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View Full Version : Some tarpon action while on a cruise ship trip.



Bill Kiene semi-retired
01-24-2006, 10:31 AM
Here is an email I just received from one of our friends who got exposed to tropical salt water fly fishing while vacationing with the wife.

"Hi Bill,

Just got back from a 7-day Southern Caribbean cruise vacation last Wednesday. The cruise started and ended in San Juan Puerto Rico. Looked for some saltwater fly fishing at one of the ports of call (St Thomas, St John, St Lucia, St Marteen, Antigua and Barbados) but couldn't find much other than offshore fishing. So I looked into fly fishing in San Juan and found a few guides.

Conversed via email with a guide that specializes in fly fishing for tarpon and booked him for two days (but only got to fish one day because of rain) after the cruise. He fishes the brackish mangrove lined estuary, that surrounds the San Juan airport, and dumps into the Atlantic.

Met him at 6am at the marina and hopped in his Hewes flats boat. He was excited about the conditions - slightly windy with overcast skies. It had rained very! hard the night before, when we were supposed to be fishing, so hard there were flash flood advisories on TV. As a result the water was a milk chocolate color and there was a ton of garbage floating - everything from coconuts to a refrigerator.

Ten minutes from the marina we came to a little lagoon and waited to see if any tarpon were rolling, but no action. So we headed into a little channel and found 5 or 6 rolling tarpon 20-50# range. We didn't get any takes.

So we followed the channel to the big lagoon, looked around for a short while and found a huge pod of tarpon rolling on baitfish. Some were slashing the baitfish off the top. These fish ranged up to 100+# fish and have no idea how many - there were so many fish that you could always see one fish rolling and sometimes several at a time, in every direction around the boat.

Wasn't having much success! - casting to fish but no takes. Then Jose said to slow down the strip, like a bonefish strip. On the next cast felt some tension, strip set, a harder strip set, then a hard sideways rod set and held on.

It was a 40-45# tarpon. It put up a great fight, burned a line-cut into my finger on the initial run, wrapped my knuckle with the reel handle on another run, jumped 4 times, and snapped my 10 weight at the ferrule with the fish next to the boat. When the rod broke, the guide had ahold of the fish, but lost his grip and the leader broke.

I can honestly say that I'm hooked on tarpon fishing now - what a gas.

Randy"

Brett
01-27-2006, 04:30 PM
Great report, Randy. Congratulations! Ifelt part of what you felt last fall, in Port Oconner, TX. I have looked into PR, and was wondering the name of the guide you used? Also, contact info if you can.

Thanks, Brett

rasbrown
01-29-2006, 01:39 PM
Brett,

We fished with Jose and can't remember his last name to save my life. He worked for the guuide we booked with, Capt. Nico Guzman, who can be reached at http://www.puertoricotarponfishing.com.

It is pricey, $325.00 for a half day, and we really didn't shop around. Supposedly guide Captain Omar Orraca is very good as well.

How are things in gulf coastal Tejas? We fished down in that neighborhood a few years back in October. We stayed in Rockport, but ended up fishing out of Aransas Pass with Chuck Skates. He was very knowledgable, but we had very overcast weather and it was tough seeing fish.

Ate a great restuarant called the "Boiling Pot", or as Chuck pronounced it, the "Bowlin' Pot", in Rockport that I'll never forget. They cooked up hot links, crab, shrimp, corn on-the-cob and potatoes and then dumped them out of a metal pail onto the butcher paper covered table, some ice cold beer, and you just went to town.

Hope to make it back there to fish for reds someday...are you in the guiding business down there? If not, willing to show us the ropes?

Take care,
Randy