pschwart00
04-01-2009, 09:03 AM
In 2008 we (Dad & I) headed down to Placencia for the first time. Over the course of 6 days of flats fishing last year we jumped numerous tarpon (but only brought two to the boat), landed 2 Permit, a handful of Bonefish and other species. We enjoyed the town, the guide (Bruce Leslie), the fishing, both in terms of challenge & variety, so much that we headed back.
This year we spent an extra day on the water, for a total of 7 days of fishing. Our average day on the water was over 11 hours. So compared to the traditional US guide on an 8 hour trip we got the equivalent of 9.5 days of fishing.
The trip, for the second time, exceeded expectations. Over the course of the week we were 5 for 6 on Permit (the guide’s record for Permit is 8 in 7 days, fishing exclusively for the fork tailed fish), 3 for 5 on tarpon and caught a few bones (didn’t spend much time fishing for them) and put a handful of ‘cudas and a few very nice horse eye jacks in the cooler.
The tarpon fishing was definitely slower this year compared to last. However, the big difference this year (and we learned this quickly) was to only fish for the Tarpon when they wanted to eat. In other words, you could always “find” rolling tarpon, but it was a little trickier to find “feeding” tarpon. Most of the feeding ‘poons was an early morning event. Except for one day when we had a north wind, clouds and scattered rain. This “less than ideal weather” turned out to be ideal weather for the big silver guys as they ate almost all day. (Other note, although it is expensive tie all your tarpon flies on carbon steel tarpon hooks – I prefer the Gamakatsu or Tiemco hooks – the hook up ratios for us greatly increased over the previous year.)
The permit actually didn’t show themselves as well the first couple of days as they did in the later part of the week. Didn’t matter, 5 landed permit in a week on a fly is still great. I can’t tell you how many fish we saw over the course of the week, but I don’t think it is unrealistic to say that we saw north of 300 fish. Getting them to eat a fly…slightly different story.
During the middle part of the week we headed north from Placencia towards Tobacco Caye. We fished our way up there and then over-nighted on the island with Bruce. (There are “lodge” options on the island.) This Caye is right at the reefs edge and the primary purpose of heading up there was to fish the cut in the reef for tarpon. Unfortunately the tarpon didn’t get the memo as they were a no-show. We spent the next morning throwing big poppers in the cut and around the reef. In a little over 2 hours of fishing we caught a very sizeable horse eye jack (they fight much better than their Crevalle cousins) a few ‘cudas and raised a giant reef snapper (bummer he didn’t eat!). We then stopped back at the lodge for breakfast before fishing our way back towards Placencia.
We ended our last day by getting a solid hook-up to a massive ‘poon that thought he was a bird or something, because he ran up into the mangroves after being hooked in open water (a first for Bruce in his roughly 15 years of guiding & obviously us). The fly line got wrapped on some mangrove roots and that’s all she wrote. My Dad made a nice comeback a couple hours later with the final permit of the trip.
Enjoy the pics below!
This year we spent an extra day on the water, for a total of 7 days of fishing. Our average day on the water was over 11 hours. So compared to the traditional US guide on an 8 hour trip we got the equivalent of 9.5 days of fishing.
The trip, for the second time, exceeded expectations. Over the course of the week we were 5 for 6 on Permit (the guide’s record for Permit is 8 in 7 days, fishing exclusively for the fork tailed fish), 3 for 5 on tarpon and caught a few bones (didn’t spend much time fishing for them) and put a handful of ‘cudas and a few very nice horse eye jacks in the cooler.
The tarpon fishing was definitely slower this year compared to last. However, the big difference this year (and we learned this quickly) was to only fish for the Tarpon when they wanted to eat. In other words, you could always “find” rolling tarpon, but it was a little trickier to find “feeding” tarpon. Most of the feeding ‘poons was an early morning event. Except for one day when we had a north wind, clouds and scattered rain. This “less than ideal weather” turned out to be ideal weather for the big silver guys as they ate almost all day. (Other note, although it is expensive tie all your tarpon flies on carbon steel tarpon hooks – I prefer the Gamakatsu or Tiemco hooks – the hook up ratios for us greatly increased over the previous year.)
The permit actually didn’t show themselves as well the first couple of days as they did in the later part of the week. Didn’t matter, 5 landed permit in a week on a fly is still great. I can’t tell you how many fish we saw over the course of the week, but I don’t think it is unrealistic to say that we saw north of 300 fish. Getting them to eat a fly…slightly different story.
During the middle part of the week we headed north from Placencia towards Tobacco Caye. We fished our way up there and then over-nighted on the island with Bruce. (There are “lodge” options on the island.) This Caye is right at the reefs edge and the primary purpose of heading up there was to fish the cut in the reef for tarpon. Unfortunately the tarpon didn’t get the memo as they were a no-show. We spent the next morning throwing big poppers in the cut and around the reef. In a little over 2 hours of fishing we caught a very sizeable horse eye jack (they fight much better than their Crevalle cousins) a few ‘cudas and raised a giant reef snapper (bummer he didn’t eat!). We then stopped back at the lodge for breakfast before fishing our way back towards Placencia.
We ended our last day by getting a solid hook-up to a massive ‘poon that thought he was a bird or something, because he ran up into the mangroves after being hooked in open water (a first for Bruce in his roughly 15 years of guiding & obviously us). The fly line got wrapped on some mangrove roots and that’s all she wrote. My Dad made a nice comeback a couple hours later with the final permit of the trip.
Enjoy the pics below!