12 years of fishing in Cuba - Cayo Largo (part 1 of 3)

[scuro2]

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.

[Weeds]

That looks absolutely awesome. Cool report. Looking forward to more.

[mikeh]

awesome assortment of pics thanks for posting.

[Jds63]

Great report , exploring an area like that would be incredible...

[Old Ironmaker]

Good read. Did you fish out of the air plane? My best Cuba fishing came from inland freshwater lakes for Largemouth, big enormous Largemouth Bass. 25 years ago.

 

I used to wade in salt water fishing until I heard about that Ausie from TV that got stung by the Ray and died. You know the guy, my memory is mush lately. I can't even remember all the Ontario fishing regs I memorized.

 

A great report thanks.

Edited February 13, 2017 by Old Ironmaker

[limeyangler]

Great stuff, i hunt the same way you do, GOOGLE EARTH IS YOUR FRIEND!!!!!!!

[JoshS]

Cool report, thanks for putting it up. I did some fishing around Santa Maria and then Cayo Coco few years ago. I'm looking forward to going back one day to explore more.

[scuro2]

Cool report, thanks for putting it up. I did some fishing around Santa Maria and then Cayo Coco few years ago. I'm looking forward to going back one day to explore more.

Those places you dreamed about fishing near Cayo Coco...I did DIY with an inflatable kayak. That will be in the next report.

 

 

Good read. Did you fish out of the air plane? My best Cuba fishing came from inland freshwater lakes for Largemouth, big enormous Largemouth Bass. 25 years ago.

 

I used to wade in salt water fishing until I heard about that Ausie from TV that got stung by the Ray and died. You know the guy, my memory is mush lately. I can't even remember all the Ontario fishing regs I memorized.

 

A great report thanks.

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!

[Korber]

Looks like so much fun! great post