"CUBAN ROCKET SCIENCE" published by Fieldsports Quarterly

June 2007



Imagine for a moment that you were able to design the perfect fly-rod quarry – what would you conjure up?

Something big, no doubt…but how big? Five pounds apiece, ten?
Why not be greedy? 20 pounds? Come on, let’s throw all that typical British reserve out of the window and really push the boat out – How about 40-80 pounds apiece, with the odd monster ranging to 150 pounds and more?

OK, so far, so good - our dream-fish is more than big enough – but what does it look like? And how does it fight? Well, let’s build ourselves a majestic silver sky-rocket of a fish – in a brighter wrapper than the freshest salmon, and three times as strong…what say we bolt on an outsized tail and have it fight like a demented lunatic, catapulting eight feet into the air in huge, wild cartwheels and tearing off huge quantities of backing in a heart-beat. How does that sound?

Naturally, it’ll be a voracious predator that rarely turns down a well-presented fly and it’ll be caught in gin-clear water where the thrill of sight fishing will be second to none.

Where does it live – in cold, frosty climes that require thermal insulation and a thermos full of oxtail? Forget it – let’s pop our creation into warm azure seas in the tropical sunshine, where an icy rum-based cocktail replaces the traditional hip-flask full of malt as the libation of choice.

“But hang on,” you cry, ”won’t this daydream fishery of ours soon be fished out by the nets of hungry local fisherman?” Simple – let’s make our quarry utterly inedible. “Ah, but what about sports fishermen?” I hear you say – “everyone will want a piece of the action, and the fish will soon become hook-shy and miserable.” Another ‘no-brainer’ – let’s put it somewhere where the vast majority of fly-fisherman simply aren’t allowed to go. But where we, of course, are

Sounds just about perfect, doesn’t it?

Happily, this daft fantasy has long since been realised by Darwinian theory or the big man in the sky – depending on your viewpoint. The fish you’ve just “invented” is in fact Megalops Atlanticus. The Silver King. The one and only Tarpon.

The waters off of southern Cuba are stuffed to the rafters with these astonishing fish, and while Mr F Castro Esquire still rules the roost, we Europeans have them all to ourselves. On a recent trip to Montana and Wyoming, I was regularly accosted in tackle shops by rabid American anglers who, on hearing my English accent, demanded: “Hey, buddy! Have you fished in Cuba? Have ya? Is it really that good?”

“Yes I have fished in Cuba!” I would retort, with poker-faced indignation, “and listen, don’t believe the hype - it’s rubbish!”

Make sure you do the same – while the enormous US contingent of fly-fishers are prohibited from fishing Cuba’s fish-filled waters, it will remain a hugely under-fished paradise, and its probably not a good idea to let too many of our friends on the far side of the pond know about the forbidden fruit that they’re missing out on. Havana will, one day soon, be bristling with Marriots and McDonalds, while the flats will be awash with skiffs full of whooping Texans, but for now, it’s all ours.

So where to go? For eight years I’ve been travelling out to the celebrated Jardines de la Reinas fishery, and the fishing has seldom let me down. As well as the tarpon, JDR boasts a myriad of other hard-fighting species: bonefish, famed for their blistering turn of speed, are everywhere, whilst Jack Crevalle, Mutton Snappers and Barracuda all come to the party, intent on smashing all your precious kit to pieces.

Then there’s the permit – the Holy Grail. Just when you think that you’ve got this Cuban saltwater lark worked out, these impossibly fickle creatures will turn up to give you and your ego a bloody nose.
Many accomplished anglers have been reduced to a gibbering rage by these enigmatic fish, but catch one and you’ll be puffing on a Cohiba, knocking back the Havana Club and grinning like a Cheshire cat long into the night.

Jardines de la Reinas offers truly world-class fishing, no question, but it doesn’t just deliver on the fishing front: the whole operation is extremely efficient, the food and accommodation is always excellent, and the guides have always been enthusiastic, knowledgeable and great, great company. One, Coki, now retired, is undoubtedly the best guide I have ever fished with anywhere, although some anglers occasionally wilt under his caustic observations. One good friend swore he would never return after he was told: “ Sir! Please! Look a’ mee, please! The fishees mouth eez at the fron’ of thee fish. Ees berry importan’ you cas’ at the front of thee fish.”

In spite of this occasionally savage candour on the part of the guides, I’ve long been of the opinion that few saltwater fisheries on earth can hold a candle to Jardines. Then, late in 2005, rumours started to surface about a new Cuban operation – based on the Isla de Juventud – where the tarpon fishing was even more sensational. Where the fish were bigger and even more plentiful! A hastily organised exploratory trip in February 2006 was a weather-spoiled disappointment, but a few fish to close on 70 pounds on the last day hinted at the possibilities, and knowing that Cuban tarpon normally only start to show up in serious numbers around late April, I resolved to return.


So it was, that in May of this year, after long, Guinness-fuelled debates, our intrepid band of six anglers decided to forsake our old hunting grounds at Jardinas for this exciting new mistress.

Using a new mothership, the excellent & extremely comfortable “Perola”, we were able to explore the whole of the Cannerreos archipelago, waters virtually unfished with a fly since the very earliest days of saltwater fly-fishing, when American pioneers like AJ McLane first set out to catch permit here.

The permit are indeed still here in numbers, although the fledgling operation has still to catch one, but we had enough casts at these infuriating fish on the first day alone to recognise that it is only a matter of time. Instead, while we still had some hair intact, we decided to concentrate on what we’d come for: the eminently more catchable – and substantially larger – tarpon.

At first, we struggled to find them in any numbers. It took most of the first afternoon before Martin Webster and I discovered a large pod rolling in one of the many channels near Monkey Cay, halfway along the island chain. For maybe an hour, we had a ball. Admittedly, we were blind casting, but there are few cooler ways to fly-fish than to sit on the poling platform at the back end of a skiff, casting a long line, hastily swallowing an icy mouthful of ‘Cristal’ beer, and starting your retrieve just in time to find out that another 40 pound tarpon has taken your fly on the way down. We had eight high-flying berserkers into the boat in double quick time before Martin, overcome with excitement, performed a magnificent pirouette at the front of the boat & promptly fell in.

The next evening, we really hit the mother lode. Out on the south side of the islands runs a long ribbon of reef, and as the sun sets, the tarpon come rolling through the gaps on the running tide looking for a hearty supper. After staking out a large rift through the coral-heads for an uneventful hour or so, the talk had turned from enthusiastic predictions to resignation and disappointment. Thoughts of tall, frosty glasses of lime-infused mojito, waiting for us back at the mothership, were becoming a regular feature of the conversation, when suddenly the sight of a dozen huge brassy flanks, rolling through the rip-tide in the dying embers of the setting sun set our hearts thumping in our chests. Long casts with 12 weight rods and suddenly we were all hooked up – grown men giggling and hollering all around and surely the biggest kick in fly-fishing as these majestic beasts explode into the peach-coloured sky like molten metal.

These weren’t the forty pounders of the cut – these were the big boys – the real McCoy. The next hour passed in a wild blur – countless hook-ups as a relentless procession of huge fish clambered effortlessly into the air, shedding a million iridescent pearls of spray and flashing back the rich crimson twilight against the darkening canvas of the eastern sky. Double hook-ups were ‘de rigueur’, and moments of frantic quick-stepping craziness would ensue as we ducked under each other’s rods and did our best to hang on to our enraged quarry as the backing sizzled out into the blue. Huge fish were hooked and lost, but occasionally everything came right. Philip Sorenson managed a magnificent fish of perhaps 90 pounds, and by the time I’d wrestled a brute of between 70 and 80 pounds to the boat, the last afterglow had faded out of the west and we were in pitch darkness, rolling drunkenly on an increasingly angry sea.

The storm blew up very quickly and only some huge and ironically welcome flashes of lightning allowed us any clues as to our whereabouts. However, after donning some oilskins and limping toward land, where a long cold night in the skiffs looked a distinct possibility, the weather relented and, grinning our relief, we bounced home to the Perola under the starry tropical sky. A great night, sitting on the back deck in the balmy tropical air, telling tall tales and demolishing bottle after bottle of seven-year-old Havana Club, ensued.

The days passed quickly – we picked off good-sized bones from Cayo Rosario, always ready with a ten-weight rigged with wire for when one of the countless barracuda emerged from nowhere to eviscerate our catch with demonic ease. Barracuda are an excellent and hugely under-rated fly-rod fish that will happily make mincemeat not only out of your bonefish, but also out of its reputation as the fastest thing on the flats. IDJ is alive with them and offers plenty of opportunities to catch one on fly.

We’d often spend a few hours on the ocean-side sand-flats, hunting fast-moving and rapacious Jack Crevalle, ranging between 10 and twenty pounds – bruising hoodlums that slug it out like fish weighing three times their weight. Sorties out to the blue would find us chasing the birds as they betrayed the bait-balls, and fast, accurate casts would bring lightning strikes from razor-toothed Sierra Mackerel and Bonito, that were great value on the hook as well as the table.

One morning, exploring a wide, ocean-side channel, Philip Sorenson and I ran into a huge school of smaller tarpon in the 30-50 pound class. Philip was up first and created his very own Cuban missile crisis, his torrent of muttered, Muttley-esque expletives reducing both myself and our excellent guide, Manolo, to giggles as he jumped no less than five of these silver torpedoes in one cast, without managing to put one in the boat. He soon made up for it with a brawny mutton snapper that astonished us with its strength and power.

Excursions into the Rosario lagoon again showed us large pods of permit, all as contemptuous of our flies as the countless other permit I’ve ever run into, but we got plenty of shots at them, and the fishing was as intense and as nail-biting as any fishing can be. One day soon…

All good fun, and yet, no matter what new game we found to play, each and every evening would bring us inexorably rambling back to the reef, where we’d now wait with quiet confidence, chatting easily in the warm evening air about fishing at Rutland or Grafham, and slaking our thirst with another delicious ‘Cristal’ from the cooler, until, suddenly, we’d catch our breath as that first pod of mirror-scaled magic came rolling through the placid golden water, and we knew that the cartwheeling Cuban kings had, once again, arrived.

FACT-FILE

What to take

One thing is more important than anything else on a trip like this: forget all the fancy rods and reels, top of the list is a bunch of good mates– you’re going to spend a lot of time together, so make sure the group all get on well! If you do then, like us, you’ll have a riot!

Second on your check-list should be two pairs of excellent polarising sunglasses – I think that Optilabs Extreme polarisers – in prescription format if necessary – are as good as anything on the market.

www.optilabs.com

Rods:

take 4 piece rods if you can for ease of travel:

9ft 8 weight rods for bonefish – the Sage TCR is fast and accurate
9ft 9 or 10 weight rods for barracuda, jacks and permit – the Sage Xi2 or Loomis GLX crosscurrent are both excellent.
9ft 11 or 12 weight rods for tarpon – I like the old Sage RPLXi with its second handle for lifting big fish, and have still not managed to break one. The new Guideline LPXe RS 12 wt is beautiful but will not bully the fish in quite as quickly as the Sage.

Remember to keep the rod low and to use the butt end rather than the tip to play these big brutal fish, or there will be tears before bed-time and a lot of nasty splinters to deal with…

Reels:

Tibor or Abels are both bulletproof and also benefit from excellent after-sales service.
The Guideline INEX is excellent and beautifully made, but will require more looking after due to its more delicate construction.

Lines:

Floaters like the Cortland 555 tropical for everything except tarpon.

For the tarpon, I use the Lee Wulff monocore intermediate more than anything else, but make sure you have full sinker like the Rio Deepwater express 400 grain for blind fishing in nasty weather.

Backing:

300 yards of 45 pound gelspun on all reels – Bionic Braid or Lee Wulff GSP are both excellent.

Leaders:

Tarpon – use a 2 foot shock tippet of 80 pound mono attached to a 20 pound class tippet. Forsake the over-complicated bimini twist for the smaller, neater “Slim Beauty”, an Australian knot that is reliable and a snap to tie.

Bonefish/permit/jacks – tapered 12 ft leaders of around 14 pounds bs are fine.

Barracuda – 40 pound tigerwire albrighted to 14 pound tapered mono.



Flies:

Tarpon:

In my opinion, the only fly that you need for tarpon in Cuba is the Tarpon Bunny. I favour this pattern with a red palmered body and a black tail.

Other colours can include: purple/black, black/black-white barred , red/orange-yellow barred, Red/yellow & just about anything else you fancy. These fish are NOT fussy.

The tying can be found at:
http://www.jackgartside.com/step_tarpon_bunny.htm

For smaller fish in the mangroves, the use of synthetic materials like EP Fibres can make for a fly that sheds water and is easier to make short accurate casts with.

Have a look at http://www.epflies.com/catalog.html for ideas

More important than the pattern is the hook – tarpon have an incredibly hard mouth and John Wilshaw once summed it up perfectly: “trying to put a hook in one is like trying to put a hook in a glass bucket.” I now reckon to land more than half the fish I hook, which is, believe it or not, a very good ratio. I use only Tiemco 600SP’s in 3/0, and discard them as soon as the point is not razor sharp. My thrifty pals Tim Marks and Martin Webster have also done well with the much cheaper Varivas hooks.

Bonefish

At JDR, Gotchas, bitters, small clousers & bonefish specials are just about all you need, but the fish at IDJ are bigger & seem to be slightly more “sniffy”. Flies with some orange seem to work well, particularly an orange bonefish bitters in size 6.

You’ll want flies in different weights from ultra-light ( some weed-guarded ) for skinny water, to heavy for boat-fishing in deeper water. I think that these fish are still be quite “green” & presentation is the main thing, not pattern. I’ve caught some of my best bones on small del’s merkins & would definitely have a few of these to hand.

Permit

How would I know? - Bring two of everything, plenty of merkins & also flexo-crabs are starting to get a bit of a cult following. Will’s Skittals & kwan flies - http://www.redchaser.com/kwan.htm - look good to me, but have so far had all the Permit I’ve thrown them at in stitches.




Contacts:

Pete McLeod

Pete is a talented angler and an extremely knowledgeable outfitter, with an excellent team around him. He offers a high degree of personal service and can advise you as to exactly how to make the most of Cuba’s fantastic fly-fishing opportunities. He will add value to your trip.

Aardvark McLeod
RBL House
Ordnance Road
Tidworth
Hampshire, SP9 7QD
Tel: +44 (0)1980 840590
www.aardvarkmcleod.com http://www.aardvarkmcleod.com/
Peter McLeod peter@aardvarkmcleod.com




Filippo Invernizzi


Filippo Invernizzi is a charming Italian who runs both the JDR & IDJ operations through his company Avalon.

Jardines de la Reina & Isla de Juventud
Fishing & diving center - Cuba
Filippo Invernizzi
Corso Peschiera 249
10141 Torino, Italy
Web site: www.avalons.net // www.divingincuba.com
e-mail: filippo.invernizzi@avalons.net
tel: +39 335 8149111 // Fax +39 011 19792138

Flights

Fly direct with Virgin’s excellent service from Gatwick and ensure that your rods don’t go missing in the Bermuda triangle that is Paris CDG airport.

www.virgin-atlantic.com





Tackle:

Brian Fratel & Sean Clarke
Farlows
9 Pall Mall
London SW1Y 5NP
Phone: 0207 484 1000

E-mail: farlows-pallmall@farlows.co.uk



Brian and Sean have a huge wealth of saltwater fly-fishing experience between them, and can advise on tackle and flies for most destinations.

Casting

Don’t be shy – the most important attribute that a successful saltwater fly-fisherman can have is the ability to cast quickly and accurately. No matter how proficient you are in fresh-water, saltwater is a whole different deal. There are a lot of casting instructors based up and down the UK – many advertise in the fly-fishing press. Ring around and find one that suits you and who can teach you to “double-haul” – mention that you’re intending to fish in saltwater.

Robin Elwes is excellent and can be reached at Farlows on 0207 484 1000

Eoin Fairgrieve, whilst best known for his excellent Spey-casting school, is also a great single-handed fly-fisherman and casting instructor, with lots of saltwater experience.

Contact him on:

t: 01573 226700
m: 0771 5977060
e: eoin@speycast.co.uk






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