A few days ago had the great pleasure of having Jim and Dan Buss onboard to do a little Puerto Rico Backcountry fishing with me. We had high hopes for the morning and WHAT a morning did we end up having! Let me tell you a quick story of that fishing trip, it will be a memorable one for all of us involved that beautiful summer morning.
As usual, we first to go and catch our fresh bait fish, something that is done every fishing charter and is NEVER charged to the customer, contrary to the practice in other world class fishing destinations.
As soon as the first bait hit the water, Dan found himself hooked up to what turned to be a decent sized Snook on 12 pound test. After we lip landed the fish, posed it for a few photos, and released it, hopefully to make more snook in the future.
Quickly, we re rigged our rods and got our second round of baits in the water, and just a few minutes later, Dan's bait was again crashed, and a long, steady pull of the 12 pound test gave us a clue to the fish doing the pulling, a very nice sized Jack Crevalle, a heavy duty brawler on light line, after careful tail grabbing, photos and release, I told the guys that we were 2/3 into the famous Puerto Rico Inshore Slam, only missing an elusive and hard fighting Tarpon!!
Yet again we cast our baits and yes, you guessed it! Dan gets hit again, this time a small tarpon clears the water and throws the hook on the second jump, well, nobody; even Dan can catch them all, after all. Hehehe!
I quickly re baited his hook and cast his line out again, and a few minutes later a runaway freight train hit , yes, Dan's bait again, a fish of lot bigger proportions, a large tarpon was solidly hooked up, YES!!!
We started to follow the tarpon, having the large fish pull the boat, pulling the fish out of the mangrove tree roots more than a dozen times, truly a battle not for the faint of heart and weak of spirit. Now I have to tell you, Dan did not have a lot of saltwater fishing experience, but he listened well and followed my instructions perfectly, so his trophy light tackle tarpon was finally lifted out of the water after more that 2 hours of battling, hope you enjoy the photograph as much as I did in guiding these two gentlemen on this trip.Congratulations Dan, on a job REALLY WELL DONE!!