March 2006
Greeting from Vieques.
One
of the best things about moving to Vieques is being the new guy
in town. Sliding my boat onto a flat that I’ve never fished
before is something that I haven’t been able to do in several
years. So much of this water down here is new to me and once
again I’m exploring the shallows for fish that I know are out
there, but not always where and when. Up at my former home in
Key West, I’d been fishing waters that I knew like the back of
my hand for more than a decade, but that changed quickly last
year.
When I moved to Vieques permanently, I doubled the number of
full time fishing guides on the island. Before me there was only
one, Capt. Franco Gonzalez of the Caribbean Fly Fishing Co.,
(787-450-3744) who could not have been more welcoming, and I’m
happy to call him a friend. Fortunately for both of us, there
are more than enough visitors coming down here these days
looking to hook up with any of our great salt water species.
Thankfully, competing for customers between the two of us is not
a problem.
So right now, several times a day, I get a call or e-mail asking
me “We’re coming soon, what’ll be biting?” I actually get a kick
out of telling them that these days I’m not always sure. After
all, I am still the new guy in town. I know how to get to where
I want to go down here and home again without running my boat
aground, an important ability to have when you spend your days
in less than three feet of water. I also know how to spot the
fish that inhabit our near shore waters, just like I did in the
Keys. This is another important skill that translates well
anywhere in the fishing world. And knowing exactly what you’re
looking for takes quite a while to learn, even here in mostly
un-fished Vieques.
Our tarpon are the most obvious. They’re the big silver
torpedoes that often roll up to the surface for air on the
calmer days. Bonefish are less noticeable, sticking their tails
up when the tide is just right and pushing tell-tale wakes as
they track down their next buried crustacean meal. Snook are the
most subtle, hiding beneath the mangrove branches of our
southern bays and in the big mullet-school mud’s on the island’s
north shore. And finally we have the permit, the Hole-In-One
species for salt water fly fishermen. These big members of the
jack-fish family are not as common in Puerto Rico as they are in
the Keys, but they can be found down here. As far as I know,
nobody has landed one yet on a fly rod in Vieques, but I’m sure
that will change, and soon.
What we do have is a year-round fishery for anglers of any skill
level. You can make like the locals and use a hand line off
Mosquito Pier for small snapper to fry up, or drive down to the
beaches past Garcia Gates for bonefish on the rising tides with
your newest $600 fly rod from the States. This is also the only
place I’ve ever been where you can go wading for tarpon. It
doesn’t happen all year, but the late summer and early fall are
really something for these incredible fish.
|
the
angler is Smoot Carter from Winchester, Virginia
with a 20 pound tarpon caught on fly near Green
Beach |
I specifically remember one early evening last August when a
friend and I literally waded into a school of rolling tarpon
just ten feet from shore. It was about 5 PM in one of the
Bio-Bays and for almost two hours we had hook-up after hook-up,
with some fish hitting right at our rod tips. In the darkening
water and with the sunset blinding us, this was often a bit
terrifying. My friend Neal, standing next to me and untangling a
bird’s nest in his spinning rod, actually had a large tarpon
explode under his top-water lure as it floated next to his
kneecap. If only ESPN had been around to film that. At least a
dozen times that evening I said out loud, “Thank God these
things don’t have teeth.”
That short feeding frenzy of wading for tarpon ended in early
October but should be back again this summer. The good news is
that we’re still seeing and hooking these fish on a daily basis.
Late winter is clearly time for the smaller tarpon, averaging
between ten and thirty pounds and perfect for an 8 or 9 weight
fly rod. The best news of all is that they’ll still eat almost
anything tossed in front of them. I’ve described them to friends
back in Key West as “stupid tarpon” but I’ve come to love them
so much that that description sounds too unflattering. From now
on I’ll call them “uneducated,” since they’ve yet to learn that
two inches of feathers tossed by people waving long sticks on
small boats means trouble.
Since I started guiding again full time back in January, I’ve
been thrilled to watch over two dozen people hook up with their
first ever tarpon. I doubt that Vieques will ever become the
Mecca for these fish that Florida is, but that’s more than fine
with me. Putting our mid-size tarpon on a fast learning curve
before they grow up and head north is the perfect job for the
small handful of us down here doing it.
Capt. Gregg McKee,
WildFly Charters
