I wanna go where it's warm...

[stam]

Somehow......I wound up on Roatan, still not quite sure how it happened, but I think my inability to say no had something to do with it.....seemed like a good idea at the time, still does.

Blake and Vanessa and I met last year in Panamania, they live in San Diego and I do not...but, we kinda sorta kept in touch through the year and in early january blake surprised me by taking me up on an offer to fish the Duc for steelhead when he banged this buck...




anyway, a long day on the river led to talk...and more talk, turns out he knows a guy... in Honduras, on an island off of an island near an island called Utila...

Next thing I know I'm online buying a plane ticket and figuring out what I need to fish the flats, or the deeps or anything that may come along, snook, tarpon, permit, bonefish, tuna, wahoo, sailfish, snapper, barra', are all in the area and I geared up for it all, packed it all in a big bag with 8# 10# Redingtons, 2 light spin rods, 1 heavy standup, a few Avets, a cannon of a spin rod and felt like I was ready for anything!

1st stop LA, flight from there was 469.00, flight from seatac was 1800.00, I figured spending a night in the LA airport would be minimal, I hated it.....froze my ass off with rest of the vagrants and sweet relief came at 4:00am when they opened up, Blake and Bana' showed up at the gate and we were off to San Salvador where we would meet one other last minute member of the group, Ben, a 10 year Navy Seal was a welcome traveling companion and my confidence in the travels went up as he told some of his Iraqi and Afghani stories....

We wound up in Roatan the 1st night and were thirsty, 1st stop....the bar.





We drank 'till we stank.....then crashed in a cabin we rented for the night, I honestly could have hung out in West Beach Roatan the whole time and been pretty happy, but the plan was to take the sailboat over to Utila the next morning, so we ate breakfast, walked off the cob-webs of the hangovers and found our boat....turns out our sailboat lost its sail a week earlier (broken mast) and now is a power boat...It's still a 4 hour ride at 7 to 8 knots and that is perfect rolling speed.



Killed a bit of time snorkeling around the bay in West Beach and trying out the newish underwater camera...it's okay, but not a replacement for a regular camera.







Getting ready to wash the white off...



Tying up a bimini for the long troll over to Utila from roatan



Scenery along the way was ...fine :thumbs:



The captain said he knew we were okay when we all brought our own 6 packs along for the ride.



Had one fish on on the troll over....lost it though, captain said they have caught sailfish, tuna and Dorado in the past....he seemed surprised by the amount of fish gear we brought, the Islands are mostly scuba destinations and semi-serious fishermen are rare.



Almost there, time to play a bit... the cute little black bikini wearing a French Chick thought we were "fun" and decided to hang out with us....Damned if she didn't invite me back to the south of France for the summer...Oui, oiu!






Tonight...we party!







Tomorrow...we fish nursing hangovers waiting for "the boat" on our dock.



local traffic, some of the boats were ancient, mostly dugouts from huge logs then the side built up with planks and samll twin cylinder diesel motors chugging them around, very interesting.



slipped up this little channel looking for....anything, saw one largish tarpon roll, but our boat was too big to get back in were they seemed to be off too...



Blake with a baby snook.



Got hungry and ran out of beer at the same time...so we *had* to go to the bar.... a bar with bonefish cruising by had not occurred to me but it turned out to be a great idea



Gratuitous Bikini shot.



Flyfishing for bonefish is easy, second cast I ever made.



Vanessa...getting her bone on.



TBC

stam

[Bucket]

The life of Stam continues!!

[cobble cruiser]

The life of Stam continues!!

Legendary indeed! Awesome pics.......Whew!

[Nelly]

Wow, killer stuff Stam!
Can't wait for Costa Rica... t-minus ten days...and counting.

[Robbo]

The Legend that is Stam

We ride again next week my fine feathered friend

[stam]

We hadn't *really* even started to fish yet either, I had already began to suspect that this trip may not be as much about the fishing as I am used too, though i am pretty good at adjusting my expectations, in our group there were three fishermen, 1 screw ball and 1 undefinable entity....we just called him Satan, anyway, he owned the boat and we were at his mercy, a bit more down time than I'm used to...waiting on people who are waiting on...? No matter how you slice it there are worse places to have to just *hang out*.

We finally pulled it together for a day of searching for a good flat to fish for *bones*...interesting fishing and I know I could get used to it, wading around in tropical water in the sand and eel grass looking for any sign of nervous water or a wake cruising along, here is our first stop, and we immediately spotted a small group of cruising fish which then began tailing about 100yards in front of us...perfect.



....finally! fishing like I had imagined it, we jumped out and began to stalk up toward them...when a boat pulls into the same bay as us and jumps about 100 yards in front of us and begins to do the same thing....Corked!

Eh, not the end of my world, we roamed around anyway and I just basically worked on some casting skills, I had an 8# 4 piece Redington CPX with a brand new rise reel and some sort of fancy RIO bonefish line that my buddy Mark from Redington had hooked me up with, damned if I couldn't cast the hell out of it, armed with new found flycasting confidence I got a bit stoked when the mob of fish was heading right at me, 2 quick false casts, then a good haul on the line, shoot it out about 10 feet in front of the cruisers and...strip, strip....sink....strip, strip...sink etc....nope. no taker. Pull it all in and go to check my fly and it's gone, I must have snapped it off during an excited backcast...live/learn.

I do love the flats though...lots of interesting things live in the flats.







A Fred Flintstone golf Ball







Robinson Crusoe..? Gilligan...?



Ended up with no bonefish out of that flat...but learned a bit for next time. Trolled out way back around the island, looking for little tuna or even a wahoo...okay, anything that would bite... nothing bit. So, it was back to the deck, lots of deck time...



Food seemed to be a bit of a priority on this trip....I'm good with that





By this time I had slipped into *island mode* which is a good place to be, our island was small..it didn't even have mopeds, or quads running up and down the main street... near as I could tell, there was one other white guy on the island, basically no tourists except for 1 day when some divers came over to hang out....



Vanessa telling them fish stories ..



The rest of the gang wanted to go scuba dive the reef one day....so I tagged along and just took it easy, slept off still another hangover in the bow of the boat and imagined what the islands fishing would be like if the locals didn't kill them all...I understand that they have to eat but these fish drying in the sun would be worth so much more on the end of a sportsmans line, but....what are ya' gunna do? I'm sure not going to eat the fish paste that they make from them, yuck.



Time has a way of slipping away on these trips and I still hadn't really scratched the fishing itch...

Maybe tomorrow..?

TBC

[Salmonhawk]

Wow! what a trip there Stam. Thanks for sharing even though it's almost like rubbing it in as I am looking out the window at rain right now.

[Robbo]

Stam was telling me that they net all the bonefish so they can make fish paste out of them. Are those bonefish that are drying in that one photo Stam?

When are you moving to the south of France Stam? An inquiring mind that needs to live vicariously thru others wants to know

[stam]

They don't necessarily net all the bonefish, they net any fish they can, that little flat that we fished had about 500 bonefish in it last fall according to a local I fished with, he said him and a friend caught about 20 between them ranging from 7 to 13 lbs one day, then one of the native fishermen went in with his net and took them all.... yeah, sold to Jamaica as *fish paste* for pennies was the story I got. Those fish in the picture were shaped and sized more like permit or jack crevalle, I could recognize some as barracuda too, never saw them dealing with fresh fish there, just followed the smell to the spot that I took that picture.

MMMMMmmmm, France does sound kinda fun........film at 11:00

[Nelly]

Oh yeah,??? Well... I caught a springer this week...!!!!