their religion. One side has scientists doing decades worth of honest research and the other side is completely dishonest and hellbent in misinforming. For whatever reason they can't accept what the scientific community in this field has concluded with as much certainty as the theory of evolution, and even that the earth is round. This is not a contest of equals, it a contest of the best of mankind vrs people who should give their heads a shake. There is no bigger problem that mankind is facing and all the DENIERS want to do is confuse the general public enough so they are unsure. I in no way dispute that the earth has been a lot hotter or colder. My point is that sudden large change in temperature in either direction would be the end of the civilized world as we know it. If you do worry about your kids then worry about solid predictions that sea levels will rise 6-9 ft in their life time. You want to talk about economic hardship for your kids? At that point the best investments will be gold and guns. What do you think happens economically when many of the major cities of the world like New York are under water? This is not a game where some people prosper with huge swings in temperature, WE ALL LOSE. Your perspective that we as Canadians don't have do anything is the same morally bankrupt perspective promoted by the worst of petroleum industry. The "old cynical" we can't make a difference so why bother line. Or to quote Rex Tillarson, Exxon Mobil CEO: “What good is it to save the planet if humanity suffers?” Do please honestly get informed because you're sharing my ride and as such you have responsibilities. Currently we are above 400 ppm and rising More on C02 in the link below https://www.co2.earth/global-warming-update

Antarctic ice extent did actually increase in recent years but total volume of ice did not. There are theories of why this happened, including the theory that so much added fresh melt water in the antarctic ocean made the ice over the ocean easier to form. As you can see, this now has changed and we are in record territory in the satellite era, and yes that only goes back to the 70s. That doesn't mean we are totally clueless of what happened to the ice sheets before 1970. More on that if you are interested.