Guatemala Nueva

A fresh take on a fishery I’ve watched evolve for nearly half a century - Story and Photos by Pat Ford

I had just returned to Miami after a week in Canada playing with polar bears when I got a call from Herb Rosell, a good friend of mine who has been booking sport-fishing trips in Guatemala for over 25 years. Rosell represents Intensity Sportfishing and Capt. Mike Sheeder. Over the past 20 years, I’ve been fortunate to fish with Sheeder on multiple occasions.

Rosell explained that Hank Draper had moved his 37-foot Sunny Briggs Prime Hook to Puerto San Jose, and it would be affiliated with Intensity Sportfishing. He went on to explain that Fin Gaddy would be fishing on Prime Hook in mid-December and had room for me to ride along as a photographer. We’d be staying at Intensity Sportfishing’s WayPoint Lodge and be fishing with Capt. Kennedy Hernandez. Rosell was interested in my impression of this new venture, and I agreed to provide him with a bunch of photos for their website.

I love fishing in Guatemala. There’s no better place to catch sailfish on a fly rod, and I usually get down there at least once a year. Rosell provided me with a bit on Hernandez’s backstory. He’d started out with Capt. Brad Philipps, fishing aboard Decisive for 16 years. With that qualification alone, I was excited for what was to come.

Adding to the excitement, I’d have the opportunity to fish with Fin Gaddy, who is a bit of a legend in his own right. Gaddy owns and operates Qualifier, a 54 Paul Mann out of Oregon Inlet, North Carolina (https://qualifiercharters.com). He’s on the board of directors of The Billfish Foundation and was named their Top Overall Tagging Captain in 2012. Gaddy has chased billfish all over the world and is an avid fly-fisherman, so we were going to get along just fine. A few days later, I was in Miami International Airport waiting on the plane to Guatemala City. I never say no to a trip to Guatemala.

SPORT FISHING’S EARLY DAYS IN GUATEMALA

In truth, my association with Guatemala goes way back to the early days of sport fishing here. In the ’80s, I fished with Tim Choate in Costa Rica quite often. That is until its sailfish population was decimated by the commercial longline boats. Rumor had it that they were killing 1,500 sailfish a day.

Choate watched his catch numbers decline so drastically that he knew he had to make a change, so he moved his two boats Magic and Intensity up the coast to Guatemala, where it was illegal to kill a sailfish. The downside was that his captains knew nothing about the area, and there was no one there to teach them.

Choate invited me down to check out the early days of his new Guatemala operation shortly after his boats got settled in. I came down to take some photos and videos, and generally help get the word out.

That trip was a disaster. I think we caught two or three sails in three days. In the captain’s defense, it was virgin territory and a very big ocean. My reaction at the conclusion of the trip was, “This is never gonna work.” But now, some 40 years later, Guatemala is the most amazing fishery imaginable, and Choate is in the IGFA Fishing Hall of Fame.

THE TRIP

I found Gaddy at the airport. Some three hours later, we were in Intensity Sportfishing’s van headed to Puerto San Jose. Mike Sheeder has a massive hacienda in a gated community. The accommodations are outstanding, including a wonderful chef and all the comforts of home. Since Prime Hook was going to be affiliated with Intensity Sportfishing, all their anglers would stay at WayPoint Lodge. Anglers fishing on the two boats would be driven to the dock at Marina Pez Vela each morning and picked up in the afternoon for the short trip back to the lodge. There was always a cold drink waiting on your return.

After some 50 years of offshore fishing, I’ve become somewhat picky about whom I spend my fishing time and money with. As we offloaded from the van at the marina, the first person I ran into was Capt. Brad Philipps. I’d fished with Philipps many times and even visited him at his lodge in South Africa. He immediately asked what boat I was on, and when I replied Prime Hook, his response was simply, “Kennedy will take good care of you.” That is high praise coming from Philipps.

There are several clues to the quality of a charter-boat operation. The most obvious is its tackle and how the reels are spooled. Prime Hook’s tackle consisted of Shimano reels and custom rods, all rigged to perfection. I checked their fly leaders, and they were all tied to IGFA specifications for 20-pound class with perfect knot combinations. The cabin was enclosed and clean with dual couches, and it was air-conditioned, which is always a plus.

I had a chance to talk with Hernandez (who is fully bilingual) before we took off. His background is impressive. He grew up near Puerto San Jose and now lives there with his wife and three daughters, of whom he spoke with great pride and fondness. He began his fishing career cleaning boats at Fins ’n Feathers when he was just 13. Eventually, he worked his way into mating for the likes of Ron Hamlin and Philipps, and wound up working for Philipps for 16 years.

Hernandez has fished all over the world, including Cape Verde, where he personally wired his first 1,000-plus-pound blue marlin. Since 2010, Hernandez has worked with Hank Draper, fishing the mid-Atlantic tournament circuit. The duo won the small boat release division in the 50th Annual White Marlin Open. (There were 400 boats in that tournament.) When talking about how all of this came together, Hernandez was very pleased to bring Prime Hook back to his home waters.

It took Gaddy and me about 60 seconds to consider Hernandez a friend. We knew this was going to be a good trip before we even left the dock.

When fishing in Guatemala, the run from the marina to the sailfish can range anywhere from 10 to 30 miles. They seem to hang around a specific area for a few days, then disappear, only to be found again several miles away. Fortunately, the captains all talk to each other on the radio and share information freely. For visiting anglers, this is a big plus.

Just how good is the fishing in Guatemala? A slow day bait-fishing here involves releasing 10 sails. Hernandez’s best day was 91 releases. The day before we arrived, the boats had been raising over 20 sails a day, with a good number of blue marlin mixed in. We would be fly-fishing, which always reduces the catch numbers. We did agree to keep a marlin rod ready with a pitch bait, just in case a blue marlin showed up.

We talked about trying it on fly, but a 200-plus-pound blue marlin on a fly rod can eat up hours of fishing time. We agreed that if it looked like the marlin was small (under 200), Gaddy would throw the fly. If it was a brute, we’d use the pitch bait. The mates were authorized to make that decision.

BILLFISH PHOTOGRAPHY SETUP

I caught my first sailfish on fly in 1978. These days, I enjoy the photography angle as much as the catching. My go-to billfish photography setup consists of Canon R5 Mark II cameras. I always have two ready to go. Most of my shots are with the 70-200 2.8 lens, but the Canon 100-500 is also excellent. My backup camera has a 24-105 f4 lens, which I go to when I figure that the sail is close to the boat or on the leader. I like to use Aperture Priority, which allows me to set the aperture (f7.1 or 8) and the ISO (800), and the camera will set the shutter speed. In bright sun the shutter will probably be over 1/2000, but if it’s cloudy, you need to take a few test shots to be sure your speed is over 1/1000. You can raise the shutter speed by raising the ISO. One thing to keep in mind is not to keep your camera in an air-conditioned cabin. The lens glass will cool down rapidly and then fog up when you bring it into the heat of the cockpit. However, you can’t leave your camera directly in the sun either. Try to find a spot with some shade or just keep the camera bag in a safe place in the cockpit.

THE FISHING

Prime Hook cruises at 24 knots, and I think we ran a little under an hour before we put our lines out. Flyfishing for billfish entails dragging several teasers with no hooks. The actual teasers can consist of daisy chains of rubber squid, marlin lures and sometimes just ballyhoo. Hernandez’s mates were obviously experienced and rigged each teaser meticulously.

The crew positioned two on the left and one on the right. Gaddy is right-handed, so the right outrigger remained upright and out of the way. This is done so as not to interfere with his casting. He had custom-made 14-weight fly rods and Tibor Pacific reels, which were rigged with a 600-grain shooting head followed by 100 feet of 40-pound fluorescent mono. This combination decreases the line drag you get with a floating line, and the high-vis mono lets the captain keep an eye on it. Most of the high-end billfish lines are built this way, and this is the standard setup for catching billfish on fly.

Hernandez’s fly of choice was also my favorite: a pink-and-white Cam Sigler billfish special. I’ve been using that fly for over 40 years. No need for any changes, but you can play with the colors a bit if you’re so inclined. The mates had the flies rigged and ready to go. It’s standard practice to change the fly-class leader after every fish. It doesn’t take much for a sailfish bill to reduce a 20-pound tippet to 4 pounds.

I am thoroughly convinced that the teasing by the mates is the most important aspect of this whole process. Once a sail comes up on a teaser, one mate must grab that rod and work the fish while the other mate gets the other lines out of the water. The sail must be allowed to get right up on the teaser bait, but you can’t let him grab it for too long; you just want to give him a taste and keep him excited. This is not an easy task.

While the teasing goes on, the angler will go to the opposite corner and let the fly drift back no more than 30 feet. There shouldn’t be any extra line on the deck, where it could tangle or be stepped on. When the teasing brings the sail in close enough, the captain takes the boat out of gear and yells, “Cast!"

This is exactly when the mate pulls the teaser completely out of the water. All the angler must do is water-load the rod and flop the fly right back into a clear spot, away from what’s left of the prop wash. There’s no false casting; just get it back in the water immediately. It doesn’t really matter where it lands. The rule is that you need to cast the fly from a boat that is out of gear, but nothing in the rules requires it to be pretty.

In a perfect world, the sailfish will chase the teaser up to the left side of the boat, where the teaser will suddenly disappear. The sail will usually continue forward almost right up to the transom. Hopefully, it will then turn to its left, spot the fly, and hit it going away.

The better the teasing, the hotter the fish, the harder the strike, and the better the hookup. The worst scenario is when the saiGaddyually swims up directly behind the fly and just sucks it in. This almost always winds up with a bill hook that is thrown on the first jump. I’ve learned that if you see the sail directly behind the fly, pull it away and cast it to the side. It’s a difficult plan to put into operation, but it works.

It was a pleasure watching the captain and crew of Prime Hook work. Hernandez knew just how to maneuver the boat, managing to keep the jumping sails down-sun so their colors would show up in my photos, and the mates handled the rigging and teasing flawlessly. At one point in the afternoon, a 250-pound blue marlin popped up in the spread. We deployed a pitch bait, and Gaddy had the pleasure of pulling on it with a 50-pound stand-up rig while I snapped photos.

It didn’t take too long on the heavy tackle, but even Gaddy had to admit that it would have taken the rest of the afternoon on a fly rod. There is always the chance of raising a blue, black or striped marlin in Guatemala, so it pays to have a plan of what you’re going to do with the fly rod when that happens.

All in all, over three days of fishing, we released 23 sailfish on fly and the blue marlin on the pitch bait. We probably could have more than doubled that number if we were dragging baits with hooks in them. We were pleased to get that one blue marlin—there is always a shot at a marlin when you’re fishing in Guatemala. During our trip, one of the other boats found a floating log offshore and caught eight marlin live-baiting around it. The fishing in this little corner of the Pacific is just off the charts.

All things considered, I could not have been more impressed with Prime Hook and its crew. Capt. Kennedy Hernandez and his mates were absolute professionals, and I’m very pleased that they are working with Intensity Sportfishing. There’s always a demand for a quality fishing experience, and nothing beats Guatemala’s billfish, especially on a fly rod.

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