Big Bend Sportsman Guide Fishing Stories

"Stories from the Caribbean"
From a Series of Short Stories

By: Capt. "Tato"  Reyes

 Tato’s Tree

 Late November marks the arrival of colder waters to the north coast of the island and the arrival with it of many pelagic and migratory species like the Dorados, Wahoos, and some Tuna species. The Trade Winds are replaced by a gentle northerly breeze and bigger swells replace the rather choppy surface of our hotter months.

I had taken my boat to Arecibo, a town further west in the north coast for our biggest Sailfish Tournament which we celebrate just prior  to the arrival of these cooler waters. Sailfish come by and are gone within two weeks, a very short season for any spindlebeak aficionado. The tournament was over and I was going to bring the boat East to my hometown of Dorado 40 miles up the coast.

I was not planning on a real fishing trip, I just wanted to bring my boat home, so I prepared a few ballyhoos and brought along a few bags of frozen ones just in case. I left the dock of the Arecibo Club Nautico at 8:00 AM on a Saturday morning and headed out about half a mile to nice clean blue waters and headed east in the direction of my home port.  I had, good old Don Jimmy as my mate, yes the Chef from Cornell University who did not know how to swim and just learned about fishing when he moved next door to us. Like always he was available to make me company and had his son drive us to Arecibo as we would return by water.

Don Jimmy took the helm and aimed the boat to “that single cloud in the horizon”. He knew that if he was not facing land or if land was not behind the engines and if he could see that cloud I pointed to him, he was OK!  He also knew that the wind must be kept hitting his left cheek. The sun of course should be kept in front of him, he also knew that one.

Having said that our boat was on course thanks to Don Jimmy’s navigational skills, and I was left free to rig some ballyhoos and see if we could find some fresh fish for dinner. We knew the Dorados must be close so we were searching for a weed line, debris or anything like that that provided structure to migrating fish.

Structure we were looking for and structure we found. A mile north east of our heading we could see what seemed like a rather large white structure with birds on top of it. We wasted no time, brought the lines in and ran to the area. To our surprise we found the white structure to be a capsized nine foot Boston Whaler. It had no name or ID numbers. It did had no less than 100 Dorados under his shade. We stopped the boat and started cutting our baits since we know we had a lot of fishing ahead of us and not many bait to waste. We landed close to 45 Dorados in the 10 to 15 pound class within an hour and broke radio silence. I called my home VHF station and told Ivette to contact my “buyers” since I was bringing home a truck load of fish and was willing and needing to sell.

Having broken the news of the fish in the area over the radio, many boats came to the area in search of the white structure that was not there any more.  In the mean time I was heading east towing my newly found dinghy and with a very nice load of Dorados.

No more than ten miles east of where I found the Whaler I encountered a very marked water change. It went from blue to cobalt blue and it looked so cool to the eye that you could feel the temperature change as you crossed the line.  Don Jimmy was happy to have a road to follow, he always enjoyed following weed lines and stuff like that, “it is easier than following clouds that keep on moving on me and I need to look for new waypoints” he would say.

I was looking back to the baits when Don Jimmy said”, Tato there is something huge in front of us, you need to come and see this”. Yes indeed, Don Jimmy had found the biggest floating structure I have ever seen in my life. It was a huge, I mean huge tree, floating upside down. You could see some of the roots above the water but there was at least 100 feet of tree down there and it was at least 40 feet wide or better. I heva never seen a tree like that one so I knew it must have been unearthed somewhere up north.

As we close down on the tree Don Jimmy said, “You wanted structure, here is your structure, and what are you going to do with those no less than a million of those yellow fish we have been catching, and look now they have company, there are other brown fish with them. The brown fish were Trippletails swimming among the Dorados rather closer to the surface.

We stayed there looking at this imponent view for a while and then decided to catch some fish.

It was not easy to pass the Tripple tails to get to the Dorados.  We had to use some half an onze weights to make the ballyhoo piece sink fast enough so the Dorados would have a chance to get to it.

We caught, I don’t know how many more Dorados and a few Trippletails and headed home. On our way we called on the radio and let everyone know about our finding and an aproximate location of the tree. They found it and all loaded up on fish.

 I went to the tree at least once more that same week. It became known as Tato’s Tree and people chased him down current all the way to the east edge of the island. People were catching all kinds of fish around it including Wahoos, and small winter male Blue Marlins. Tato’s Tree was the best natural FAD (Fish Aggregating Device) we have ever seen. I heard that when the tree reached the East edge of the island and was ready to abandon us forever , two boats tied it up and towed up current more than 40 miles just to keep it in the area. Even our local TV station sent a helicopter to film the tree and the fishing activity around it.

Thousands of fish were caught around Tato’s Tree as he replenish himslef by the never ending migration that just started. He spent at least three weeks with us with the help of towing volunteers that refused to let him continue his drift to easterly waters.

Rought weather kept our boats inland and Tato’s Tree earned his freedom only to drift East and end up North of St. Thomas where he was expected by fishermen that already new about Tato’s Tree.  For several weeks Tato’s Tree was well know over the Caribbean as he drifted North of all the US Virgin Island and British Islands as well.

Last time I heard from him he was 60 miles North East of the island of Anegada heading into open Atlantic waters on his way to African whereabouts. Yes, it was still producing fish but had lost his original name and was now know Francis Drake Tree or something like that.