This February I went 2 weeks to Los Roques in Venezuela to get away from the cold Danish weather. I have done so many times before and contrary to many others I do not mind going back to where I have been before. It gives you advantages to know where to find sleep, where to fish etc. and it also nice to see some of the people you have met before again. So for the umphth time I went to Los Roques. this time I went with Gunnar and Ib. Ib is not a fly-fisher so his agenda was to relax, read, swim, drink rum and have a nice time and as he nicely puts it: be with passionate people.
This time I fished a lot on my own which is Ok but when you release the fish and want to do that quite fast it does not give many photo opportunities and therefore the quality of the photos this time is even worse than normally.
This classic sight from the airplane before landing can always make long for the coming days
The first day we went to Madrisqui and Pirata and here Gunnar amongst other caught this bonefish.
Around Los Roques many of the bonefish primarily feed on small baitfish at many occasions the gummi minnow is the preferred pattern despite they in the wind are quite annoying to cast.
The black market exchange rate has skyrocketed the last months so everything was more or less half price compared to last year and we had a very inexpensive trip. Here I am with my lunch one day, a lobster prepared with side dish and dessert – app. 20 USD. Actually we sometimes had fish for lunch as we were tired of lobster, that is luxury.
I the morning I often fished from the main island Gran Roque before breakfast. I hoped to catch some of the few baby tarpon or some of the schools of jacks making attacks at the minnows close to land. One morning I got the smallest bonefish (app. 2 lbs.) on the whole trip on a black and red tarpon fly – the Black Death.
We fished a few days with guide and here Gunnar is on a pancake flat with our guide Antonio. Gunnar has hooked a bonefish which is hard to see at this distance but unfortunately he later lost it. It was not that easy to get a guide as there were many customers and due to the exchange rate their salary had more or less doubled as they are paid in USD so they did not feel the need to work that much.
I found many times tailing fish but as I am more a fly-fisher than a photographer I did not get nice shots of one of most thrilling sights I can think of. But here you can see a single tail near the mangrove to the right.
All fish were released here a bonefish from one of the flats start its return.
and way it goes.
After a day on the beach or on the flats we went to the beach bar drinking mojitos and piña coladas in the bean bag chairs. Here Poul a Danish flyfisher on is own has joined us.
The sunset from our bean bag chairs – not the worst option in February seen from a Danish point of view.
Bonefish was our main target but whenever we got the chance for something else we tried to grab it and sometime other species just grab our fly.
a small grouper
a pompano – a small version of a permit
a blue runner – many of the schools of fish that attacked the minnows near the beaches this year were blue runners
but there were also some horse eyed jacks at times.
and sometimes yellow tail snappers
There are some big fish in the waters around Los Roques – here Ib pose with a ray the local fishermen had caught
The last day I did not want to fish much but as there was a school of blue runners chasing in front of us I had to grab the fly rod.
All in all this trip was business as usual but the fishing was a bit worse than normally as it was extremely windy and therefore the waters were a bit more murky than normally and there were more clouds than normally which also makes it harder to sight fish and finally the water was cooler than normally. The good thing was the exchange rate that made this trip the cheapest in many years.
Filed under: Fishing diary | Tagged: blue runner, bonefish, bonito, flats fishing, Los Roques, stripping basket | 3 Comments »
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