Guides bonefish and tarpon

[alpuente]

Hi
I am looking some info on guides in Los Roques, Belize, Mexico and Cuba to fish bonefish and tarpon in the flats.
I only want info about guides and not lodges. If any of you could recommend a guide.
Thanks in advance for any help.
Greetings!
Alpuente

[Shadowcast]

Don't know any....but have fun down there!!

[Capt. Ted Lund]

Cuba might be tough to book, but for Belize or Los Roques, try these outfitters:
www.anglingdestinations.com
www.frontierstravel.com
www.yellowdogflyfishing.com.

[launchone]

Heres what to do. You will want to stay at the Posada Gramery, or get lodging somewhere and then work your way to the hotel Gramery. They have lodging with breakfast and dinner for US $35. Accomodations are very simple. No A/C and the gravity fed showers from cisterns on the roof. If you want luxury you can find other Posada's that offer A/C, but we found it tolerable (barely), to sleep with multiple fans and bug dope smeared on us. One of the cooks at the posada is the sister of a great guide named Philipe. Unfortunately I have no better way of locating him. Otherwise there is a Chilean guide named Santiago (I think), he was in that SA ad with the Beck's several years ago. Anyway, you may be able to track some of these guys down once you get there. The thing to remember, as you may already know, is that none of these guides work exclusively for any one lodge. Some outfitters will tell you their guides are special, but from what I saw, the only thing exclusive those guides work for is the greenbackk dollar bill. Additionally, I would avoid anyone marching around town that will offer to find you a guide, the scam is they want a kickback and every other person claims to be a guide. Our first day of guided fishing, with a dumb*** named Chapin consisted of a walk from one end of Key largo to the other (which we later found out is an illegal place to fish).

For unguided fishing it is easy to get a boat ride from the posada you stay in to any number of the surrounding islands of Grand Roque. We had very good luck with Cras Cay (spelling?) and actually the largest bones we found we cruising in front of the airport on grand roque. However, for tarpon and permit you will need a guide to access the lagoons and marls.

For flies the usual assortment is sufficient. We had particular success with small white charlies, mantis shrimp patterns, and some of the small crab patterns that the Beck's have come out with. They were hosting a trip while we were there are were nice enough to give us a few. The most important thing you bring will be gummy minnows. They were so prized we would steal them from one anothers fly boxes at night. Make sure and bring lots of minnows in varying sizes and bring a few tubes of Zap a gap to repair them. We found that the best tarpon flies were small gummies that we had surgically removed the smaller hook and attached a tarpon hook.

Good luck and let me know if I can help. It has been about 2 years since my last trip there so I hope I goes well. As a final tip be sure and take cash....traveler's checks were useless.