Warunta lodge is built entirely on a dock connected to a semi-dry island. There are four, two-room thatched huts built from native wood, with two small shower huts. In the middle is a comfortable dining room with books and music, couches, a big table for excellent meals and a bar. The food rivaled most restaurants, and our cook Porfirio made his finely chopped snook ceviche better than anything found in Florida, in my estimation. Our host Eric is a Swede who went native back in 1981, living around Central America. He knows much about the lay of the land, the native fish, animals, people and politics.

Amazingly, there were few mosquitoes. The resident cat, a small fellow rumored to carry oscelot genes, stalked and pounced on any bug or gecko that dared appear. Our rooms and beds were so comfortable, I slept through several rain squalls at night, unusual for me. Temps were in the mid-70s at night, much cooler than Florida. With a polite wakeup knock at 5:30 each morning for breakfast, it was best to get a good night’s sleep. And we did.

The daily average for snook is 20 to 40 fish per angler, and often more. They range up to 20 pounds, though only one lunker was caught during our stay. Rain and occasional lightning had the fish uneasy, the locals said. At any rate, it was impressive how snook hit the trolled plugs, sort of a lost art back in Florida. Some of these fish hit only 10 feet behind the propeller while I was watching. Because of aquatic weeds in some spots, you couldn’t troll far behind the boat, thus the short lines. Ralston said the motor’s noise makes the fish glance up as the boat passes by.

The tarpon range from babies to brutes. All of them were sulking because of the weather, and few even rolled. One guest from Lakeland named Sam jumped a few tarpon while doing his best to avoid them. (He claimed a total of 200 snook during the trip.) January through May is best for tarpon, and we were there in early July. Most of their tarpon are hooked and lost on small plugs meant for snook, rigged with treble hooks. Next time, I’ll rig a mid-sized trolling plug with a single circle hook, attached to the plug’s eye with copper wire. The detachable plug will float and can then be retrieved. That’s how world-record tarpon are fought and landed in Africa, in jungle rivers and ocean inlets. The lure flies high, but circle hooks stick like glue.

Of course, Africa doesn’t have the same snook. And Honduras is a whole lot closer, only two hours from Miami. I’ll stick with Honduras.

Ollie’s Gift

The Miskito people say a strange thing happened in Puerto Lempira about 20 years ago. A gringo named “Ollie North” showed up one day with a lot of friends in noisy helicopters. Within days, they had bulldozed a primitive airstrip on the edge of town. Soon there were many more just like him, all wearing camouflage, many carrying guns. Eventually 20,000 refugees arrived from neighboring Nicaragua, where many Miskito also live. Many shelters went up in Lempira. As it turned out, the history of the Miskito people made them a perfect foe against the Sandinista government; they have always acted independently or ignored Spanish governments. For the past three centuries, they have admired the English. In times of war, very often they were allies with the King of England. (Their fascinating history is summarized at www.miskitoindians.org/indians.htm).

Sleepy Lempira hasn’t been the same since the early 1980’s, with its population growing. One item that came from all this activity is the gravel airstrip. It remains the only means of reaching Lempira today, aside from slow, shallow-draft boats. That airstrip is how we came to plunk down in a sturdy, Russian-built 14-seat aircraft (Sosa Airlines, daily flights from La Ceiba). The plane kicked up huge splashes of red mud puddles from the tropical showers. From every house porch, people watched us land. It’s the morning’s entertainment, watching three planes splash down on the strip and then take off again, departing before afternoon thunderstorms can intensify. People, bicycles and sometimes cattle wander the runway, but clear out as each plane appears low on the horizon.

Upon arrival, our bags were loaded into a pickup truck. We drove slowly around potholes through the small town, down to the community dock, where our gear was stowed in center console pangas for a 45-mile boat ride to the fishing lodge. Fortunately, the weather was calm. When whitecaps dominated the bay on our return, our two boat guides returned through the back way, a protected bay with what looked like an idyllic Miskito village on the shore. There we saw no less than 15 dugout canoes dotting the water, a scene that could have been 500 years old. In each one, old women and children were handlining for machaca, the local freshwater panfish. Young and old are fully utilized in this society; whoever can paddle and fish, does so. It’s true they have no electricity. But that means they have no satellite television either, a huge blessing. That’s one more reason to call this place Gracias a Dios.

FS