18/02/08 - Tarpon, tarpon and more tarpon - Charlie White reports on a recent trip to the Isle of Youth in Cuba

Louise Mackenny and I have just returned from a week of fishing the Cayo Canarreos archipelago, just off the Isle of Youth in Cuba and were very impressed with what we found.

The Isle of Youth has been fished by our Cuban partners for three years now and it is true to say that the operation is now far slicker and easier than at the outset. The guides have really worked out the areas that need to be focused on: a transfer boat now negates long skiff rides in the morning and evening and the fishing appears to be getting better and better as the effects of a ban on commercial fishing (implemented 4 years ago) really start to be of benefit.

Our base for the week was the Hotel Rancho which is only 10 minutes from the airport and 15 minutes from the marina where one starts and ends the fishing day. Bus transfers were extremely efficient and waiting times for the skiff in the morning or ride home in the evening were practically zero.

The hotel is clean, comfortable, air conditioned and has superb staff. It is not the most luxurious but has everything you need and they bend over backwards to help.

All the guides we met were charming and most spoke excellent English; our guide was very informative about the politics and history of Cuba while being able to name, in English, all the various birds and plants we saw each day. However he lapsed into excitable Spanish whenever I managed to fail to execute a cast properly - he had ample opportunities to lapse into Spanish....!

The fishing? In a nutshell, seriously good. We saw a huge number of bonefish, the biggest we landed was 6lbs but, as always, we saw many more that were substantially bigger than that. We chose to fish mostly from the skiff but wading was always possible whenever we asked.

We saw good numbers of very decent sized permit (I would guess up to 25lbs) and had any number of excellent shots at them. However, by their own admission, the guides have not really worked out the permit yet and the killer fly has yet to be found. Koki, the head guide of the original operation in Jardines de La Reina, is now the head guide on the Isle of Youth (teaching the younger guides rather than actually guiding himself) and he is determined to get to the bottom of what the permit are taking - I would not bet against it as Koki on a mission is something to behold!

We caught a number of snook, up to about 12lbs. They were great fun and provided some excellent opportunities to lose masses of flies in the mangroves under which they lie in wait to ambush anything unfortunate enough to come within their field of vision. They are very strong fish but an 8 weight was sufficient for the most part.

We also fished the reef for an hour when it got too cloudy for spotting bones and in that hour we landed 13 fish of 5 different species including king mackerel, mutton snapper, barracuda and a very strong and angry cubera snapper! We could have fished the reef a lot more and also could have caught many more bonefish but we chose instead to concentrate on what can only be described as simply incredible tarpon fishing which, for both of us, was the main attraction of the destination.

Bearing in mind that we were there for the first week of February and you would expect to see more in the forthcoming months, we saw an incredible number of these epic fish and on the final morning I am pretty sure we saw close to 300 fish over 60lbs all within a decent cast of the skiff. This was not blind casting in a channel; these fish were in 10 feet of water and appeared to have no fear of the skiff at all. Indeed one of our biggest problems (excuses?!) was the fact that often a very big fish would take the fly so close to the skiff that the leader was inside the rod tip which did not leave much room for striking - even if it did lead to some incredible sights and takes. It is not often you fish with 80lb leader straight from the fly line to the fly and feel outgunned. But outgunned we were! That morning we jumped 8 fish of between 60-90lbs and did not manage to get one to the boat - a couple simply smashed us and a couple managed to cut us off on the mangroves. For the most part it was simply the fact that we were fishing for very big fish that undid us. Setting a hook in an 80lbs tarpon is not always the easiest of tasks!

All through the week we saw tarpon, some of them babies underneath the mangroves, some of them rolling in deep channels and some on the flats - they were everywhere and it is certainly the biggest number of these wonderful fish that I have seen in any of the destinations I have been fortunate enough to visit.

There are still lengthy skiff rides as the archipelago is long and narrow but the guides were expert at taking the skiffs close to the mangroves in order to keep the ride as smooth as possible. The introduction of the transfer boat has stopped an awful lot of the harder skiff work that, perhaps, the destination was becoming known for.

There is a live-aboard boat, Perola which is based in the middle of the archipelago, similar to the Halcon in Jardines. If you are an intact party of 5 or 6 would be perfect as being land-based does mean you need to leave the fishing around 4-4:30pm in order to get back in the light - you need to cross blue water to and from the archipelago. I cannot help but think that to fish for the tarpon in one of the channels as the light fails would be a magical experience.

This is not a destination for non-fishers as there is very little to do on the island and there are not really any beautiful beaches to lie on. However as somewhere to go fishing, especially if you are keen on tarpon, the Isle of Youth has become a must.

For further information please contact Charlie White or Louise Mackenny on 01488 689701.