We have had a succession of really lovely days here, flat calm, sunny, and with just a little cloud. Earlier this week all the local boat owners gathered in Monkey River Village for the annual boat registration exercise. We club together and bring the inspector down from Placencia - yes, you have to pay government officials to come down here to carry out their job - and he takes photos of all the boats, checks out that they are carrying the correct equipment, and generally keeps us on the straight and narrow, sort of marine version of the UK MOT inspection.
Obviously, this all takes time, so we spent a couple of enjoyable hours chewing the fat with our guides (and watching George catch a double figure snook right in front of the village). We decided that the weather was great, we had nothing urgent to do, so we'd plan on a fishing trip for the next day.
This trip was slated to be something of an in service training session, with George Garbutt and Ian Cuevas doing the fishing, me and Chris observing and learning. The two guides wanted to spend some time together checking out some areas that they don’t fish very often, and also wanted to share their own personal hot spot information with each other. This is all in aid of making sure Steppingstones' guests have the very best fishing experience in Belize - we work hard for you guys!
We were targeting permit, so no need for an early start as permit are highly responsive to the state of the tide; we left around 8.30 am and headed south into the Port Honduras Marine Reserve to the Snake Cayes. The water was mirror calm, making it a really smooth ride, but these conditions are tough for the angler. Fish spotting is easy, but presenting a fly without spooking the ever wary permit is difficult when they can see you even more easily than you can see them.
Early on, while the tide was still low, there was not much fish activity apart from a solitary huge tarpon which swirled at Chris's Zara Spook, and a couple of small barracudas. We did notice quite a few turtles though, mostly green back turtles but one hawkesbill, plus the usual assortment of eagle rays. There seem to be a lot more turtles down south, probably because the Port Honduras Marine Reserve is a strictly controlled area and the turtles, like everything else, can breed in peace.
Ian was poling and George was up front, spotting and fishing. Chris and I were standing on the thwart, straining our eyes to spot fish and to see what Ian and George were seeing. It wasn't long before the guys saw "nervous water" about 100 yards away or more, and sure enough, underneath the nervous water were permit, who obligingly showed us their sickle shaped fins. George made a great cast, but his fly was snatched from under the nose of a permit by a fast moving small jack -damn!
The jack was landed in short order, and we moved on. More permit were spotted on a small flat, we snuck up on them, George fired, and lo and behold, the same thing happened again, this time a snapper snapped up the crab fly before the permit could get to it. Maybe that's why they are called snappers! Although that was not what George called it….
The Snake Cayes are very lovely, just small patches of mangrove really, divided by flats, under a big blue sky, and we spent an hour more searching for permit, finding the odd school, getting in the odd shot, but not having the kind of action we were after. So Ian and George decided to move on to fish the huge lagoon which is in the delta of Deep River, and off we steamed. The sun was beating down, and we were glad to get some breeze as we went along.
Once in the lagoon, a small wind came up, putting a tiny ruffle on the water, which was unusually coloured up. Ian and George were straining to see into the water, and to us it seemed they had no chance of making a spot. Then suddenly, the soft Creole chat backward and forward became urgent and intense, as they both spotted a good fish about 25 yards off the bow at 12 o'clock. George made a cast, twitched the green crab fly back and with a howl of the reel the fight was on.
The fish set off on a fast run which soon had George looking anxiously at the rapidly diminishing backing line on his reel, as the fish headed for a distant island. Eventually it stopped and George got a breather, and was able to start cranking the fish back. About thirty yards off the bow and the fish set off again, and again ran unstoppably for the island some two hundred yards distant. We were all offering advice on what to do if the fish succeeded in going around the island.
By this time George, who had been doing all the casting, decided he had a tired arm, and handed over to Ian. "This is gwan' t' be a fight 'bout ten minutes." he declared. And we settled down to admire Ian's fighting technique.
It's a funny thing, but that ten minute fish seemed to grow bigger and bigger as the fight progressed. We lost count of the number of times it came to the boat, only to turn and proceed to take all of Ian's line right down into the backing. "I jus' don' know how guys ken fight a fish fo' a hour", declared Ian after twenty minutes, labouring away in the sun as we sat back and ate our lunch. "It's a jack," the audience declared after half an hour. "It's a big 'cuda," we decided after an hour. "It's a small foul hooked permit," was the verdict a quarter of an hour later. After an hour and forty minutes, we declared it to be a permit of 24 1/2" nose to fork - a fish of around 17lb which fought like Mohammed Ali on a good day.
Ian and George did a fantastic job. They knew that to horse a fish like that meant to lose it. Fishing with a 7/8 weight rod and 12lb bottom, slow and steady won the race. But what a fish! Ian got into the water to revive it, and we had the feeling that it had been a real battle of wills, with much respect from Ian to the fish - and maybe from the fish to Ian.
We then had a recce round the lagoon, checking out some good looking spots for future exploration. There is such a lot of water to fish around here, that even our guides are still learning. So this year Chris and I have begun working with them to look at new techniques, new place and new ideas, the ones that work will be brought into the mainstream fishing programme for this winter.
On the way back, Chris and I trolled light outfits with very shallow lures, pretty fast up the river. This resulted in three barracuda to me, including a nice one which made a beautiful leap clean out of the water. This was on what Ian calls one of my ugly lures - a battered Storm Jointed Thunderstick in silver scale, which still bears the scars of many Norfolk pike. Chris caught an excellent snapper with a brand new black and silver Yo-Zuri Crystal Minnow, but unfortunately it came unstuck right at the boat.
So we had a fun day, learnt a lot, got too much sun, and generally had a great time. There will be pictures available soon, but our pc is sick at the moment so will have to wait until next week probably when it comes back from the pc doctor.