Day One, Cuba 2007. Leave Red Deer yesterday at 5:30 a.m. for the 9:00 a.m. flight to Toronto, and, naturally, I get to the airport way too early, but the rest of the guys from Calgary all do the same thing :-) The flight to Toronto is uneventful, as is the flight from Toronto to Cayo Coco. No real problems at customs, and we are bussed to the Playa Coco resort at Cayo Coco where we bunk for the night. Get a reminder of the usual Cayo Coco-style resort Friday night, i.e. the noisy "show" with some hard working dancers and entertainers, and a bunch of drunk Brits. We're on the road by about 8:30 a.m., and it's another bus ride --- this time about two hours south to the little port town of Jucaro, where we board a ship for the three hour tour to our destination, the Tortuga, a floating hotel moored in a channel in the Jardines de la Reina. After a quick lunch, and a welcoming Cuba Libre, we head out for a bit of fishing! My guide is Pedrito (Peter), a sixteen year veteran of the game... his English is passable; certainly better than that of our guides from Cayo Coco in 2004. The skiffs are modern, well-maintained Dolphin flats boats with sixty horse Yamahas or Evinrudes. We don't get too far from home base this afternoon, but there are some adventures. We see a good sized Hammerhead Shark right away, and shortly thereafter I hook a decent-sized Tarpon (Pedrito estimates it at twenty pounds), only to snap it off immediately... the line parts with a little pigtail just above the top Bimini :-(. I subsequently blow a shot at a considerably larger Tarpon while screwing around with the camera gear. We see Larry B. hooked up to a nice 'poon, later estimated at fifty pounds. He plays the fish for about forty minutes, when the class tippet gives way as the fish is being brought to hand. Apparently one of the guides here has no use for Biminis, and just goes with a leader composed of a chunk of eighty pound mono tied to a chunk of fifty pound mono. No "weak link" in that setup, which I guess could be a real problem if you happen to have the line wrapped around a finger or toe when the big Tarpon takes off... Another issue, as Hugh later points out to me, is that if your backing is the weakest link, then you lose your whole line and leader when things do get to the breaking point. Also, he points out that another time when you might want to deliberately break a Tarpon off is when you see a big shark about to go after the Tarpon! We see a couple of decent sized Cuda, more sharks, and a few more Tarpon, but no more hookups for me other than a little Yellowfin Tuna (or was that a Yellowtail Snapper?) that I do land. Back to the Tortuga for cold Crystal (one of Cuba's fine beers) at about 7:00 p.m. Weather is fine, warm and clear, with a moderate breeze. I hear at supper (from Pepe, one of the Italian owners of Avalons) that Cayo Coco is notorious for heavy winds... about two hundred days a year, apparently. Perhaps our experience in '04 wasn't so unusual...