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St. Thomas/Johns advice?

Started by Dougfish, January 10, 2017, 11:47:15 AM

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Woolly Bugger

Quote from: Dougfish on February 08, 2017, 19:17:38 PM
Quote from: driver on February 08, 2017, 19:03:38 PM
Have fun. Don't get any of those parasitic sand fleas!
Bastard! Hey, do bonefish have teeth?


Let me google that shit for you....

Quote3. Bonefish don't have teeth in the conventional (or at least visible) sense. They do, however, have granular, crushing teeth on their tongue and upper jaw, and in the throat, helping them to grind up prey.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
ex - I'm not going to live with you through one more fishing season!
me -There's a season?

Pastor explains icons to my son: you know like the fish symbol on the back of cars.
My son: My dad has two fish on his car and they're both trout!

Dee-Vo

Catch some fish. Have some fun. Good luck.

ptfranze

Good luck catch us some fish to see!

Big J

Good luck at getting skunked.

Sincerely,
I'm Jealous.

Woolly Bugger

I think you tied up way too many flies and will return with all of them


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
ex - I'm not going to live with you through one more fishing season!
me -There's a season?

Pastor explains icons to my son: you know like the fish symbol on the back of cars.
My son: My dad has two fish on his car and they're both trout!


ptfranze

Looking forward to this report...hope you got everything squared away with the airlines Doug

Dougfish

#37




One of my favorite movies, The Usual Suspects, starts with the confusing finale and continues with the beginning and the rest of the story. Pay attention.
A very smart, awesome movie.

I'll start at the end of our journey. It's not very confusing though.

I caught 3 of these. Missed probably 10 more fish. Boom. The end.

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Turn the clock back...........

Scooted out of Roanoke Thursday AM. Stopped in Charlotte, then Miami before a St. Thomas landing.
BTW, if you have a 40 min layover in Miami and a 40 gate move......Run Forest! That is one spread out airport with nobody in a hurry. Lollygagging, no moving walkways, golf carts that will run you over, etc. We got to the door just before they closed it.
Picked up our red Jeep Wrangler (the rental car of choice) and headed out. Steering wheel on the left, but you drive on the left. Anne was charged with telling me Left!, Left! every turn I made. Plus, make the last look for danger to the right. After 2 days, I wasn't scaring the crap out of us.

Breakfast from condo unit looking toward Redhook harbor.

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Our closest beach looked out on Vessup Bay and a big anchorage.

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After the first day on the beach, I came home to fried feet.  b'; Aloe, aloe and aloe.
The second day on the same beach was spent with my feet covered by a towel all day.
We walked to the neighborhood bar and grill for lunch.

The mooch.

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Sunday was up early and off the nearby car ferry. St. John for the day.
The chickens greeted us at the wharf. In fact the chickens are everywhere. EVERYWHERE. Feral chickens.
If you don't like cock-a-doodle-do all damn day, don't go.

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St. Johns is not St. Thomas. Former is 9 miles across, latter is 14. The former has a population about 10% of the big island. St. John is 70% national park.
More prosperous, better roads, much cleaner. I was blown away with the amount of litter along the roads and at beaches used by St. Thomas islanders.
Reminded me of NC interstates.  ;D
We headed out of the port and climbed up around the north coast road.

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As you can see, they are mountainous islands. Volcanic in origin. Most of the shoreline is rocky. Guessing that the sand beaches are only 20% of the shoreline.
Flats are few and far. I headed to the one ODA put me on. The idea was for Anne to have the beach, me the flats. The tide was still too high and there was zero sand for baybee  b';
The tides do a false low tide, then it came up a little for a few hours before falling all the way.

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Hiked up to the old Danish sugar plantation ruins.
Old windmill base, factory building, details. Look at the use of broken bricks and coral.

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Gathered up our stuff and hiked down a trail to a out of sight sandy beached bay about a mile away.
Boom! Gobs of snorkelers, sea turtles, nurse sharks, needlefish, jacks, small barracudas and unknown more.

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Find the barracuda.

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Off course, all the best fishing was full of snorkelers and morring lines.
I wandered off and fished for the first time down the rocky shore.
Got a few hits, nada. Not bonefish country. Blind casting with clousers and stuff.

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This guy was crushing it.

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We hiked out and a school of something was busting bait balls about 50 ft. off shore. Savage frenzy. then quit. Then it renewed a 100 yds. further up.
Rod was broken down and I felt like shit. Watched, but kept moving.  n!n
Where I originally wanted to fish, and to the left were mangroves along the shore.
It was 4pm, still no sand, the tide was getting good, but we had to get back to catch our ferry.  -0-

On to Monday. We did some early shopping and set off for a tour/new beaches to the north of St. Thomas.
Be aware, the most toothless county of VA, WV TN or NC has better marked roads. Signs here are few and far between. I ran by unmarked roads that suddenly appeared, then had to find a U turn and try it out. 3/4 got me no where, the rest were semi-fruitful. Some of the advertised beaches were either private or sketchy as fuck.

One had a funky boardwalk along side a salt pond.
Termite mound up a mangrove.

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Hermit Crab.

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I think this is a Kapok Tree?

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The ones the looked the fishiest were impossible to find or sketchy. Moved on. Spent about 4 hours here. Probably the biggest and nicest beach on STT.
Downside was lots of  cruise ship folks. Good people watching. A pop up rain appeared about 2 and we headed to Charlotte Amalie for some shopping.
Went back to condo with a few gifts.

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Which brings us to Tuesday. The last day. A long day on the local beach.
Awesome lunch. (Anne cooked all our dinners, leftovers were most lunches. Mahi-mahi, lobster, shrimp, steak. Had shark bites and conch fritters out.)
I fished some. Blind casting, changing every 15 min. Nada. Sat down for more sun and beer and a local backed a Tacoma in up the beach.
Older (than me!) white dude hops out and pulls out a fly rod from a tube on his overhead rack. He proceeds to go to the water's edge and starts peeling off line. After 15 minutes of casting and nothing to hand, he put his rod away. I wandered over, introduced myself and picked his brain. He was from NJ and had lived in STT for 40 years. Ran a day charter cat until 2008. He was just down practicing for a Bahama trip. Fishes here, the Bahamas and Wyoming, mostly. Told me where I was sucked. In fact the VI is not great. Gave me a few better spots on the island, some of which require a no charge permit.
Told him I was leaving in the AM and I would put it in the memory bank.
After he left I wandered back into the water and headed to some rocks at the far left of the beach.
Fish on. Fish on. Fish on.
Misses in between, but no skunk.

If you are going to the islands, be prepared to pay a lot for lodging, meals, food supplies, rental car, etc. Liquor, wine and beer are about the same.
Honestly, we had the week we were looking for. No bonefish seen or caught for Doug. But that increases the hunger.
No computers, no radio, no TV, no internet (except twice at a hotspot to check in for flights.)
Watching the boats and ferries come and go from the porch. Sleeping with windows open and the waves crashing only 50 ft. from the sea.
Lots of reading and conversation. Good chit.
Scheming on our next trip already. New locale? Probably. Maybe BVI?

Sargasso?

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The look of da feet.

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0:0

"Why don't you knock it off with them negative waves? Why don't you dig how beautiful it is out here?
 Why don't you say something righteous and hopeful for a change? "
Kelly's Heroes,1970

"I don't wanna go to hell,
But if I do,
It'll be 'cause of you..."
Strange Desire, The Black Keys, 2006

troutfanatic

Digging those old colonial fort pics man.

Dee-Vo


Onslow

Thanks for sharing some pics. 

Although the Virgins are mountainous, the Keys are similar in many ways.  Very little in the way of beaches, feral chickens in Key West, tons of barracuda, big lizards, mangroves....

Dougfish

Quote from: Woolly Bugger on February 09, 2017, 15:21:36 PM
I think you tied up way too many flies and will return with all of them

Brought back every one, Nostradamus.
Had fun tying them and it got me motivated to tie trout stuff I need.

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"Why don't you knock it off with them negative waves? Why don't you dig how beautiful it is out here?
 Why don't you say something righteous and hopeful for a change? "
Kelly's Heroes,1970

"I don't wanna go to hell,
But if I do,
It'll be 'cause of you..."
Strange Desire, The Black Keys, 2006

ptfranze

Looks like a hell of a trip Doug!  At least you avoided the skunk  'c; 

Those old mill pictures were awesome, really cool to see what they did with the coral.

driver

Well damn. Sounds like it was still a blast.

Big J

Looks like a good time to me.