Magazine Article

SONS of SANTIAGO

McCafferty, Keith

2016

Overview

[...]whereas he would shortly be trying to get out of Cuba, we were plotting to get in-to see and fish this country before the embargo lifts and the high rises go up, the fleets of classic automobiles are lost to collectors, and the inshore fishing becomes fishing like anywhere else monied anglers exercise their passion-the mother ship, the Wi-Fi hookup, the fisherman hustled between flats on a modern bonefish skiff, seeing no more of the country or its people than he would by staying in the States. Along with two friends, who are his fellow guides and business partners-Lázaro Cotayo Cedeño, a fisheries biologist who used to run the crocodile reserve in Ciénaga de Zapata National Park, and Lázaro Viñola, whose house on the Bay of Pigs is where we are renting rooms-Filipe is acutely aware of the pressures that bear on the ecosystem here and that threaten his way of life. The idea is that you cast the fly a short distance in front of the fish (not a long lead like you give bonefish, because you want the permit to hear the fly land), count it down, and then strip slowly. [...]if the bonefish is the Oh, wow! and tarpon the Holy s - - t!, the permit is the It's a miracle! fish. Because with permit things almost always go wrong, even if you do everything right.

• Publisher: North Equity
• Subject: Fish / Fishing / Fly fishing