Splash! My rubber sandal kicks up red water, first step off the plane in Puerto Lempira, Honduras. Gentle rain is falling: Welcome to Waterworld. This is a place where the local Miskito people still depend almost entirely on traveling or fishing by paddling boats carved from solid trees. Try that when the wind is blowing, bubba. They are a tough people.

The snook, tarpon and jacks here are essentially the same fish found in Florida, but it’s the remoteness of this Caribbean coast, the jungle surroundings, exotic wildlife, culture and people that make this trip so fascinating. One ponders such things late at night, as small wavelets lap 30 inches beneath the floor in the dark, while a guest at a small resort built entirely on a dock.

For four days we fished around Warunta Lagoon, part of the largest lagoon system in Central America. More than 60 miles long, it has countless rivers, islands, lakes and twisting creeks threading through jungle, and that makes it easy to get lost here. Saltwater fish roam the entire system, even though the water is a clear black with freshwater, aquatic plants growing in abundance.

Ralston is our fishing guide. Born and raised on this lagoon, after 50 years he knows the way. While we plugged picturesque shorelines for snook, he told us many stories about the region and its people, including the local medicine men, often referred to as witch doctors. We even met two of them, one of whom was paddling two days upriver in a dugout canoe. Ralston conversed with him as the canoe worked against the current, the other crew never missing a dip of their paddles. The medicine man had just seen a “tiger” (jaguar) around the bend. He had followed it briefly into the woods with his rifle, but the cat (fortunately) escaped. Ralston explained that the Miskito still eat jaguar, though they’re not allowed to trade in furs. Ian and I gazed at the tall, dripping rainforest, listened to the screech of birds we couldn’t begin to identify. Our words were unspoken. “Never get off the boat.”

We landed 22 snook at that very fork, where muddy water from far inland collided with a blackwater creek draining local jungle. We worked out a system there: Let the crankbait sink for a count of 10, and wind slowly. Wham! Another snook. On the muddy side in swifter current, a few tarpon quietly rolled, but refused to eat. We tossed them a live machaca as bait, suspended under a balloon, but no dice.

Warunta Lagoon is on the edge of a huge, protected biosphere in Gracias A Dios, which means “Thanks to God.” We figured either the locals really liked the place, or sailors off the coast were happy to pass it by. Peter Matthiessen writes about it in Far Tortuga, the finest book ever written about the Caribbean. The region remains isolated from the rest of the world, since a road has never been built. Hundreds of miles of marsh, jungle and rivers separate it from the rest of Honduras; even building a road along the edge of the sea is impossible, thanks to blocking mountains. So the Miskito survive, most of them hoping that the rest of Honduras, run by people of Spanish descent, never push a road through. If that happens, they say it will be the end for them. Or their way of life, anyway.

Action was slow at times, as each squall line rolled in. On our best morning we boated exactly 30 snook before lunch. This was still below average, with everyone blaming unsettled weather from a tropical storm front that lingered over neighboring Nicaragua.

Our lucky lure was a 3⁄4-ounce, chrome and purple Rat-L-Trap. It trolled well, but could also be cast. Sometimes it flew long and landed just inside the jungle, which Ralston refers to as “monkey fishing.” Somehow we never left one of these precious plugs behind, even if the line broke and we searched for it later on. In Honduras, you don’t leave good fishing plugs hanging from trees. The nearest tackle store might be several countries away.

Of our four identical plugs in that color pattern, all were battle-scarred from catching 90 percent of the fish, including some colorful, 15-pound crevalle jacks. At the end of our trip we left all four purples, along with a dozen other patterns, for the lodge staff. Under some circumstances, the purples might have been retired to a mantle piece, but it’s safe to assume they were back on the water soon after we left. The staff at Warunta has a list of proven artificial baits, which they’d been kind enough to mail before our arrival.

In Waterworld there are countless miles of blackwater shorelines, fallen trees, deeper rivers, creek forks and mouths that attract the fish. Schools tend to move around a lot in this limitless expanse, so it’s common to troll until fish are located. That’s when you pelt them with jigs, spoons, shallow-diving plugs, and perhaps topwaters. For those who can accurately cast topwater plugs back into shady realms and around fallen trees, this place offers the ultimate workout for plug gear.

My son Ian, a junior at the University of Florida, had grown tired of Gulf bottom fishing years ago in high school, and had taken up non-angling pursuits. Before then, as he was starting junior high, I had snagged him in the head with a tarpon plug as he tiptoed around behind me, so as not to spook rolling fish. Our trip to the emergency room made for a grim evening that he never quite forgot. Understandably his enthusiasm for fishing had waned to a low ebb in recent years. But now the kid was back. For four days he had a hot hand, trolling or pelting the edge of the forest with plugs, dragging three kinds of snook from cover while using only 10-pound spin gear. He landed two jacks and the biggest snook, as well. Looks like a fisherman has rejoined our ranks.

One day when the weather seemed calm, we made a determined, one-hour dash with two boats, for the inlet. Stories of huge schools of tarpon just off the beach in the Caribbean made this run very tempting. Our sense of adventure escalated with tales of “killer” tarpon: Last year, a lady passenger being ferried in a panga out to a coastal freighter was struck by a large, free-jumping tarpon. The huge tail smacked her in the head, snapping her neck like a chicken. Everyone else dove overboard. When they climbed back in the boat, the tarpon was gone but the woman lay lifeless, a victim of truly bad luck. So we readied our heaviest tackle (40-pound) with big diving plugs, loaded up two boats, and prepared for battle at the inlet.

The inlet itself is about standard size, with a rather run-down Coast Guard dock and vessel stationed there with a dozen personnel. It’s wise to converse with these guys (none of whom were smiling) before running offshore. They like to know the nature of your business around the inlet, since people in fast, outboard-equipped boats sometimes carry cargo frowned upon by laws both local and international. These fellows appreciate fish, even jacks, since they don’t appear to be fishermen. (They couldn’t even tell us when the tide was changing.)

Offshore out to about six miles, we trolled around hoping for a glimpse of clear water between rain squalls. The water grudgingly turned greener, and we hooked and lost a big tarpon. A jack tried to steal a bigger plug but we landed it, a gift for the sailors. Overall it was a long run with expensive gasoline, to find out what the inlet looked like on that particular day. Unfortunately, there is no way to predict such things. No weather forecasts, tide charts, first-hand reports. It’s old fashioned fishing: just glance at the sky and perhaps an old fashioned barometer, and take your best guess. It was rather refreshing, really. But time and again that day, we were thrown back by fresh squalls from disturbed weather. Seas were about three feet, with a few breakers on the sandbars. Back in the peaceful inlet, the only sign of movement was a native dugout, whose crew rigged a tarp on a pole, and slowly sailed back to the bay. The coast appears to have a sluggish tidal swing, apparent from the Coast Guard station, which sits only two feet abovesea level.

By evening we were worn out. Dry clothes felt good, but the evening issue of snook ceviche with salsa on huge crackers, washed down with Nicaraguan rum and limes, was heavenly. And that was before our steak dinner.