Regards from Alabama!
I am still trying to catch up on the sleep I lost, not gained, while on vacation in Tobago, which leads me to believe that I need a "vacation from my vacation" haha, oh well. But here below, as promised, is my trip report/experiences from Tobago. I'll try to be as in-depth as I can, but the days sadly are beginning to run together on me...
Day 1:
Started out the morning (5 am) by fishing from Sandy Point all the way around crown point, until the rocks got too steep to climb. My lucky friend, of course, started the trip off by getting blasted by this 3lb jack on a popper.
But besides that the morning was quiet and fishless.
In the evening, we went and fished from Conrado Beach resort all the way to the back side of pigeon point. We saw a couple of small baracuda hits, as well as nabbing some small Mangoes from the mangrove area, there again was little fish to be found.
Day 2:
We hailed a taxi at first light to Bago's beach bar and fished the beach of Pigeon Point all the way to the backside again (4 hours transpired). It was low tide, so if there were any fish- we'd see them first. Surely enough, I spotted a small school of bonefish feeding/tailing just inside the breakers. The fish weren't wary at all as I was able to walk within 10m of them. I screwed the whole thing up by placing the 3rd cast on top of their backs...oh well.. As we kept working our way to the backside, I noticed some noisy black seabirds feeding between the boats moored there. They were diving and skimming the waters surface to catch small baitfish that were hurling themselves skyward. It took no medical degree to figure out that,
something must be pressuring them towards the surface. But, no matter what lure we threw (Poppers, Crystal minnows, spoons, swimbaits, jigs, and 8 different types of flies) the fish were not interested. Even more infuriating, the fish revealed themselves to be tarpon, 5-20 pounds, by rolling on the surface. (sigh)
On the way back we were able to catch an entire school of Mangrove Snapper hanging out by a rock. Entertaining for the guys new to saltwater fishing, but pure mockery to me..
That evening, we headed to Plymouth to see if there were snook or tarpon to be found. In one word? Nope. We fished the river, the pier, the rock, and even walked over to back bay. Nothing. Zip. Nada. And we had a quiteeee interesting stroll/taxi back to town at 9pm. Be careful, eh?
Day 3:
We had the privilege of connecting up with Kester Herbert of Grand Slam Charters and arranging a half day of fishing. We started the morning early of course, and headed ironically, back up to Plymouth. When he saw the conditions he shook his head and said that it wouldnt do. He dropped us off and promised to return with more bait at 1:30. True to his word, we met him again, and we soon found out why he is so well regarded by all in tobago and all who've fished with him. He KNOWS how to tarpon fish. Within an hour, my good friend had lost an 80+ pound tarpon on the jaw-rattling second jump. I personally had been broken off by pure ignorance. Even further, Kester gladly looked through my fly box and offered suggestions on why we couldn't get the Pigeon Point tarpon to bite. (He explained that during the summer there are two types of inshore baitfish prevalent- fry (juvenile bay anchovy) and scad (spanish sardine/menhaden). The tarpon we had seen were exclusively feeding on "fry" which grow no more than 2 inches long. So it made total since that the 4-6 inch lures we had been throwing werent inducing hits.)
Anyways, once the sun began to set, the fishing got hotter than I've really ever seen. Ladyfish and tarpon alike began pounding, boiling the surface everywhere. We got hook ups everywhere we casted for about 15-30min, making up for a slow day. These pictures should surely show some satisfied customers!
Day 4:
We were so excited about the day we had that we celebrated a
little tooooo much and thus could not wake up for the morning's fishing. We did however, do some snorkeling at Sandy Point to see if we could learn anything about fishing. Instead, we got a hard life lesson on strong currents and their relations to sharp rocks. Ouch. Anyways, we headed over to Canoe Bay to sample some of the bonefishing we had heard about. To our dismay, the water was deep dingy and cloudy. (Kester later corrected us and said the time was to blame-not the tide or location. Apparently, its a morning only location). We ended up fishing all the way to the airport fence without a hit and had a lovely trekk home through the jungles and marshes of tobago (all sarcasm intended).