Down at the secret lagoon……..
OK it’s not really a secret, but it IS hidden from view and does not get fished a lot. The entrance is via a small creek opposite Little Monkey Caye, easily missed unless you are looking for it. The creek widens out after about a half mile into a lagoon and then a further lagoon I guess a mile long altogether, all fringed with mangrove and an average depth of perhaps ten feet. We moor our boat, Patience, in the lagoon as it is safe from the open sea and wind there. So I get plenty of opportunities to pop down and run the boat around the edges. With a small lure trolled behind.
The lagoon is currently flooded because it is the rainy season here. That has brought in large numbers of small tarpon up to about ten pounds plus the odd bigger one. There are also jacks, snook, snapper and other species in the brackish water. My last trip produced in thirty minutes a tarpon of perhaps 7lbs, a small snook and a small jack. Good sport on the light spinning gear we use.
Then last night running up the creek, Sue and I ran across an area of fish slashing through a huge shoal of small baitfish. We stopped, out came the rods and we cast into them. They were a mixture of jacks about 2lb and blue runners the same size. They produced fast and furious sport for about ten minutes until in my enthusiasm for that slightly longer cast (you know the one I mean), I put my lure straight into the mangroves. Sue’s polite enquiry as to whether I was fishing for monkeys was not appreciated.
By the time we had sorted that out the fish had moved on. So we continued trolling up the creek, but had only gone fifty yards before Sue had a super hit and a really good tarpon launched itself out of the water. This was the biggest we had yet hooked and must have been well into the twenties. However the tarpon had other ideas and threw the hook fully thirty yards and disappeared amid a flurry of foam. I had just put the boat back in gear and started moving when I had a take which proved to be another tarpon, this on maybe 5lbs.which we unhooked at the side of the boat. We had really only come out to moor the boat up for the night, so we decided to go in. Not a bad reward for an hour’s fishing!
OK it’s not really a secret, but it IS hidden from view and does not get fished a lot. The entrance is via a small creek opposite Little Monkey Caye, easily missed unless you are looking for it. The creek widens out after about a half mile into a lagoon and then a further lagoon I guess a mile long altogether, all fringed with mangrove and an average depth of perhaps ten feet. We moor our boat, Patience, in the lagoon as it is safe from the open sea and wind there. So I get plenty of opportunities to pop down and run the boat around the edges. With a small lure trolled behind.
The lagoon is currently flooded because it is the rainy season here. That has brought in large numbers of small tarpon up to about ten pounds plus the odd bigger one. There are also jacks, snook, snapper and other species in the brackish water. My last trip produced in thirty minutes a tarpon of perhaps 7lbs, a small snook and a small jack. Good sport on the light spinning gear we use.
Then last night running up the creek, Sue and I ran across an area of fish slashing through a huge shoal of small baitfish. We stopped, out came the rods and we cast into them. They were a mixture of jacks about 2lb and blue runners the same size. They produced fast and furious sport for about ten minutes until in my enthusiasm for that slightly longer cast (you know the one I mean), I put my lure straight into the mangroves. Sue’s polite enquiry as to whether I was fishing for monkeys was not appreciated.
By the time we had sorted that out the fish had moved on. So we continued trolling up the creek, but had only gone fifty yards before Sue had a super hit and a really good tarpon launched itself out of the water. This was the biggest we had yet hooked and must have been well into the twenties. However the tarpon had other ideas and threw the hook fully thirty yards and disappeared amid a flurry of foam. I had just put the boat back in gear and started moving when I had a take which proved to be another tarpon, this on maybe 5lbs.which we unhooked at the side of the boat. We had really only come out to moor the boat up for the night, so we decided to go in. Not a bad reward for an hour’s fishing!
posted by Sue Harris @ 5:16 pm
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