Brandon Cyr: Growing Up Conch and Guiding the Key West Flats

Full transcript of the Tom Rowland Podcast, Episode 211 with Brandon Cyr.

Introduction

Tom Rowland: I love talking to the younger guys in Key West and really all through the Florida Keys. It's cool to surround yourself with enthusiasm and people that are really loving what they do. We had a great opportunity to do that earlier this summer with Nick Labadie, and today I had a great opportunity to sit down with one of his friends, Brandon Cyr. Brandon is a Conch, a true Conch, fourth-generation Conch. If you don't know what a Conch is, that's somebody that was born in Key West. He's fourth generation, and now he is a fantastic fishing guide in Key West, Florida. Not only that, but he's doing some really cool stuff outside of that. He's doing some cool traveling, and I wanted to talk about his trip to Cuba. That's exactly what we did, by way of a lot of other stories. Man, he's got some great stories. We had a fantastic conversation. I think you're going to really enjoy it. Go check out Brandon Cyr on Instagram and follow him there. Alright, here comes Brandon Cyr. Brandon, what's up, man? You've been traveling. Thanks for doing this.

Brandon Cyr: No problem, man. I'm glad to be here.

Tom Rowland: I just got off the water myself, rushed back, and met you here. So you had the day off today?

Brandon Cyr: Yeah, I did. Unfortunately, doing flats fishing with the conditions we have, the cold front coming through, solid cloud cover, not very optimal conditions for what I do.

Tom Rowland: Well, it was almost entirely overcast when we were out there for the most part, but then the sun came out. It was really nice. Did it come out on land?

Brandon Cyr: Honestly, I spent most of the day inside. It's very rare that I get a day off. So when I do, I find a cold dark hole and hide in it.

Reading Conditions and How to Handle a Cancellation

Tom Rowland: That's the best way, as opposed to waiting for your customer that you canceled to call you and say, as they go to the leeward side of the island, I think the wind stopped blowing.

Brandon Cyr: Right. And the problem with that is, quite a few times when we do cancel because of bad weather, me and my buddies, we don't care. We want to go anyway. So we'll go out fishing. Client will call me two or three hours later, like, hey, you know what? I decided, let's go for it. And I'm already out on the water. Like, sorry, man. It's too late now. We're already catching fish. That happens a lot.

Tom Rowland: What's your cancellation policy? How do you cancel a trip if you were to cancel a trip? Because I just want to know how everybody does it.

Brandon Cyr: It's so different from guide to guide. For me personally, my entire business runs off of my client's experience. So if the weather is going to be horrible, I'm always completely honest. Because I know the area very well, if I'm not going to be able to produce, I don't want to take them out and not show them a good time. Now, with that being said, I'll tell them, hey, it's cloudy, windy, wrong tide, everything is going against us, but this is your vacation. If you want to go, I will go out there and give it my best. Our chance of success is not very high, but I am just obsessed with being on the water. So I have foul weather gear. Whatever the conditions are, I don't care. I'm game to go, but it's your money.

Tom Rowland: So you put the ball in their court.

Brandon Cyr: And so, obviously, if the weather is perfect and they canceled, then I would charge them, or whatever the situation would present itself. But for the most part, man, I just want people to have fun. If the conditions out there are not going to be fun, then I don't really want to push them to go, because it's not worth it. I would rather them come back the next year or in two or three months and have the epic conditions that we have. And one of the issues with that is social media is such a big presence now. I post pretty much every day. So people see all this stuff, you're catching tarpon every day, permit, bonefish, three, four times a week. They come down here and they expect that. They're seeing just the tip of the iceberg. They're not seeing this other six hours that go into it. So you have this expectation to produce all these fish for people, and sometimes there's nothing you can do about it. The conditions are just horrible.

Tom Rowland: I had a guy stop me not too long ago somewhere well outside of the Florida Keys, and he's like, hey, you're never going to remember me, but I booked a trip with you one time, and we never got to go fishing. And you canceled the trip. And I thought, oh, boy, he's going to be mad. And he goes, that was the best thing you ever did for me, because my buddy went out with somebody else. We met you at the dock, and you told us what the conditions were, and that didn't seem like it was going to be very good. You gave us the choice just exactly like what you outlined. And then this guy went back with his son, and they had breakfast, and they walked around Duval Street and just had a good time. And then his buddy went out, and at about eleven, they came back. He had been throwing up. He was beat up. He was cold and wet. And this guy was like, man, you really did us a favor there. It was exactly the opposite of what I thought he was going to say. But that's what I always thought the best thing was: just communication. If you can just let them know. But then you have this situation of, you do a lot of fly fishing as well. And if somebody comes down here and they want to fly fish for permit and it's blowing 20, totally cloudy, cold front just came through, that's going to be really tough. But you could go out and spin fish for cudas.

Brandon Cyr: Right.

Tom Rowland: And so I always felt like, should I tell them about that? I mean, it could be really fun, and maybe they want to do it, and maybe they're going to be insulted. Some of the hardcore fly fishermen are like, spin fish for cudas? No, I don't want to. But other guys are like, it's better than sitting in the hotel room. I came down here to do something. If that's the option, then let's go.

Brandon Cyr: Yep. So I had a huge turning point in my career probably three or four years ago. It was when we had, like, a crazy cold snap that killed a bunch of fish. And before then, I was just by the book, black and white, weather's bad, and we're not going. That was my call. And this guy was being really adamant about going out. He's like, please, I really just want to go. And it was the worst weather of my guiding career.

Tom Rowland: That's saying a lot.

Brandon Cyr: I know, right? And so we decided to go out anyways, and we get out there. We didn't see a single fish for the first four hours. And we come across this, like, four-foot diamond squid up by Geiger on the south side in the middle of a cold front.

Tom Rowland: I don't think I'd know what that is.

Brandon Cyr: Yeah, I never even heard of it. I didn't know what it was. I had to post it on social media to find out what it was, but it's this deep water squid that we have down here that gets six, seven foot long. And it was up on the surface because something had slashed it, cut the top of its head. I don't know if the cold made it lost, but we were trying to grab it because I was like, nobody's going to believe us. I'm taking videos. And it's squirting ink everywhere, and it ends up getting away. And the guy looked at me. He's like, look, I didn't want to tell you this, but I was diagnosed with brain cancer, and I was given about a month to live. And he was like, this is my last fishing trip in my life. And I was just like, holy crap. I never even thought about that. And he was like, most people would have canceled it on me. He's like, thank you for taking me out. And so that hit me. And I was like, man, people in Kansas or Missouri, for us, this is what we get to do every day. We get to pick and choose weather, but if it's a trip of a lifetime you've been saving up for for ten years, it's not cheap to come to the US, and you come down, you want to go out.

Tom Rowland: Some people are fixed to that once in a lifetime.

Brandon Cyr: Exactly. And so that's really what made me start catering towards clients more. If you want to go, just be honest. Because the thing is, if you say no, a lot of guys down here are just so focused about the money. They're looking short term. They just want that quick cash flow. They're not thinking about the repeat customers and stuff like that. But most of the time, if you're honest with people, especially being on a flat, it's so beautiful as it is. You're not out in rough water or anything like that. You can have a blast just hanging out and have fun. Even if you don't catch fish, you're going to have a good time out there.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. You take them through a couple of mangrove creeks, give them a good boat ride as well. But if you communicate the right way, like, look, the fishing is really tough, and we will try as hard as you want. But if you just don't want to spend the day in the hotel room, I'm all about that too. And we will go out there, and we will have some fun, and we will do great. That's great. And that fishing trip that you had with that guy, that would have been such a disappointment to him to just have somebody say, we're not going, it's not going.

Brandon Cyr: Yeah. He was down here by himself. It was definitely a life-changing experience for me. Opened my eyes a little bit.

Tom Rowland: We've talked about it so much on this podcast, about the importance of communication between the angler and the guide on both sides of it. If you're booking a guide and you have something that's very important to you, it's really important to communicate that across to the guide. But also from the guide's point of view, it's like, look, man, Key West is a really expensive place to live. I need the days on the water. I don't want to cancel you. And if you want to go, let's go. I'm all about it. It will be fun. But if you don't want to go, I can understand that too. I'm not going to take your deposit, and everything's going to be fine. And hopefully you'll come back next year, and we'll get some better days.

Brandon Cyr: Exactly. And it always works out, because if that guy comes back that next spring and crushes tarpon with you, he's going to have such a more positive memory of the Keys. That's another thing, being grown up down here, it's important to me what people think of this place. This is where I plan on spending the rest of my life. I'm raising my daughter here. This is home. I'm proud of it.

Four Generations of Conch: The Family History

Tom Rowland: How many generations Conch are you?

Brandon Cyr: So I'm the fourth generation.

Tom Rowland: Fourth. Wow. So I knew your dad when I was guiding with him together down here, a little bit. But you and your brother, your dad, then your grandfather. And then is there another?

Brandon Cyr: So there was Willie Wickers, who was actually the one who got my family all started in the charter industry. He brought the first marlin to charter boat row in 1945. And then it branched out into his son, and there were cousins. I mean, at one point, charter boat row was the family. And then it all kind of broke off and split down into smaller little groups. But we're really the only ones left.

Tom Rowland: So wait a minute. Let's talk. So the Wickers is the original family, and then how does Cyr connect?

Brandon Cyr: So my grandmother was Wickers' sister. They were related that way. And my great-grandfather, or my dad's dad, was on a submarine in the navy down there.

Tom Rowland: Nice. And then did he stay after? Like, he got off the submarine and stayed?

Brandon Cyr: He was out. And then my mom's father is Bill Osterhout, and he did commercial fishing down here, and he owned Bill's Fish Market. I don't know if you remember that or not, back over off of North Roosevelt.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, absolutely. And so then your dad guided.

Brandon Cyr: Yep. When he got out, I think he was 19 when he started guiding. He did a lot of mating and different stuff like that. I'm trying to remember who the first guy he worked with. Aaron Snell's dad was the one who got him into offshore. And he did that for most of his life. We were obsessed with offshore. That's what I grew up doing, the offshore boat with him. And we had so many cool different things growing up. Like, I remember him keeping, he'd go buy old cheap clothes for me and keep them in his truck. So when he pulled me out of school early, he would change me into those. We'd go fishing, and then we came back in on the afternoon half. He'd change me back into my school clothes so my mom wouldn't find out.

Tom Rowland: That's awesome.

Brandon Cyr: So every memory I have growing up was on the boat, learning to tie my shoes, everything. I remember being up on that. And still to this day, it affects me, because I used to sleep on top of that diesel engine so much that I need white noise when I sleep. But no, it's a pretty cool way to grow up. I'm super blessed. Grew up on a big Contender back there, so we had skiffs when we were super young going out, doing the island thing. And I caught my first bonefish on fly when I was seven. Complete accident. I was just obsessed with catching sharks on fly, going out there and, while everybody was hanging out in the sand, I'd go walk off and start looking for little sharks and stuff. And I found this little school of these little fish, and I just couldn't get them to eat. I was so mad they wouldn't eat my red shark fly. I went over, like, dad, what are these? He walks over, and he's like, oh my god, those are bonefish. And I ended up catching, like, six of them that day. That's what got me hooked.

Tom Rowland: And so is Jared older, or are you older?

Brandon Cyr: Jared's older. I'm the youngest. Jared's 31 this year.

Tom Rowland: Okay. And how old are you?

Brandon Cyr: 26.

The Proposal: A Birthday Grand Slam

Tom Rowland: So you also recently got engaged?

Brandon Cyr: I did. Yeah. This past summer.

Tom Rowland: It was pretty exciting. I've fished with your buddy Nick. He told me a little bit about it. But that's about one of the most interesting stories of asking someone to marry you that I've ever heard. How about a recap?

Brandon Cyr: Yeah. So just to give you kind of background information, how I actually met her was through fishing. My fiancee, Amber, she came down on a spring break trip with a bunch of girls, which typically when that happens in Key West, it goes a completely different direction. And she did offshore fishing. She went out and on her way back just said, this is unbelievable. This is where I'm meant to be.

Tom Rowland: So was she a fisher person before?

Brandon Cyr: Yeah. She grew up hunting and fishing in South Carolina with her dad. And she went home, told her dad that this is where I'm meant to be. Sold everything, moved down here a week and a half, two weeks later. And she's a personal trainer. She was at the gym that I work out at. And I just happened to walk in when she was applying for a job at the front desk. And the owner of the gym came in, as smooth as you could, perfect timing. I literally just introduced myself to her. I was like, I've got to talk to this girl. She's so pretty. And he had seen on my Instagram story that I was filming a TV show that day. And he was like, man, I'm so excited to see this show. It's going to be amazing. You guys crushed it. And she was like, wait, what show? What is he talking about? And I was like, oh, I'm a fishing guide in Key West. And she just lit up. She's like, oh my god. And then they had to go back for the interview. So I gave her my number, and she messaged me and said, when are you taking me fishing? And so we were doing some B-roll stuff the next day, and I took her out. In the first five minutes, we had, like, a 120-pound tarpon.

Tom Rowland: Wow.

Brandon Cyr: And so she just got hooked. That's just our entire world together, is being on the boat and going fishing. And we were just planning out the wedding last week. She was looking at everything. And she's like, honestly, can we just do a simple wedding at the beach? Save money. That way we can spend all the money on a honeymoon and go to some really cool fishing destination. And I'm like, pinch me. Is this real?

Tom Rowland: Right. Well, first of all, you found the one girl that's impressed that you're a fishing guide, which is usually repellent for women. There are only a few out there. My wife happens to be one that wasn't super impressed with me being a fishing guide, but she has always been my number one fan once that got started. She wasn't attracted to me because of the fishing. She was kind of along for the ride, and it became kind of what happened. But, yeah, you found the one that's into fishing.

Brandon Cyr: Exactly. It's crazy. And so after we've been dating, I finally, I knew that when I wanted to propose, I wanted to do it on the water, because I was like, what was special to us? And me and Nick were down in Mexico together chasing roosterfish. And we were down there thinking about it, and I was like, dude, I want her to be holding a permit while I proposed to her. Because that was the first fish she ever caught with me, was a permit.

Tom Rowland: How did the permit happen? I thought it was a 120-pound tarpon in the first ten minutes.

Brandon Cyr: That's while we were filming. I called the producer and asked her if she could ride along. So she was just sitting back for it while we were doing our thing. Which was perfect. But the first fish she caught with me was a permit, which was pretty wild. And, of course, the skin-crawling first thing out of her mouth was, that was easy. Her first cast at a permit, she hooks and catches it.

Tom Rowland: Nice.

Brandon Cyr: And, like, she didn't understand, me and Nick and all my friends talking about how hard permit are. All we do is fly fish for them. And she got hers on a crab. And so right then, that was, like, a little heart-killer. But yeah. So we made this game plan to go out. And, of course, they had no idea. It was four of us on a skiff, so that makes it even harder, because Nick brought his girlfriend too, since they're best friends. And we go out. We caught a couple tarpon right off the bat. It was my birthday, perfect little way to start the day. And Nick kind of looked at me first thing, but I wanted her to be in the water with it. And we were in some dirty shrimp-patch water. Didn't really want her hopping in. So we run to this spot. And me and Nick are normally the most relaxed people on the water. We have a hard time finding where we want to fish together because we're both just like, oh, whatever, let's go here. But we both knew there's a permit. We were, like, super focused. So the girls are like, chill out, it's your birthday. I'm like, no. We were looking, just trying to make decisions, second-guessing ourselves, which we never do. Get to the first permit spot that Nick picked out, and there's a group of, like, three or four tailing on the edge. Like, oh my god. Made a perfect cast. Come tight. And I'm just like, oh my god, this is it. And I started getting the shakes. And she's like, man, you really like catching permit. And I look back at Nick and I'm like, dude, this is it. It's about to happen. And they're all like, alright, cool, you've caught a bunch of permit.

Tom Rowland: Now did Nick's girlfriend know?

Brandon Cyr: No, he never told her. So she was a surprise too, so she thought I was weird too. I thought she knew, but she didn't. And the permit tail-cut us in the 15, and we lost him. And so I'm like, oh my god, that was it. That was what I wanted to do. And Nick, of course joking around, was like, just wasn't meant to be, man. Maybe that's a sign. Joking around, I'm looking back at him, and they're like, sign for what? You'll be fine, you'll catch another one. And we ended up going to another flat, and I got a nice bonefish. And that's when I was like, alright, I can't wait anymore. I've got to do it now, because I was getting more and more nervous about it. And I pulled the total millennial situation on her. She was holding the bonefish in the water. I was like, hey, let me go change my shirt real quick for a sponsor. And I walked back to the boat, put our song on, and I turned around with the ring, and she's just bawling. As soon as I put the song on, she knew.

Tom Rowland: She knew?

Brandon Cyr: I turned around, and as soon as, because that's why I never play it. She always says it's her favorite song. It's All On Me, I think Devin Dawson's country song. And, yeah, man. It was really, really cool. And, of course, first thing she does is drop the fish. When she's in the water, she lets it go. And we'd already taken the hook out, so the fish swims off. And I come over, get down on one knee, and propose to her. The bonefish swam back and is sitting alongside of us, just hanging out. And we had no idea. We're just doing our thing, crying and laughing, and Nick's taking pictures. I look over and this bonefish is, like, six inches away from me. Reached over, picked him up. And we were able to get shots of him with the ring and everything. So it was just really, really cool. It was an awesome way. And then the wheels kind of fell off. We started drinking a lot of tequila and everything. And we were going to hang out at the beach, and I talked to Nick. I was like, man, I have this one permit spot that I want to check that's been pretty good. Pull up and there's a school of like 30. Throw the crab in. They ate the crab like two or three times. Still didn't come tight. Ended up getting a shell back. So I'm starting to get a little discouraged. Hit one more spot and I caught a nice little one. So it was like the best birthday I could have asked for. Married my best friend, caught a grand slam, hanging out with my other best friend Nick. So it was pretty cool.

Tom Rowland: That sounds like the best day ever.

Brandon Cyr: Dude, it's going to be hard to beat for a little while, I'll tell you. Pretty amazing.

Tom Rowland: That's really good, man. I read that on social media, and I was trying to put it together. I'm like, damn, that's incredible. Catching the grand slam is one thing. That's pretty hard. And then to do that on your birthday, that's pretty hard. I did that with your buddy Nick. And then to put that all together and ask your fiancee, well, I guess she wasn't your fiancee at the time, ask your girlfriend to marry you, and then she says yes. That's pretty awesome.

Brandon Cyr: No, man. It's kind of one of those things. I'm a firm believer in karma. Everything just kind of happened for a reason. All the stars aligned and everything worked out. It was really, really cool.

Chasing Grand Slams: Spots, Tides, and a Game Plan

Brandon Cyr: And the whole slam thing, we've gotten so lucky. Me and Nick have both been catching more slams than I could ever imagine. I think last year I did 42. And I think, like, 80% of those were on fly. It's one of the reasons why Nick's one of my best friends: we're absolutely obsessed. He went out today. He wanted to go out this afternoon. I was like, dude, I just need to get my stuff in order. And he's like, I'll do mine tonight, I'm going to go out. And so every chance we get, we're out there. And the more time you spend out there, the more knowledge you get.

Tom Rowland: That's what it's all about. But then there's also knowledge, and then I talked to Nick about this too. I guess at the time when we fished together, maybe he said he hadn't guided too many slams. So I started talking to him about it. I was like, how do you do it? What are you thinking about when you do it? Because that was one of the things that I really liked to do was the slam. It's great on fly, but mixed slams were fine too. I just kind of got into, let's find all three and try to catch all three. And it's really cool. But I also found that there were other people that it never happened for, and they wanted it to happen so bad. So now you caught a bunch last year. What changed?

Brandon Cyr: Honestly, it was tournament fishing that changed it for me. I got to do quite a few different tournaments, and I'm getting to fish against the legends that I grew up watching. So I want to be competitive. I've always been a competitive person, and the one thing I could think about was spots and tides. So I knew when my optimal time to be at each spot was going to be, so I would plan my day out. Like, I need to leave here by, say if the tide's dropping, at a point-eight at this one spot where I've been seeing all these fish push through at 10:55, but then my next best spot's at 11:30 at a point-four, or whatever the tide drop is. I keep track of that every fifteen minutes. I'm looking down and saying, okay, this is the optimal time to be there. And so I had a lot of success that way. So I started basing my whole day out like that. Fishing the spot, having a plan. Obviously, the fishing being insane, I would stay on a spot and keep pulling it. But for the most part, if it was mediocre, I'm like, okay. You hate to leave fish to find fish. It's one of the oldest sayings in the book, but if you spend enough time, you know that at this specific time and tide drop and conditions, that spot is going to be the best it's going to be all day. So you start picking all these different spots that you know are going to be the best, even if it's a far run. And when I first started guiding, I would pick flats, and I would fish a couple mediocre flats in between just because they were close, because I was always worried about clients, running time and anything like that. But if you spend twenty minutes running to a spot, you get there and you catch two permit right away, you're like, oh man, okay, let's go to another permit spot. Catch two more at the next spot. And so that really has been the key to success for me.

Tom Rowland: Well, that's the key to success, but is that the key to success in catching a slam?

Brandon Cyr: Absolutely. So when you're structuring out the day, tarpon at sunrise is the easiest, because you don't have enough light for the most part. So normally what I would do is start off looking for tarpon early morning. It's normally pretty much a guarantee, depending on the time of the year, that you're going to get one. And then after that, depending on what the tide is, if it's higher water, I'm focusing on permit and permit only. And don't get discouraged. If you hit one or two permit spots and you don't get one, don't make the switch until the tides are right for those bones. Sometimes you're like, oh, well, let's go do the bonefish thing to keep some time. Just explain to them, look, this afternoon it's going to go off for bones, don't worry about it, it's not going to be a problem. And that's typically the way I do it, because I just have everything based off time and tides. And then the very end of the day typically, once you get the permit, you're set. That's the hardest one. The bonefish are typically pretty easy. I've had a few different times that we didn't get the tarpon in the morning. We get the permit and the bonefish, and like I said, I'm absolutely obsessed. So as long as my clients are okay with it, I'm like, hey, we're at two out of the three, we're staying out till a sunset bite for tarpon. As long as you're cool with it, I'll give it to you for free, but we're going to stay out and get this.

Tom Rowland: Right. And the tarpon, I hate to leave that one for last because they just come off so much. I mean, it's one thing to be like, I've got a hundred tarpon spots. Man, the jets are starting to fly. They were doing this last night. Full throttle right overhead. But to leave the tarpon for last is my least favorite way to get it, because you may have a bunch of spots, but for whatever reason on that day, when you need them the worst, they just come off a lot of times, or break, or you jump quite a few. Or you get in a great spot, and it's like, this is a really easy spot. But if you jump five, it's not an easy spot anymore. It's a really hard spot. Now they're all boogered up, and it's getting dark, and I don't like doing that.

Brandon Cyr: No, I've definitely been in that position a few different times. I was doing a show with Rick Murphy. Same thing. We jumped a tarpon early in the morning. I was like, no worries, we'll get them later on. Day of September, there's babies everywhere. First permit spot, get our permit, go to the next bonefish spot. I think in thirty minutes we got five. Crushed it. Alright, get all that, let's go start looking for tarpon again. Couldn't find them. And I knew exactly where they were going to be at sunset, so I'm like, oh, it's not that big of a deal. Well, Rick is an amazing fisherman. Very good. I don't know what was going on, but he jumped, like, 18. They're all small. So the smaller ones typically are a lot easier to throw the hook than the big ones. But I was looking at my watch, like, it was 8:35, we have like five minutes of camera light left. And he got one, stuck it good, and kept it. But I was like, oh my god, this is it. Because I was on a roll. I had done, like, five TV shows and caught a slam on every single one. So I was like, I can't break this. We're going bridge fishing if we have to. We're going to go at night and do it. But he pulled through for me.

Tom Rowland: Funny. I had the exact opposite experience with Rick Murphy when I was fishing and did a show with him. He wanted to catch a slam, so I said no problem. And so we go looking for tarpon. Same kind of thing, man. August. They're everywhere usually. For whatever reason, man, I took him to every tarpon spot I knew, I think. And we just kept striking out one after another after another. And he looked at me one time and he was like, look, I know we're kind of competition fishing in these tournaments, but we're fishing on a ship filming a show. I said, man, listen, I'm doing everything I can, I promise you. In fact, I'm doing exactly what I said that I wasn't going to do, which is show you every tarpon spot in the Lower Keys. But for whatever reason, man, it was not happening that day. But the cool thing was that I did tell him, I know a place where the permit follow eagle rays, and he was like, never seen a permit follow an eagle ray. I said, well, I hadn't either, except for this one place. And we went there, and sure enough, a permit followed an eagle ray, and he did catch that. But, yeah, that was a nerve-wracking experience.

Brandon Cyr: Yeah. It's crazy. It really does get your nerves up when the cameras are on, the pressure's on, and you only have a certain window to make it happen. You know, all the shows you do, it's a whole different aspect. But honestly, I love it. I love that drive that makes you push a little bit harder. And every day is tournament day. I do that all the time on social media. I tell my clients, we're doing 50 on the way out to the spots. Like, why are we going so fast? I'm like, because every day is tournament day.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, well, it's a good mindset to get in. One of the things is I caught almost no slams for a while. And then one would just kind of happen. You go out, you catch your tarpon in the morning. You're permit fishing and a bonefish swims by and you catch that. Now you're like, wow, we've got the rest of the day. You catch a permit at the end, and you've got a slam. And it was like this miraculous thing that happened. And it was tournament fishing for me too that really changed a lot. And it was like, okay, I'm not catching slams because I'm not fishing for slams. I'm fishing for my customers. They're having a good time tarpon fishing. There's a lot of tarpon around, so we're staying on the tarpon. And all the while, you're just burning up the tide on the next spot you're trying to go to, and you're burning up these opportunities. The next thing you know, you've messed around at this tarpon spot until 10:30, 11:00. And now you're going to go try to catch the second one. And now you've burned up that tide, and it's just not as good. And so when I started fishing those Redbone slam tournaments and all that, I saw that there was a strategy to it. It's like, okay, as soon as you get your tarpon, you need to be gone immediately. Pull up and leave, because you need as much time as possible to get the second leg done. And then when you get that second leg done, no matter how good it is, you need to be moving. And when I started thinking like that and going 50 between spots, things started happening. And again, going back to the communication, you communicate with your anglers and you're like, okay, if you're telling me your lifetime dream is a slam, then we need to fish a certain way. Meaning we're going to get in these spots, and it's going to be really good. And if we catch one, we're leaving no matter what. And if you're okay with that, great, then that's how you're going to get a slam.

Brandon Cyr: No, definitely. I agree a hundred percent. Most of the time, one of the great things about flats fishing for the most part is the people who come down here to do it, they know exactly what they're getting into before they get down here. They know the challenges of flats fishing. They know the ins and outs of it basically. Most of the time you mention to somebody, sometimes I won't even talk about it the night before, I'll be like, what do you want to target, so I can make a basic game plan. And they're like, tarpon, permit, bonefish, the normal, whatever you can do. I'm like, alright. And then the next day, I'm like, alright, this is what we're going to do. And the way that my brain works, the whole reason I love fishing is like a never-ending chess game. I love getting onto a flat, looking at it, and just studying where the fish are going to be coming from, their patterns, everything. And one of the things I really enjoy doing is sharing that with my clients. So when I go onto a spot, I'll say, hey, so we're going to pull down this edge, this is where I want you to be looking. We've got thirty minutes till that tide gets to point-five. When it gets to point-five, they're going to come around that corner, and that's where they're going to be. Just keep looking right there, and this is what you're going to be looking for. Show them the mud puff with the push. And that way, they feel like they're hunting. They know what they're doing. In my travels, one of the things I noticed a lot of the guides do is you just kind of get on a flat, and they just pull. And then, oh, there's a fish, 10 o'clock. You're like, oh, I'm trying to get there. And so I really like the whole strategy part of it. And most of the time the clients get into it too, because then in their head the wheels are turning. They're like, okay, when that fish comes around. I'll explain to them, alright, and once this tide gets to this level, it's over, we're going to leave and go try to get your permit. And so they already have that mentality, and just the whole process of that makes it fun. Even if you don't get it, it's that challenge. That's the whole reason that we flats fish, is because it's hard. The challenge of it is what drives us. I had a guy the other day, he casted at a permit, followed the fly for like 15 feet and turned off. He's like, I just wish they would eat. I wish they were easier. And I'm like, no, you don't wish they were easier. I'm like, do you like catching sharks? He's like, no, because it's the same thing over and over again. They come and eat. And I'm like, why is that? Because it's too easy. I'm like, exactly. Now that's not saying that catching sharks isn't fun. It's just the next graduation step. Same thing like gun hunting versus bow hunting. After you've shot enough animals with a gun, you're ready to move on to the bow.

The Confidence Game: Catching Permit

Tom Rowland: Right. I just did a little podcast, we do this How-To Tuesday, and the whole thing was about catching permit on fly or spin or whatever you're catching them on. And I just noticed that so many anglers do what that guy's saying. He throws at it, and he's just fishing. Deep down, he really doesn't expect the fish to eat. He doesn't have any confidence. Well, I don't know about that particular guy, but for the most part, in that kind of scenario, they don't have any confidence that the fish is going to bite because they've never caught one before. And everyone they throw at does kind of the same thing. And it's a different deal when you get somebody who has caught a hundred. And he throws at them, and it's like, this thing is supposed to eat. I'm going to make it eat. And there's confidence. And if you just throw at the fish with no confidence, you're probably not going to catch very many.

Brandon Cyr: No. That's one of the most accurate things I've ever heard about permit fishing. So one of my really close friends is Nathaniel Linville of the Angling Company. And I know when we leave the dock, we're catching a permit on fly that day. And, like, it bothered me for a little while, because I love catching a permit on fly. And I'd push them. First fish, he'd just be like, stop the boat. We wouldn't even communicate. He's got it so down that I don't need to say, okay, 11 o'clock, 60 feet, current's pulling to the left, drop six feet right of him. I don't even have to say anything. I just stop the boat. He starts his cast, and it looks like every other single person putting a fish out, then he comes tight every time. It's one of those things. He has the confidence. He's, I think, like a hundred. I think when we were in Cuba, he got number one-eighty while we were down there on fly. And it's that confidence that you're putting it where it needs to be every time, because the adrenaline, you calm yourself down. It's kind of like buck fever. You get all excited. Permit don't make me shake when I cast at them. I don't realize it until after. But when I hook one and I get to the reel, I'm looking around, like, oh my god, it happened. And that definitely accelerates the process a little bit more when you're more confident about it and you take them off the pedestal. Yes, they're hard, but it is obtainable. You can get them.

Tom Rowland: Plenty of fish are harder than permit on occasion. You can go and fish for bonefish in certain places, and they're way harder than permit. I can take you to a place where they have a lot of redfish tournaments, and these redfish are way harder than permit. They're damn near uncatchable, especially if you're in shallow water. And you're like, these are redfish, we should be catching these things. But they're super hard to catch. You move the rod and they blow out. It's very, very hard. I mean, if fish get really pressured, they get really hard to catch. I don't care what species they are. So the permit, I don't think that it's that hard to catch. You guys are going to have to excuse the jets. The navy is going nuts right over our heads right now. But I don't think they're that hard to catch. I think that more often people get really intimidated by the permit, and guides as well. Like, oh my god, there's a permit. And then everybody's freaking out talking to those. It's loud and you're yelling and everything's going on. Whereas you've been tarpon fishing all morning, and it's like, there's another one coming at eleven, and everybody's calm. You go in there. Oh, I can't believe you didn't bite. Like, okay. That's how you should act with permit.

Brandon Cyr: So I actually had a funny thing happen with Nathaniel. He was the one who taught me this. We were out fishing one day, and I go, okay, here comes a permit. And he turned around, and he goes, you still call him permit? And I was like, what do you mean? He goes, next time when you're on a charter with a client, even though they have a permit... And so that's good advice. Honestly, I would say 80% of the time that we catch a permit, the client doesn't actually see it, because they're already hard to see in the water over grass and stuff like that. So you don't have a whole lot of time. So a lot of times, they're casting and you're coaching them to it. So if you're just saying, alright, I've got a fish out here at eleven, go ahead and start your cast, alright, six more feet left, five feet further, alright, drop it right there, slow strip, drop...

Tom Rowland: Now, see, that could be a lot better for them, because they don't see it and they're just doing what you say. Whereas if they did see it and you're just like, put it on his nose, and then he's looking at it, and then he gets all wobbly, and next thing you know, he's white-knuckled on the rod too, and it goes exactly where it isn't supposed to go.

Brandon Cyr: Adrenaline kicks in, you forget. I'd say the biggest thing is people rushing the cast. They see that fish 60 feet out. They rush their back cast. All of a sudden their loop's falling apart. They're losing tension because they're just so excited. They want it so bad. And it's crazy because, so here's a funny story for you. I lost 12 permit on fly before I landed one. Number 13 was my lucky one.

Tom Rowland: Really? Lucky number 13.

Brandon Cyr: So when I finally landed that last one, I was at the point where I almost stopped fishing for them on fly, because I was so frustrated. And when it happened, I had gotten so concentrated on studying how they ate, just watching them, how everything went, trying to put it in the perfect spot every time, which is what you want to do. But the first one I caught, the fish was swimming away from me, sixty, seventy feet out. And I was like, whatever, I'm just going to throw a long cast, just kind of blow them out of here, I'm done with this fish. Fly landed, like, six feet to the right, five feet past, horrible cast. Started stripping real quick to pick it up. He turned real hard. I just stopped, and he came over and ate it. And I was just like, that was so easy. And that's the thing. Once you start getting the confidence and you realize that if it's presented right, most of the time they're going to eat.

Tom Rowland: What's your feeling about somebody that's had a hard time catching a permit, either somebody that's had a hard time catching it for years and they haven't caught one on fly, or somebody that's new into the sport. What's your feeling about having them catch one on a crab first?

Brandon Cyr: I think that all really comes down to the person. I definitely am a big advocate for that. Because there's so much about it that depends on your casting.

Tom Rowland: Spin casting or fly casting?

Brandon Cyr: Fly casting. Most of the time people come down, they're like, hey, this is my first time saltwater fly fishing. I've been dreaming to catch a permit. A lot of people don't realize that you're no longer in a 10-foot trout stream. You're casting at a target that's moving with current, with wind, sixty, seventy feet.

Tom Rowland: With a heavy fly. That throws people off.

Brandon Cyr: Exactly. A whole different rod, and just the whole process of it. And I'm like, look, just to enjoy this beautiful fish, catch one. Get it off your bucket list, and then it also does the calmness. Because then you get the guy who hasn't caught one for twenty years. Like, I just had a guy last week who lives here. He's been trying. He's 72 years old. He's never caught a permit on fly. And he's been talking to me forever, saying, if you ever get great fishing. And I had phenomenal fishing about a week ago. I think we caught, like, eight permit in the week. I texted him, and I was like, hey, if you have tomorrow afternoon off, we have the right tide, let's go. First thing, a school of, like, twenty, ten-pounders. Mud and real hard coming at us. Makes a good cast. Fish comes over and inhales it, and he's midway on a strip. And I said, alright, he ate it, hit him. And he was so nervous about getting a good set on him that he let go of the line with his left hand and reached back up toward the guides to grab it. And by then, the crab blew. And he watched the whole thing happen. He blew the fly out of his mouth. And he turned around and looked at me. He's like, I don't even know why I did that. I know in my mind that is the wrong thing to do. I don't know why, it's just strip tight. And he's gotten so worked up over so many years. It's that mental block. And then he ended up doing the same thing to another fish, like a 30-pounder, which would have been one of the bigger ones I've ever guided to on fly. Fish came up, ate it, and just paused. And I was like, strip. But he didn't see that fish. He's like, I don't feel anything. And I was like, just strip. And right when I said that, he saw the same thing. He saw the fish blow the fly out, and he just put his hands on his head and looked back. He's like, I'm so sorry, I just can't. And so I feel like if you catch that one on crab, it kind of gets your confidence built up, gets it out of the way, and then you're going for the next thing.

Tom Rowland: For sure. But you also got to see it eat. Like that guy, he's been fishing for how long and he's never really seen one eat before. He doesn't know what he's even trying to get them to do with the fly. And if you throw a fresh crab out there that's kicking and screaming, and the fish comes over and eats it just like he's supposed to, that's what you're trying to get out of him with the fly. But mostly, they throw it in there in the wrong spot. The fly looks like a dead crab. They come over there, they kind of look at it, and they keep going.

Brandon Cyr: Yeah. Well, that's the whole concept. I have people all the time that ask me, hey, I'm coming down to the Keys permit fishing. I'm going to do it myself. How do I strip for permit? And it's like, well, that's hard to say, because there's a million different scenarios: how that fish is behaving, which direction he's heading, which way the current's going, the bottom you're on, all this stuff. So the advantage you're right about having the crab, if you catch a few on crab, you get to watch them and how they behave and how they eat, how a crab swims, what a crab looks like when it's evading a permit.

Tom Rowland: Right. How excited they get when the crab is doing what crabs do and moving naturally and rarely spooking. But do you ever have somebody that is having trouble with it, and they're having trouble fly casting to it, and you offer the spinning rod, and they gladly accept, and they pick it up, and they're so bad that you just give them back the fly rod? Because they never spin fished before. That always happened to me a lot. And I'm like, wow, you've never spin fished before. And they're like, no, I've never done it. It's like, we're going to do better with a fly rod.

Brandon Cyr: Yeah, I've had that happen. It gets to the point where I'm like, alright, well, if you're going to make a shitty cast either way, the live bait's got a higher chance of getting eaten.

Coaching, Not Yelling: Guide-Client Communication

Brandon Cyr: But the thing is, it's funny how you're talking about communicating. This is a conversation that I've had lately with a lot of different people, because I've noticed a huge thing between me and my clients and the new clientele that I've been picking up as of recent: the guide speaking to the client on the bow. It's weird. It's a touchy subject for me because I feel bad, but I have acquired so many amazing clients lately that have left their older guides that they've been fishing with for ten years, because the older guy is screaming at them when they mess up. And I played competitive sports my whole life. I have never been yelled at and performed better. And so that's a huge thing. You get all these guys that start yelling. They mess up a fly cast. Oh, man, that was a perfect shot, you really messed that up. I mean, I hear some crazy stories.

Tom Rowland: For sure.

Brandon Cyr: And that doesn't make the guy perform any better.

Tom Rowland: Rarely does it ever make anyone perform better, just like yourself. It's just like you're talking about. It doesn't work with your kids. It doesn't work with your clients. But you might have some people that are positively motivated by at least an increase in tone or something. Like, you've got to do this one right. Okay, okay, now I'm going to concentrate, I'm going to do this one right, or something. But that was kind of the similar thing. You see that either with guides that really want to impress somebody back at the dock, or younger guides that just want it to happen so bad. And it's coming from a good place, and they're frustrated. They just want it to happen so bad for this angler, and they just let it go. And it doesn't come out right. And then it happens repeatedly, and that's not good for the reputation.

Brandon Cyr: No, absolutely. The way that I look at it is that we're not commercial fishing out there. I've done a lot of commercial fishing. We're on the flats. We're not commercial fishing. We're there because it's fun.

Tom Rowland: Supposed to be.

Brandon Cyr: Supposed to be. If you go out flats fishing and you don't have a good time, whether you catch fish or you get skunked, you're doing something wrong. You should be enjoying your time on the water. Most of my clients have become friends of mine. I know the names of their dogs or kids, check up frequently, and that's what it's all about. The fish is a bonus. We're all out there to catch them, but at the end of the day, we're doing it because we love it and we enjoy it, and that's what makes us obsessed.

Getting Into Cuba: The Trip of a Lifetime

Tom Rowland: That's awesome. Well, before we run out of time, I want to talk to you about your Cuba trip. You just got back from Cuba. What was that like?

Brandon Cyr: Cuba. Well, first of all...

Tom Rowland: Why did you go?

Brandon Cyr: So I walked into a very fortunate situation. A trip had been donated to BTT through the Avalon group. And out of the 10 guys that paid for it, five of them couldn't go. So I got, like, a week's heads up. Hey, we're trying to go down there. We want some experienced anglers to come too. We're trying to get some fin clippings for tarpon and do some research and stuff like that. You're familiar with our protocol in the Keys. Can you go?

Tom Rowland: That's a pretty good phone call.

Brandon Cyr: Well, it actually got to Nathaniel, and Nathaniel was like, oh, can I bring my friend Brandon? And then they're like, yeah, we use Brandon in the Keys for everything. So it worked out perfect. And so we went down there, and that's how we got in with the whole visa, was through the Bonefish Tarpon Trust for research purposes and everything like that, doing a lot of work with the local guides and stuff like that.

Tom Rowland: So let's talk about the way that you get into the country. They had, like, some kind of a scientific research visa or something like that for this particular trip that allowed just a regular person, not a scientist, to go with them.

Brandon Cyr: Exactly. Yep. Because it had already been in place back in April, was when it was actually paid for, and the visa was in place then. And then when it changed in July, the visa still carried through. I believe it's still open, though. I get people who want to go.

Tom Rowland: I get varying reports, and I know some people that have gone and then some people that said they wanted to go, and then I don't know. What about the travel down there to the boat? I talked to another two or three different people, because I'm extremely interested in this trip because I really want to go. Cuba to me, that is a lifetime place for me. I want to go so bad.

Brandon Cyr: Being in the Keys, like...

Tom Rowland: That's 90 miles. It's right there.

Brandon Cyr: How many clients ever, I mean, it's almost a daily thing. Oh, have you ever been to Cuba? And I was always like, no, but I've always wanted to go. And now I'll go make the trip. But it's pretty crazy. When you fly in, we flew out of Fort Lauderdale, and we first hit the coast of Cuba. I was expecting just buildings, population, imagine kind of like Havana. For almost the entire flight, it was just farmland for the entire flight over Cuba.

Tom Rowland: Mountains. I've flown over Cuba too, but it's really high. Like, I haven't gone in to land.

Brandon Cyr: So the area that we came through, we never saw the mountains. We were flying real low under the clouds, and when we landed, it was pretty incredible to see the poverty that was there. I never ever imagined that they had it as bad as they did, just as far as supplies and stuff like that. It was really cool getting to see all the old cars and everything, but just when you're driving through the towns, and the college, it looks like rundown buildings. Nothing's been painted in thirty, forty years. But the Avalon group did an amazing job. They had this really nice bus that picked us up. We landed in Camaguey, and we're going...

Tom Rowland: That's your first landing?

Brandon Cyr: First landing. That's the only landing. It was a direct flight. And then from there, you take a bus from Camaguey to, I think it's called Jucaro.

Tom Rowland: How long was that bus ride?

Brandon Cyr: Like, three and a half, four hours. It's a long ride.

Tom Rowland: So far, we're consistent with my buddy's trip as well.

Brandon Cyr: And you want to talk about interesting, though? Those drivers, there's no road rules there. They're going, two buses on dirt roads at 60 miles an hour. It was pretty intense, but it was a really fun experience. When they're going through the streets, people are picking their bicycles up and laying against the wall, because the bus is going so close to them, but there's just no room in the street. It was really crazy. And then we got to do a little bit of shopping. We stopped at a little cigar place, get to try to talk to people a little bit. I'm horrible with Spanish. So it didn't work out very well for me.

Tom Rowland: Did you have some Spanish speakers?

Brandon Cyr: Nathaniel was the only one.

Tom Rowland: Is he pretty fluent?

Brandon Cyr: Fluent, yep.

Tom Rowland: Because Dan Diaz is with us this week, shooting. We went to El Siboney last night, and he's super fluent, man.

Brandon Cyr: Yeah. Dan's awesome.

Tom Rowland: He's a good guy. Not only super fluent, but he was born in Cuba. So he's a guy you'd want to take.

Brandon Cyr: Yeah, for sure. The one thing I will say about Cuba is that the people there, it blew my mind how friendly everybody was.

Tom Rowland: Really?

Brandon Cyr: I did not have a single negative encounter with anyone. Anywhere else that I've been, if somebody doesn't speak the same language as you, they kind of look offended that you don't speak their language, or they just don't give you the time of day, brush you off as soon as you try speaking to them. They genuinely wanted to have a conversation with me and talk to me, and they tried. And it ended up being a bunch of awkward hand symbols, and I was trying to figure out what the other one wanted. But I was super impressed with everyone there.

Jardines de la Reina: The Mothership and the Fishery

Tom Rowland: So once you take that bus ride in, then you're getting onto this mothership?

Brandon Cyr: Yep. So I think it was probably about a 120, 130 foot. I'm not sure. It's, like, four stories. They have four of these motherships. Two are dedicated to fishing and two are dedicated to diving, because they have some of the most unbelievable reefs I've ever seen in my life.

Tom Rowland: Did you get in the water when you were there?

Brandon Cyr: I didn't, but the water is so clear. And you're going to lose it when I tell you what happened when we were fishing there. It's just unbelievable. So you take, I think it was 50 miles to Jardines de la Reina, which is like the whole south side there.

Tom Rowland: And that's like a long, like a Florida Keys kind of chain of islands off the east side of Cuba, right?

Brandon Cyr: Exactly.

Tom Rowland: And it's basically, the Florida Keys are 150 miles, so this is 80 miles. So basically you've got the Florida Keys underneath Cuba.

Brandon Cyr: Exactly. And it was all part of an ecological reserve. It's a national park for them. So imagine if you took from Islamorada to the Marquesas and you only allowed about maybe eight to nine fishing guides to fish that. That would be amazing. It was unbelievable. And so you get there, you get to the anchoring spot the first morning, and I'm a super early riser being a fishing guide. So I wake up at, like, 5:30 before the sun comes up, and I walk back, they said coffee at six upstairs. I walk back on the back deck. I look, and there's, like, six tarpon sitting there in the lights. So, of course, I'm off. It's not a small boat. I get my flow on. I'm casting off the back, first cast, stick like a 30-pounder. Fighting them, jumping. Some of the fishing guides come out from below deck, and they're freaking out. They're like, oh, man, let me help you, because we had no way, some of them didn't speak English. They didn't know I was a fishing guide. I was like, no, it's alright, I got it. But they were like, alright, good start to the day. That was my first morning in Cuba. We made a run up to fish some of the flats, and it was just unbelievable. It's if you took the Everglades, combined it with our Keys flats, and then threw in our entire reef system a hundred feet off the flats.

Tom Rowland: So you bring in the Everglades to that because there's some rivers flowing out from the mainland?

Brandon Cyr: A lot of, like, lagoon stuff. There was, like, a little bit of, not really brackish water. I guess you could say it's kind of brackish. But you would go from the most pristine, on the south side of it on the flats, just these giant massive coral heads, abundant with life. 300 yards out, it drops off to, like, a thousand feet. So then you have this whole coral reef and then these grass flats that look just like our south side grass flats here. You go to Islamorada, anywhere like that, beautiful turtle grass, everything, sand. And then you go up on just the north side of the mangroves and it turns into this really soft mud grass bottom, and there's just little, it's almost like tidal pools. You get all these tiny, there's just islands everywhere, hundreds of thousands of these little mangrove clusters that are like brand new. They're only two feet wide by two feet tall, but you start pulling through there once the tide comes up, and it's the first place I've ever seen that has bonefish and tarpon together. So you'd be pulling in six inches of water and then you'd come to this little, right in the middle of, there's hundreds of these little holes in the flats, kind of like a stingray dig-out. And sitting in this little hole would be two or three tarpon between ten and twenty pounds, and swimming among them is a dozen bonefish from three to nine pounds. And it was just absurd, because they're not scared. Most of these fish, it's the first time they've ever seen a fly in their life. It got to the point where one of the days with a guy, just to make it fun, we were only throwing gurglers and stuff. But then we'd take a line of fish in the hole, get them to blow out, so as they're running away, I would do a long, like, 80-foot cast out in front of them, start stripping, and they would stop, turn, and eat. And one day we did, like, 30-something tarpon, like 18 bones between the two of us. Absolutely insane.

Tom Rowland: So how much was the mothership moving through this big area?

Brandon Cyr: So it started off, the first night we fished down on the furthest west end of it, and we kind of bumped our way up. And they're like, another ship's going to be down there at the end towards the east side. And so we kind of fished all the way up. Once we got up to the east side, we had horrible weather, super windy, kind of cloudy the first day. And then once we got up there, it was blowing every morning. It was blowing 20 every morning for some reason.

Tom Rowland: What direction?

Brandon Cyr: I'm all thrown. I would say east. It was blowing out of the east. Similar to us, blowing, like, 20. But then every single night, it would be slick calm.

Tom Rowland: Really?

Brandon Cyr: Yeah. Guaranteed. From 20 to slick calm by the sunset.

Tom Rowland: That direction that you're saying was east, is that an onshore wind or an offshore? Like, is it blowing from the land to the ocean or from the ocean to the land, or just straight down the side?

Brandon Cyr: It was really weird in that it was almost like a swirling effect. The guide would go, because, you know, when you plan to run with clients, I'm gonna hug this shoreline. We were getting our asses kicked a few times, and I'm just like, man, I hope this guy dips to the north side. Then he'd dip to the north side. We get on the north side, and it's just as rough. And I'm like, it's coming out of a completely different direction. Like, what's going on here? I think it's just because there's so much current movement and tide that the waves just stack up on either side. But it seemed like it was coming almost east-northeast a little bit. But it was great.

Tom Rowland: Wow. And so over how many days did you fish?

Brandon Cyr: Six.

Tom Rowland: So six days, did you make it from the West End to the East End?

Brandon Cyr: Well, the first day, we went all the way from the West End to the East End and then spent all the days except for the last one up at the East End. From my understanding, the East End is like the better part of the fishery, the way that the preserve is. They've had a mothership down in the West End for a long time. It's like a house that they've built there, and it's all in the water. It's like a barge. And then they've just recently in the last, like, eight years gotten the extension all the way up, because they've seen what it can do and how much the fish are coming back. Because I guess this used to not always be as good as it is right now. And I think that is a strange reason why our bonefish is so good.

The Science of the Fishery: BTT, Gill Nets, and the Bonefish Boom

Tom Rowland: I'd like to talk to you about that too. But do you think that maybe it's becoming better in their opinion because they're getting better anglers down there that are catching more fish? Or do you think that it actually is getting better?

Brandon Cyr: I think it's actually getting better. Mainly just from the few conversations I was able to have with the guides. The average income down there is, like, $20 a month. And then so you start getting all these fishing guides going down there and tipping them a hundred dollars a day and everything like this. They start realizing how valuable these fish are. Cuba used to gill net bonefish, used to kill tarpon. To them, it just didn't matter. It was an endless resource. And the education wasn't there. And then you get groups like Bonefish Tarpon Trust that get involved, which helps because the scientists want to do it, but there's a huge gap between scientists and fishermen even here in the Keys.

Tom Rowland: Oh, yes.

Brandon Cyr: It's nonstop. So then, I think what happened is, take Cuba, for example. The Bonefish Tarpon Trust kind of was the buffer in between the two. And the government got involved as well. And everybody was pissed when they first closed that. Because when the commercial fishermen go off to fish there, they don't get paid if they bring back 500 pounds or 1,500 pounds, they're getting paid the same either way. But then they started realizing that all these people that are coming over and fishing, the more fun they have, the more they tip. And so they start getting to understand the process of how valuable a single bonefish is.

Tom Rowland: So do you think that that message is getting through to the Cuban government, or do you think it's, I mean, it's obviously getting through to the people that run the Avalon deal?

Brandon Cyr: I think it's kind of going all around. Because they were very friendly, and the government seemed like everybody wanted it. Because the fact that they extended that preserve I think is kind of a sign of showing them how important the resource is.

Tom Rowland: And so Bonefish Tarpon Trust is helping with the communication.

Brandon Cyr: Yep. Basically giving them the science, showing them. Because at first we had this really cool presentation by one of the local scientists there. And actually one of the people that works on the Avalon is another scientist who's also helping out with this. And so BTT kind of helps show them what type of acoustic tags, how to do the surgeries, how to do the DNA. Because they've basically been able to find that the bonefish and tarpon in Cuba have the same DNA thumbprint that the Keys bonefish do. Because when I was growing up, I was always told that bonefish migrate back and forth between the Bahamas and Key West, and that's why they weren't here in the winter. When it turned out, that's not the fact. Bonefish live in about a five-mile down here in the Keys. Five miles would be a grand scale in their entire lifetime, besides when they go offshore to spawn. And so what happens is they go offshore to spawn out on the Gulf Stream. Most of the larvae, the fertilized eggs, get blown up to Key Biscayne, Bimini, and all the Bahamas and everything like that. And a few might drift back in and end up down here, but a primary resource of where our bonefish are coming from is Mexico, Cuba, all these areas, the way the current's pulling through. And I think that's why, when I grew up, finding bonefish down here was a challenge.

Tom Rowland: Very hard.

Brandon Cyr: Like, I remember...

Tom Rowland: When you grew up, it was probably when I was a guide. Yeah. And it was very difficult to find bonefish. There were a couple little schools out west. Other than that, you had to go to Jewfish Basin or further east to find them. And the only ones that were there, there were no little fish. They were all very large fish. And it was a real challenge to find one under eight pounds. If you'd just wouldn't catch any, or you'd catch a big one. And even if you caught a big one, you wouldn't catch many. And so many things have changed. Like, now the bonefish in here is ripping.

Brandon Cyr: No, it's unbelievable. That's, I remember I used to work at Tony Murphy's fly shop, Saltwater Angler, in high school, and people would call and be like, I want to crush bonefish. And I'd be like, look, as much as I would love to set you up with somebody down here, if you're planning your trip specifically off bonefish, go to Islamorada, Key Biscayne, or the Bahamas. We just don't have them. You could go out, if you get five shots, it'd be a great day.

Tom Rowland: Well, permit.

Brandon Cyr: Yeah, or permit. Exactly. But it's gotten to the point now where if I don't catch four or five bones on a half day, I'm like, man, I suck. Seems like almost every flat has bonefish on them.

Tom Rowland: The work that you've done with BTT, what's the explanation? It's the larvae coming up from Mexico, Cuba?

Brandon Cyr: Yep. They've stopped gill netting. I think that's a huge part of it.

Tom Rowland: Okay. So areas like Cuba have stopped gill netting. Mexico has stopped gill netting.

Brandon Cyr: Yeah, I believe so. I'm not 100% sure exactly. I know certain parts have. I don't know the exact areas, but that's basically the consensus, is they stopped gill netting, they stopped killing them, they made them a sport fish. Kind of like the Bahamas.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. I think that's one of the most exciting things about somebody like BTT putting all this together. Because it's one thing, when you were growing up and when I started guiding here, you'd go out to the Marquesas and there'd be people gill netting out there. Like, they would be waiting around, and I didn't know what they were doing. And I just showed up, so I didn't feel like it was my place to be like, what are these people doing? They looked like they knew what they were doing. And they've got a gill net. They're going around right on the floor where you bonefish, man. And they're catching everything that's there. And that wasn't good. And so that ended up stopping. But where I see the real excitement is a group like that putting together this different research that shows that, look, it's one thing to stop the gill netting in your own area. But if you can somehow influence the government in Cuba or in Mexico, you can have these unbelievable benefits maybe up and down the Keys. Certainly it seems like that's what's happened in Key West. Because listen, it's not just stopping that one little operation where they were gill netting out in the Marquesas. That's not what created this. Of course, we've had a lot of different hurricanes. We've had a lot of different storms. We've had a lot of different situations with the 2010 cold front that killed so many fish in the Northern Keys, and there's just a lot of things that have happened. How do you put your finger on what it was that caused what I consider a bonefish explosion in a certain area? But it only makes sense to me that it's something bigger than anything that we're doing right here.

Brandon Cyr: No, absolutely. That's what, not only do they have the DNA proof, but they also have current proof. The tide and the currents are literally pushing straight into the Keys. So all those larvae, because they'll both spawn on, like, 800 feet of water a lot of times, all that's getting blown straight into us. And I think it's worked out great because it's a win-win for everybody. The Cuban government, the people, tourists are going to come there more, they're going to want to spend the money more. So the local population, the fishing guides, they're getting paid from it. People are enjoying it, and then it helps us. It helps the Bahamas. It's really cool having an organization that's more than just politics for once. It's actually about the fish and preserving the fish, which is amazing. That's why I love helping them down here do their research, finding where our permit spawn to try to protect them, and we're currently trying to find where bonefish spawn down here. We have a pretty good idea. We put quite a few acoustic tags on them, and we find these different, because right now we don't even know what time of year they spawn. It's like conditions are right and they go.

Tagging, Spawning Sites, and Fish Handling

Tom Rowland: Right.

Brandon Cyr: When it's the right moon and everything like that. So we're trying to find the different spawning sites where they leave from. We have a general idea of different areas that they do it. Because you'll go pick up a big bone, and there'll be a school of 500 in six feet of water, and I always thought they were mullet muds. Before I would drive right over them. And I started realizing, oh my god, these are bonefish. And you go to release them, when you pull them over, it'll put a bunch of sperm out in the water. And I was like, holy crap. At first I didn't say anything for two or three years. And then I started dealing with BTT a lot, and dealing with Ross. And he was like, man, we've been dying to find where we think these fish are spawning, because he gets pre-spawn aggregation for permit and anything else. And I was like, what would happen? He's like, oh, there'd be these males that basically get up in, like, five, six feet of water, mud real hard, big groups of them, just feeding, getting energy, and then as soon as the sun goes down, they're heading offshore. I was like, would they be releasing sperm? Is this something they just carry with them? He's like, no. Pre-spawn.

Tom Rowland: Super interesting. Because, like, the mullet muds in the backcountry, those were mullet muds because we didn't have the bonefish back there. But that's super interesting that you're finding that, and then that they're confirming, like, yeah, that's the behavior that we're looking for. And everybody's just running over it like it's a mullet mud.

Brandon Cyr: Which hopefully stays that way. Maybe not now.

Tom Rowland: Well, I would think that anybody that's listening to this is interested in the bonefish, not only just catching them, but...

Brandon Cyr: That's also another huge thing I'd like to bring up, on the conservation side of it, is also just the etiquette and the handling of bonefish has changed so dramatically since I was a kid and since you were guiding. Chumming for bonefish used to be, like, the number one way of catching bonefish, because they were so scarce. And I can remember being on the boat while chumming was happening, and it feels like almost every other bonefish he caught, the hook was down the hatch.

Tom Rowland: That has to kill them.

Brandon Cyr: Yeah. They can't pass that. And there's so many different things. Another thing that BTT has proven is that if you hold a bonefish out of the water longer than ninety seconds, its chance of survival is decreased by fifty percent in ninety seconds. And fortunately, due to social media and everything, it's not cool anymore to show a picture of a bonefish laying in your lap. The awesome picture is a fish sitting on top of the water. If you do pick them up, pick them up for five seconds, get your picture, set them back in the water. And I think that's huge. Like, I really realized that because I had so many bonefish that would be weak when I first started guiding. I'd throw them in the livewell, let them recuperate, then release them. Then once I started doing the work with the BTT guys and we were putting in the acoustic tags and taking fin clippings, if you leave them in the water, they're pretty hardy. Turn them upside down, they go into the trance. You perform surgery on them. And at first, I was like, this thing's going to die. There's no way. I've watched so many kick off, go five feet, and turn belly up. When you leave them in the water, they'll perform a ten-minute surgery on them, turn them over, and that fish, boom, bolts out of there.

Tom Rowland: That's super interesting. Do they have any kind of oxygen in the livewell or anything like that?

Brandon Cyr: They're keeping them in the water. In the actual, they're doing it in the ocean.

Tom Rowland: So you catch them, how?

Brandon Cyr: Conventional. We all jump in, conventional or fly. I normally throw flies.

Tom Rowland: You mean, like, hook and line?

Brandon Cyr: Hook and line. Flip them over. And we typically pick places that have high current. If the water's over 82 or 85 degrees, we won't even do it. Because that's another thing. Lactic acid builds up a lot faster in the heat, there's not as much oxygen in the hot water. So we try to do it in cool water, and basically make a little incision by the anal fin, slide that little acoustic sounder in, which is about the size of a triple-A battery, slide it in, sew them back up, turn them over, and let them go. And they have different, basically, that fish swims within a hundred meters of which they have set up and down the flat. And then it's pretty cool, because not just the ones that BTT has will pick them up. It's NOAA's, FWC's. There's literally thousands of these different up and down the coast. So it's really cool to be able to see these.

Tom Rowland: So how far, on some of the acoustic tags, are they picking up any that were, like, tagged in Biscayne Bay or any of them that are tagged in Islamorada?

Brandon Cyr: No. So that's kind of how they've gotten to find out where those bonefish, because we, I mean, that was probably two, three years ago that we started putting those acoustic tags in. I haven't really seen the data from that. I know that they still are firm believers. And a lot of spots, a bonefish lives on a flat, it can be the size of a house, and that fish will be there every single day. And they did a lot of that through the DNA clippings. And I was taking 10 DNA clippings a day, and the recapture studies, they found that the bonefish are being recaptured five years later on the exact same flat to within a hundred yards. So they pretty much spend their entire adult life there.

Tom Rowland: Have you seen recapture studies where a fish is captured multiple times? Like, maybe five or six times?

Brandon Cyr: The most I've ever heard of was three.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. But that shows that it works when you release them, and that you handle them properly.

Brandon Cyr: Exactly. I think that mostly has to do with just the fact that the science is relatively new. Because a bonefish, they don't know this, but if you get to a 10-pound bonefish in the Keys, it's typically about 20 years old, which is interesting because a 10-pound bonefish in the Bahamas is 25 years old. That our bonefish here actually grow faster than the Bahamas bonefish do.

Tom Rowland: Wonder why that is?

Brandon Cyr: I've had a couple different discussions with the guys who work there about what they think it is. It could be nutrition. There's less fish on a more abundant seagrass.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. So we would have less fish here on more abundant seagrass. And over there, I mean, you fished over there, I fished over there, there are a hundred times more fish. A thousand times more fish. And when you're flying over the Bahamas to get to whichever island you want, you look down and there's just mud after mud after mud that are miles long, and those are bonefish. And we don't see that here. Not like that.

Brandon Cyr: It's like taking, you put three cattle in a hundred acres of open grass, they're going to do well, versus taking a thousand cattle in that same amount.

Tom Rowland: I could see that. I could see that that would cause that. I mean, I don't know about how fast they grow or anything, that's super interesting, but twenty-five years to twenty years, either way, that fish is really old.

Brandon Cyr: Yeah, takes a long time.

Handling Fish Right: Nets, Hook Removal, and Letting Them Go

Tom Rowland: When you're catching five, six fish on a charter these days, what's the size variation?

Brandon Cyr: Honestly, it's very rare that we catch small ones. And that's why a lot of my clients, one of the reasons why they love coming here, especially like August, September, October, our bonefish is phenomenal. You can catch 15 in a day.

Tom Rowland: So if you catch 15 in a day, they'd be between what sizes?

Brandon Cyr: Four being on the small end, being generous, to seven to eight pounds. I would say our typical cookie-cutter size, anywhere you go there's a species cookie-cutter size, I'd say ours is six pounds.

Tom Rowland: So the cookie-cutter size, that's what I was getting at with the handling of them. When you're catching a lot of fish that are basically the same size, you need a picture of one of them. Like, you don't need a picture of every single one that is just a frog's hair larger than the last one. And that's where you get the mishandling of the fish. It's like, oh, let's get another picture of that one. Let's get another picture of that one. As opposed to using a landing net with friendly netting material. So it's either, the rubber is really nice for fish, like rubber netting, or the netting that doesn't have the knots in it. And if you land that fish, you cut down on the fighting time substantially.

Brandon Cyr: Unbelievable.

Tom Rowland: And then you just leave the fish in the net, reach down there, and grab nothing but the fly or the hook and pull it out, and just let that fish swim out of the net. You've probably helped that fish out more than you would ever know.

Brandon Cyr: It's unbelievable. So Benny Blanco was the one who got me on that. I had been in a rut. I never used one in a tournament. I was like, oh, no, I've got a gold-cup grip. I work out a lot. That fish isn't getting away. I'm going to grab that permit's tail, and he's not going away from me. And then when I filmed the show with Benny, first time I ever used a landing net, fish was six feet out, scoop. And I was like, oh my god.

Tom Rowland: As opposed to taking three more turns around the boat.

Brandon Cyr: Three more turns, ten to fifteen more minutes of fighting, and then you increase the chances of it getting eaten by a shark. All these different things. And then we kept it in the net, took the hook out. And one of the biggest things that I hate is fish flops.

Tom Rowland: People pop up to the deck.

Brandon Cyr: And they drop it on the deck, and you're just like, oh.

Tom Rowland: It's unintentional, but, man, it's really slippery.

Brandon Cyr: People don't realize it. But if you got them over the net in the water, you pick them up, hold them over the net, snap your picture, set them right back down in the net. If they slip out of your hands, they're going right there. Fish is going to be healthy.

Tom Rowland: And, again, back to the communication. If you can get this across to your client, like, look, fishing's good, man. The weather's great. We're probably going to catch a lot of fish. They're all going to be real close to the same size. So let's kind of land one quick, we'll get the picture. And then from then on, if it's okay with you, we'll just let them go real quick.

Brandon Cyr: Well, you can also kind of, as a guide, give a little bit of a joking atmosphere to it too, and be like, do you really want to picture this one, or do you want to wait till we get a bigger one? You can hint to it. Most people are like, yeah, yeah, let's get a bigger one.

Tom Rowland: If you get the first one and you're like, well, you got your picture. Okay? So everybody's happy, right? And not to say it's a sacrificial fish, but it's the one fish out of the day that's going to get the picture, unless you catch a really big one. But then if you can do that thing in the landing net where you just leave them in the net, man, it makes such a big difference.

Brandon Cyr: It's huge. And there's so many other ways to look at it too. Like, I'm a statistics guy. With the whole chess game thing and everything with that strategy, I enjoy telling my clients, hey, they've proven that if you hold these fish out of the water for longer than ninety seconds, it's probably going to die. So here's how we're going to do this. We're going to do this fast. And after they hear that, for the most part, they don't even want a picture of the next fish unless it's a monster. Like, no, no, I don't, because it brought them so much joy catching that fish that they want to let it go. They understand that's the healthy way to let the fish go.

Tom Rowland: It's super awesome to have a statistic. That's a pretty powerful statistic. It's cut and dry. Ninety seconds basically kills a fish. So what about if they never leave the water and you never touch them? Like, is that a 3000% increase in the ability of it to live? But it's all catch and release. Everybody's talking about catch and release, and you feel good about catch and release. But you want to do it in a way that it's actually working, because it's rough out there, man. There are sharks, like, a lot of sharks. And if that fish is compromised even at all, it's going to get eaten. So if you drop it on the deck and it swims off, I don't know, it makes it that much easier for a shark to catch it. And it's already pretty easy for a shark to catch it.

Brandon Cyr: Yeah. And there's other things too. One of the big things with the BTT guys that I learned was, when you go to release a bonefish, you take the hook out, don't ever use pliers. If you have to use pliers to get it out of their mouth, just leave it. Because a lot of times what happens is their mouth is so soft and rubbery that you should be able to pop it out with your finger. If it's down the hatch, I'll stick my finger in there, most of the time I can pop it out. But you also probably don't think, when they go to release a fish, they'll grab it and shake it real hard. You're dislocating that fish's jaw. They can't swim over to the urgent care and have their jaw relocated so they can continue to eat. That fish's jaw is now dislocated, it can't go and eat anymore, it's going to starve to death. And they proved, they took a bunch of bonefish, put hooks in their mouth down deep, in the roof of the mouth, tongue, very close to the gills. If you start messing with them, you're going to pinch a gill. They can actually work the fly out over four or five days. They can take and work the hook out, or it'll just rust out on its own if it's not impinging them on eating. So I know, I'll just leave it in there. If I can't get it out with my finger, I cut the fly, let them go, and they're most likely going to work it out. And we have a hard time keeping them on anyways.

Tom Rowland: It comes out all the time when you really want one.

Brandon Cyr: I think it's kind of like tarpon. I have that discussion with people. I have some guys that will see a hundred-pound tarpon jump and they're like, I'm not fighting that. And they'll just break it off, because they want the small ones.

Tom Rowland: Right.

Brandon Cyr: And at first, I was kind of like, man, you're leaving two feet of leader, because I fish IGFA. So I do the 16-pound class, and all my breaks are at 16. I'm like, you're leaving a foot of leader or whatever in his mouth with a fly. It kind of sucks. You're thinking about it. And you're like, dude, I can't even keep these things on when I try. That hard bone, that's going to work free.

Tom Rowland: And the difference between that fish, I don't know which is better or whatever, but it just seems like if a fish jumps twice and you break it off, that fish has a lot better chance of living than one that does 17 laps around the boat. You grab it by the jaw. It jumps out of your hands. You get it again. It jumps out of your hands. You get it one more time. You reach in there, you get it. Now you've got to put the trolling motor down, or you push forward, and you're reviving this fish, and you let it go. It just sure does seem like even with a fly in its mouth, the previous one is probably a better chance.

Brandon Cyr: Absolutely. And it's also better on me. I can't tell you every time I've almost broken my nose or dislocated fingers, broken fingers trying to grab tarpon. I always love it when you can always tell the really experienced clients. When they hook a fish, they'll pinch the barb in, get the fish to eat, jump, pull as hard as they can back on the jumps. The fly goes flying out, and they turn back, and they're like, that was awesome.

Tom Rowland: It's just enough.

Brandon Cyr: That was actually, speaking of Cuba, there was such a, like I said, some of the guys spoke English, some didn't. On the one day that we caught, like, 20 tarpon, I pinched in my barb on my gurgler. I didn't want to deal with that. I just wanted to watch them eat that gurgler, get one jump, and throw the fly. Well, like towards the end of the day, I had this really young guy, and he's like 28, like my age, and he's getting upset. He looks at me and he's like, you've hooked, like, 40 tarpon, you've landed one. He said, I thought you were a guide. Put his hands up. And I was like, no, dude, I'm doing that on purpose. I love that. I'm good. And he didn't grasp the concept that that was okay. They're so used to...

Permit vs. Tarpon: A Cultural Gap in Cuba

Tom Rowland: Well, he might have to go back and put his score on the scoreboard in the guide corners.

Brandon Cyr: That's another thing. They get paid double if they catch a slam. Their permit fishery definitely, I would say, isn't as good as ours. I would say in the six days I was there, I maybe had six shots.

Tom Rowland: What if you weren't fishing for those tarpon so much?

Brandon Cyr: Well, no, they wouldn't. I mean, we only wanted, I personally only wanted to fish for permit the whole time I was there. And the one day we had the one guide, his name was Memba, and he saw me and Nathaniel cast, and he was like, we're going for permit. And we each caught one. The rest of the days we keep saying permit, permit, permit. And he'd be like, no, the other guys were like, no, tide's not right. We'd see, like, one blown-out shot or something like that throughout the day. And we'd permit, one more flat, one more flat. They still haven't grasped the concept yet.

Tom Rowland: Well, they don't think they're going to catch them.

Brandon Cyr: Exactly. But they don't know. I don't think they get the level of anglers yet to realize. Because everybody else on the trip that wasn't experienced anglers like me and Nathaniel, they were like, permit fish for an hour, and they'd be like, is it always this slow? They didn't understand the concept. So I think that the more popular Cuba becomes as a fishing destination, the better it's going to be for the fishery. Because it's going to push the guides to start looking for permit more. Because if you can push a hundred feet inside and catch 20 tarpon and 15 bones, why would you? Until you get crazy people like us who like to mentally abuse ourselves and chase permit all day, to get shut down and get a permit.

Tom Rowland: A lot of people like that, honestly. I mean, for that to turn around, that takes a lot of people that really want to catch a permit, and then they have to say, look, I'm not coming unless we go permit fishing. And once you get that kind of crowd coming there, that will happen. But it'll take a while. Or if they have a board or whatever kind of scoreboard that they have.

Brandon Cyr: They started, the first day they started keeping track. And they had, like, kind of this lady who's like the boat mom. She takes care of all of us, makes sure that we have everything we need. And then when I got off the boat the first day, she's like, so what did you catch? How many? I was like, I don't know. Jumped a bunch of tarpon, bonefish. And she was like, yeah. And she's like, like it doesn't matter.

Tom Rowland: Well, the numbers for them are also important, because they can see, I mean, you're a numbers guy, and you see that, last year we caught 3,000 fish, we've put a lot of training into the guides, we've worked really hard, this year we should be catching 6,000 fish. And you're seeing this increase. But the real trick is that somehow, and I've figured out the trick, I realized that one permit is better than 40 bonefish. And so then they're like, oh, okay, so now it's actually easier. I go out there, I catch one, this guy's had to catch 40 to match my number, so it becomes a commodity.

Brandon Cyr: Top of the heap. Absolutely. I talk to people all the time when we're permit fishing. I'm like, look, this is going to be hard, but it's the holy grail. You can walk into any fly shop.

Tom Rowland: That's easy to communicate here.

Brandon Cyr: But over there, no. It's completely different.

Tom Rowland: It has to transcend over there, and that comes really through the anglers, right? The anglers have to kind of help that cause, as opposed to just being super happy with 50 tarpon. Why wouldn't you be?

Brandon Cyr: I think it also comes down to the location in Cuba. Because everything I've heard about Cayo Largo, which is also an Avalon-run thing where you're not on a mothership, you're staying, like, you're not on a boat.

Tom Rowland: I haven't heard of that one. I don't know anything about that one.

Brandon Cyr: Supposedly that one's, like, the permit capital. They have permit, snook, bonefish, and tarpon. That's on the north side. And that's because I kept trying to talk to the guides. I couldn't speak Spanish at all. So I had my broken Spanish, palometa, like, that's all I want. And they'd be like, you know, Sabalo, Sabalo, tarpon. And I was like...

Tom Rowland: See, and there it's also easy for them to be like, I don't think he really knows what he's talking about or really knows what he wants. So we're taking a guy like Dan Diaz there, and then he could fully explain it. He's like, listen, man, these guys fish for these fish all the time. They don't want more tarpon. They don't want more bonefish. They want the permit. That's the way to go.

Brandon Cyr: That's kind of how we got set up with Memba on the second day. We were sitting, I'm ridiculous, dude. Like I said, I'm absolutely obsessed. When everybody else, when we're at the drive-out, everybody's drinking rum and smoking cigars, I was sitting on the top deck by myself, rigging up all my tarpon leaders, permit leaders. I had all my rods. They said that they were going to do it in the morning. Oh, we'll have a meeting in the morning and have everything set up. I was like, no, I'm going to have all that set up.

Tom Rowland: Oh, they expect you to bring one rod. Like, you're bringing probably 20 rods.

Brandon Cyr: Four. Four rods. I had everything rigged. And when I was rigging, one guy came over and he looked at me. He saw, because I had the permit tattoo on my foot.

Tom Rowland: That's the coolest tattoo, by the way.

Brandon Cyr: And he was pointing at it. I was like, yeah. And he points at himself. He's like, 148. And he goes, how many you catch? How many have you guided to? And I didn't know how to say, I didn't want to say, oh, it comes a lot. I was just like...

Tom Rowland: One more than you.

Brandon Cyr: Yeah. So I just pulled out my phone and kind of started scrolling through the pictures, and he was like, yeah, like this. He's like, me and you, palometa, day two. And I was like, alright. And I point at Nathaniel, and I was like, him too. I was like, he's at 100, at 179. He's like, oh my god. So that was really cool. Can you do that with him? And that's all we did all day. Now once we got, we each got our permit, we're like, alright, let's go get two and three. He was like, nope, no, we got to go get the slam. Because I guess that's how, for his payment stuff, he gets paid. Because we didn't really understand that, because we were always tipping super well, being a fishing guide. I always want to tip the best I can. And I guess they were only expecting, like, a $30 tip. And you know, once we got back, the guy was like, since you guys got a slam, it's customary to do a hundred. I was like, dude, we're going to do a hundred each. Because for us, that's, yeah, I just want to do it. At least customary.

The Snapper Fishing and a 30-Pound Cubera

Brandon Cyr: But no, it was a really cool experience. But my absolute favorite thing about Cuba, which is going to seem ridiculous, was doing the snapper fishing.

Tom Rowland: Really?

Brandon Cyr: There's nothing that we have here that is like that. So we're all fishing all those little mangrove sprouts and stuff like that. If you go to a mangrove island here and you cast a fly, a Clouser, you're going to catch a three-inch gray snapper. Anyone you go to there that has, like, a five-foot drop on it, you cast and you're going to catch a mutton snapper between six and ten pounds. And then you go into the channels or just outside that reef that I was telling you about, and there's everything you can imagine. I mean, literally 15-pound muttons everywhere.

Tom Rowland: Wow. So were you not seeing these up on the flats at all?

Brandon Cyr: They were on the flats. But they're more, when I talk about being off the flat, I'm talking about a hundred feet. Like, take Western Dry Rocks and set it on the edge of Seven Sisters.

Tom Rowland: Right. Nice.

Brandon Cyr: And that's what, it's like the most minor. When you're pulling up to the spot, all the flats, you're driving over coral heads that are 12 inches underwater in 10 feet of water. Just these massive clusters. And so we're throwing these super heavy Clousers and catching them every night. That's why we were eating the fish till we caught. We'd stop for five minutes, and every single cast was a legal mutton.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. See, I've had a couple of trips, one to Australia and one to a couple other places, where you're fishing for something that's familiar, and then you find something like that. It's like, man, I can bonefish and tarpon fish at home. This is what gets me going, because I've never seen this before. This is amazing. Like, that's pretty cool.

Brandon Cyr: And so that was, like, one of the afternoons, we did so well in the morning, and the other guy who was on the boat with me was kind of like, oh, what do you want to do? I'm like, dude, come fish the Keys with me, I'll put you on as many bonefish, tarpon, permit as you want. What I can't do is take you to go catch a ten, twelve-pound mutton snapper in six feet of water ever on fly on one cast, with no chum. And it was crazy to me, because it's not like, oh, I have this bad-ass hole that I'm going to take you to that nobody knows about. There was no rhyme or reason. I'm like, oh, have you fished this before? Do you know these fish are here? He's like, nah. There's coral. Cast.

Tom Rowland: That's where they are.

Brandon Cyr: Yeah.

Tom Rowland: And what would that look like with a well full of pilchards?

Brandon Cyr: Oh, dude.

Tom Rowland: We were talking about it, the puta.

Brandon Cyr: Just an explosion. Diving. But the thing is, though, you're not allowed to spin fish. It's all fly fishing there.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. But if you had, I mean, just to get them chopped up on the surface. I don't even need to throw at it. But just to unload three big scoops of pilchards next to something like that and just see what comes up, it would just be amazing.

Brandon Cyr: I wanted to jump in, being from a dive certification background.

Tom Rowland: They wouldn't let you go.

Brandon Cyr: We didn't have any equipment with us. I didn't even think that...

Tom Rowland: Take a pair of goggles next time.

Brandon Cyr: Next time I go, I'm bringing my friend's mask, 100%, just to see what it looks like. But the coolest fish that I hooked there, somebody messaged me on Instagram asking about cubera snapper. And I was like, alright. So we get there, and after we caught a bunch of muttons for dinner, I was like, hey, man, you got any cubera spots, Pargo, big? He's like, yeah, yeah. We go over to this mangrove, this flat about three feet of water. It looks just like one of our mangrove islands in three feet of water. It drops off to about five feet, big sand hole to, like, a cave system. Alright. Dump, dump, dump, and there's, like, this little coral head right off the side. I start stripping. I'm like, I'm going to bump it next to that coral head. Coral head moved. And I'm like, oh my god. A big black, about thirty, thirty-five pound cubera comes over, and I'm on a 10-weight. I got 16-pound class on there going to, you know, 60-pound bite. But as soon as I came tight on him, he started running back into the cave, and the guide's just saying, stop him, stop him. And I'm like, I could feel it bending. Oh, I was so undergunned. There's no way I believe that you can catch that fish in class. You have to fish straight 60 pounds. And I had the 10-weight, and it was bending. Because a lot of people don't realize how much pressure 16 pounds of drag really truly is if your knots are properly tied. But I could feel the rod bend all the way to the cork, and I could not stop. And I just kept watching them getting further and further, and finally I broke the class.

Tom Rowland: Wow.

Brandon Cyr: But I looked back at him, and he was like, well, that was average. And I was losing my mind. I was like, that was cooler than the permit.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, for sure.

Brandon Cyr: Something I have never seen in my life, and I probably will never see again.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. That's amazing, man.

Brandon Cyr: To see a 30-pound cubera. And I mean, we were so shallow that I could have waited and cast it into the drop-off. Now that's crazy to me.

Tom Rowland: That is crazy.

Wrapping Up: Where to Find Brandon

Tom Rowland: Man, we could talk all night.

Brandon Cyr: I know. Yeah. Sorry for taking so much time here.

Tom Rowland: I tell you what, man, you've got some awesome stories, and you're doing so many awesome things. It's really cool. It's really cool to see you, because I love to see kids grow up and do exactly what you're doing, man. You're guiding, you're doing awesome. You love and respect the place you grew up, and you're an ambassador for the water. And it's really cool to see both you and your brother, your whole family, what you're doing. It's really cool. So we'll do this again, because you've got amazing stories, and you're really good at this. So how do people find you? What do they do? How do they book you?

Brandon Cyr: Honestly, one of the best things to do is just follow me on Instagram. It's Brandon Cyr, C-Y-R-K-W. And my phone number, like I said, I'm on the water pretty much every single day, so the best way to get a hold of me is text me, because my voicemail box is full pretty much all the time. But if you send me a text, I'll get back to you once I get back off the water.

Tom Rowland: Right on. And if you were to blue-sky it, what would be the best thing that could happen to you in the next year, and how can everybody listening to this podcast help you get there?

Brandon Cyr: Honestly, just keep fishing with me. I've never really had any desire to be a millionaire or anything like that, because if I ever made millions of dollars, the one thing I would do would be move to Key West and fish. So I'm basically living what I want to do, and I just want to be able to share that with everybody else.

Tom Rowland: Right on, man. That's a great way to end it. Brandon, thank you for doing this with me. I really appreciate it. And you guys go check him out. You will not be disappointed, and see if you can get on his bow. You won't be disappointed with that either. Alright, man. We'll see you.

Brandon Cyr: Appreciate it. Thank you.