DIY fishing Cuba Prt 2 - kayak fishing

[scuro2]

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.

[Freshtrax]

Very cool, I caught a few fish at Cayo Coco of the rocks at pilar beach and at the bridge a few years back. Thanks for the report

Edited February 27, 2017 by Freshtrax

[leaf4]

That's pretty awesome! Thanks for sharing

[Weeds]

A lot of work went into putting that report together. Thanks for the read. Makes me wish I'd tried my hand at fishing when I was Cuba.

[Toronto_Angler]

Great report!

[PBenson]

Awesome report

[JoshS]

Awesome! Thanks for sharing that trip and the details.

[blaque]

Nice...........those bonefish are cool as he77

[scuro2]

Nice...........those bonefish are cool as he77

Trolling for bonefish...fly fishing purists would stop reading at that point. They are cool to catch mainly because they are invisible in the water so they are a challenge. They call them ghost fish because when not actively feeding normally you only see their shadows. You can sometimes see blue flashes that look like tiny flashes of lightening in the water if they turn as you are looking at them. Great sunglasses are a must.

 

In the end this sort of fishing is a bit like the way a Heron fishes. Go to the right location at the right time and as quietly as you can stalk fish by sight. There are people who spend huge money to mainly bonefish....spending $10000 plus fishing for a week is not unheard of...they get poled around on skiffs by a guide. it ain't my style but for those who like fishing to be "chess like" in beautiful locals I could see the attraction. It is very peaceful, soul enhancing type fishing.

Edited March 2, 2017 by scuro2