We hit that Cuban river right the first day. Freshened and cooled by rain from a tropical storm, the resident babies were rolling in the main channel when we got there and still feeding and doing whatever tarpon do when we left. Four days later and you would swear that river held no more than a handful of fish and they all insisted on feeding under cover of dense mangrove roots.

I didn’t expect to fish for tarpon in a tea-stained river but we did. Casting to notches in the mangrove where fish should be feeding, or throwing flies close to where fish had just rolled. On the open river casting was pretty straightforward; if a fish hit and if it stuck those baby tarpon lived up to the reputation of adult tarpon – spectacular jumps and brute strength! In narrow side creeks casting was frustrating, finding an angle that allowed a back and forward cast was not easy. But that was nothing compared to the problems posed as and when the hook-up happened: playing a fish with the rod pointing straight down the line, locking the reel and heaving goes against my every fishing instinct. But with a good hook, a 100lb shock tippet to a 40lb leader the rod simply becomes the weakest link.

Some fly fishing is about the take; a fat trout slurping down a dry. Sometimes it is about speed; a bonefish on a shallow flat sprinting for the deep. Sometimes it is the rod being almost wrenched from your hands and a few kilos of berserk fish clearing the water while you wonder if this is really a good idea.


Anyway, who called baby tarpon, babies? Baby suggests mewling, puking, feeble, pink, pudgy, cute (arguably) rug rats! It does not suggest silver slabs of solid muscle determined to take your line into the tangle of mangrove roots.