Puerto Rico Fishing
- This topic has 6 replies, 5 voices, and was last updated May 21, 2012 at 1:30 am by
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Does anyone know if there’s good self-guided flyfishing convienent to san juan?
I’ll be going down in May for 4 days for a wedding. We will be staying at a resort near the airport, which I understand is actually near a nature preserve. I’m sure we’ll have some downtime and I wanted to see what you guys know about the fishing down there and whether its worth dragging the 8wt. I dont feel too pressured to make it a fishing trip since its sandwiched between other fishing weekends, but I’d like to check out PR flyfishing if its awesome.
Any input appreciated.
Scott,
There is some very good Tarpon fishing just outside of San Juan although its been more than a few years since we have fished down there, so I know there have been some changes.
The fishing industry is well developed, some Google searching should help.
Seriously consider getting a guide for a half day to get tuned in to the area….there are good deals to be had with the right guide. A small investment in guided service will take you a long way toward finding the niche you seek in terms of time, location and the type of fishing you choose to pursue.
The rum is worth checking out as well. 😉I know a really good guide on the west coast of the island. He is a superb fly fisherman and put us on many good fish of all species. I went there last May and posted a report if you would like to search for it.
Have fun!
Thanks for the recommendation, Craig. Unfortunately I’m no longer guiding down on Vieques. A year old baby and the giant tarpon swimming around Pine Island now have me in Southwest Florida on a full time basis these days.
Scott, there are a lot of small tarpon and some really nice snook in the lagoons and waterways all around San Juan, especially near the airport. Getting to them on foot is going to be difficult unless you really know your way around the city. Fighing your way through San Juan traffic is a unique horror. There are several guides in that area but the best one by far, especially for fly fishing, is Capt. Franco Gonzalez. We used to work together on Vieques and he does a lot of tarpon trip around San Juan, too. It’s best to call Franco directly at 787-450-3744.
If you do manage to hit some lagoons on your own keep in mind that it’s all dark water so bushy patterns work best. Anything you’d use in the Everglades will be fine for San Juan tarpon and snook. Good luck with your trip. It’s a great island and you’ll have a blast.
I wanted to give you all an update on the attempt at the self-guided PR trip if anyone ever finds themselves in PR looking for something different (again, we were in PR for a wedding, we had pretty limited time to fish – basically, 3/4 of one day. And given that I’d come directly from 4 days of guided tarpon in FL, a guided trip wasn’t what we were looking for).
In any case, we ended up driving from San Juan about 2 hours to a town on the Caribbean coast called Parguera (basically, a small fishing / PR weekender town on the south west coast – and completely opposite San Juan). Main feature of the place is about 30 mangrove islands spread out and protected by a reef within about 1/2 to 3 miles from the town.
Went down there on a hunch – a mention on trip advisor of being able to rent boats and motors down there, and be able to hang / cruise around to the various small islands. Also, a place online had said this was once a great bonefish flats area but the gill nets had really killed it in the 80s and 90s (and continuing through to today). So, I brought along my 8 wt just in case we saw one. Oh – the main point of the excursion was ostensibly not fishing – it was just to do something different with the Ms. other than the rote tourist stuff in san juan.
So. We drive there (mountains – pretty drive), rent a boat (a 15 foot flat bottom carolina skiff with 15 hp engine), head out of the harbor, and it immediately started to rain…. hard. On one hand, this was pretty surprising because the Caribbean coast is supposed to be very dry (an apparently aptly named Dry Forest is located a stones-throw from where we were). On the other, my weather mojo has been bad lately (e.g., my 4 days of cloudy and blowing tarpon hunting just before), so this was not too shocking.
In any case, we anchor up in 4 ft of water in the rain near one of the more westerly islands. We immediately look down and see 4 or 5 juvenile (4 foot or so) poons swim high and happy right over the white sand flat by the boat. Holy shit. Not expecting that.
Rigged-up some 60 lb shock on the 8 wt and dropped a poon fly on there. Unfortunately, no hook-ups on those fish (long gone by the time i rigged up) or the other fish (only saw 3 others and they were basically in the boat when i could shoot to them – the rain, wind and glare narrowed the window of what i could see in the water to just a few feet in front of me).
Even still, we had a great trip. Lots of sand and grass flats between 6 inches and 6 feet (average – 4 feet). Worth exploring if someone has the desire to do it. Who knows, maybe i saw the only 7 tarpon in the area. Never saw a bonefish.
Overall, we had a great time and made some great memories being huddled under the rain fly of the skiff and knocking around the area when it sort of cleared-up. We wish that we had more time and that the weather could have been better, but it was still a fun off-the-reservation activity.
A few thoughts:
– More locales need to freely rent boats with motors. It is awesome.
– Go on weekdays. We were there on a weekend, and it is quite the spot for folks on the island to bring / rent a boat and boom box and cruise around. Even in the rain.
– There are a few boat companies. They are all about $25 per hour on the boats. We were able to negotiate something better for the four hours we were out. I’m sure if you wanted to do a whole day or week, you could cut one heck of a deal on the things.
– If you are thinking about doing this, the total cost of this can be pretty high (in the couple of hundred per day range if you factor rental car into the equation), plus the actual drive. Still, cheaper than hiring a guide – obviously, you are less assured any type of success in actually catching fish.
– An interesting trip would be 3 days midweek and stay at a local hotel. The town caters to local tourists, so its pretty clean and has the typical assortment of bars and a gas station you’d expect. Hotel is certainly not ornate, but looked fine.
– Place is a big scuba place, if you’re into that. There is apparently a huge wall everyone likes to go look at.
– We really wanted to stay close to San Juan and do the lagoons by the airport via kayak or SUP. Never did this. We couldn’t find any actual company that rented the boards or Kayaks in the lagoons. A few listed online, but no addressees and we never received calls back. That was disappointing.
– We also wanted to go to the islands (Vieques and Culebra), but the timing didn’t work for us in part because weekend ferries are difficult to get a ticket for (i.e. you gotta show up 4 hours early to hope to get a ticket to Culebra, or so I’m told). From the looks of it, those are pretty cool places and worth checking out.
– 50% of puerto rican drivers drive like little old ladies (e.g., going 30 in a 55 in the left lane on the expressway). The other 50% bob and weave between the first 50% like teenagers in a riced-up cars living a fast and furious fantasy. We saw 2 car overturned and way off the road accidents in our 4 hours of driving in mostly fine weather. We were not surprised. Look out!
– If anyone actually goes to Parguera and fishes this place, let me know how it turned out!
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