Fishing Cayo Coco Cuba

I eventually booked a boat to go flats fishing with Miguel through the Melia Cayo Coco Hotel sales manager Violeta who was most helpful and she got us a booking with him for the day after we arrived even though he does not like taking bookings from overseas and the boats were booked to the live on boat with the Canadians from Fish tales fishing tackle shop. We shared a mini bus with them because the boat had generator problems and they had to stay at the Tryp Cayo Coco Hotel They had Permit and Tarpon the week before we got there but the Permit did not come on the flats whilst we were there but we did have fun with the Tarpon but did not land any. We both hooked fish in the 60-70lb mark and had loads of strikes but they all came off eventually after some heart stopping action. The tides were wrong for the first week for Bones but we did get a few so we did some trolling of the reef and had loads of Barras upto about 20lbs and Steve had a nice Grouper. We chartered a Blue Water boat for the four of us and had a great day with Henry and Pedro the crew, open bar and Lobster lunch caught by the skipper and cooked beautifully by Pedro We all caught fish but the sea was too calm for Billfish so we just caught Barras and swam of a lovely island.

The second week was good for Bonefish even though the sea was very warm, Rolando found a flat were the fish were muddying all over the place and it was a bit like trout fishing casting into the sea blind and waiting for the pull and you did not know what you would catch as there were Snapper GTs and Barras on the outside waiting for fish to come out, we lost two fish to Barras strikes. The Melia flat was full of fish but because we were so booked up for boat fishing we only fished it once for two hours and the lagoon at the Hotel had shoals of Bonefish tailing in front of the Balcony every morning and as we were waiting for the baggage buggy to go home a fish of about 6lbs tailed right in front of us it must of known my tackle was packed!!! We swam with Dolphins went to Che memorial went to Pilar beach and had a wonderful time. we tried the channel behind the Sol cayo Guillermo one morning but the water was too clear and they were very spooky Ian Cowie got a couple (see Cuba Mania) on a tiny size 10 gotcher but we did no good. We are going to book again as we want have a go for some big Tarpon on the fly from Cayo Santa Maria with Orlando and by the way he is going to get three boats over to Paradon so there will be more availability. The top fly was the Abaco shrimp, they turned there noses up to other patterns especially in the muddies. Best Bone was 8.5 lbs but we lost bigger ones, I broke two fly rods and lost a lot of fish through tackle failure and incompetence but that's another story. Brilliant time super fishing, want to do all again!! At least we had the right tackle this time but we must get better hooks on the poppers , Owner Stingers hooks are what we are going to get next time