This conversation with Clay Watson — a lifelong friend, fishing travel veteran, and one of the most reliable barometers I have for whether a destination is worth the trip — covers his recent mothership expedition to Cuba's Gardens of the Queen, what he thinks separates a good fishing guide from a great one, and a torn labrum he refused to fix until after the trip was over.
Press play in the YouTube player at the top of this page, or scroll back up to watch. Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and iHeartRadio.
Clay fished the Gardens of the Queen (Jardines de la Reina), a chain of islands roughly 60 miles off Cuba's southern coast. The archipelago is approximately 150 miles long, completely uninhabited, and operated as a national preserve. Clay described it as what the Florida Keys might have looked like 150 years ago. His group traveled via a 120-foot mothership run by Avalon, an Argentinian outfitter that has operated in the area for about a decade.
As of this conversation, Americans cannot travel to Cuba under a tourism visa. Clay's group entered under a "people to people" educational interaction, which framed the trip as research into Cuba's national preserve, its protection force, and the marine ecosystem of the Gardens of the Queen. The fishing was part of the educational program. Clay's group flew into Camagüey rather than Havana, cutting significant travel time off the trip.
The Gardens of the Queen is fly fishing only, catch and release only, for its primary game fish: permit, bonefish, and tarpon. Clay reported seeing large permit tailing on exposed coral reefs in skinny water, bonefish up to eight or nine pounds, resident and baby tarpon in the mangrove backcountry, and mutton snapper on the flats. The area also holds a healthy tarpon migration similar to the Florida Keys. Snook are present near the Cuban mainland but are heavily overfished there.
Clay draws a distinction between a good guide and a great one. A good guide respects your ability, customizes the day to your skill level, and understands that boating a fish is not the only measure of success. A great guide goes further — treating every fish, from a half-pound bonefish to a 25-pound permit, with the same reverence, and treating every angler who steps on the boat like the most important client they have ever had. Clay's full answer, including what he learned about guiding from his own years working as a swamper on the South Fork of the Snake River, is in the episode.
Clay's group was advised by the Avalon outfitter to tip approximately 400 CUCs (Cuban convertible pesos, roughly one-to-one with the US dollar) for the week per guide. The outfitter specifically coached the group against over-tipping, warning that giving too much could disrupt the local economy where the average monthly wage is approximately 29 Cuban dollars. The guides were all Cuban nationals — required by law — working week-on, week-off rotations from the mothership.
The group of nine anglers lived aboard a 120-foot mothership for a full week, Saturday to Saturday. The crew caught fresh fish and lobster daily to supplement rice, beans, and other Cuban provisions. Anglers fished from dolphin skiffs from roughly 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. with no commute time lost — the boat anchored directly in the fishing grounds and repositioned overnight to cover different sections of the archipelago. Clay called the logistics impressive given Cuba's limited supply infrastructure.
I have known Clay Watson for close to thirty years. I met him and his family when I was guiding for Westler Outfitters on the South Fork of the Snake River. His whole family would come out every summer — grandfather all the way down to the youngest kid — and I had the pleasure of fishing with Clay and his cousin Steen because they were close to my age. One summer, Joe Bressler was short on guides because A River Runs Through It had just come out and Jackson Hole was overrun with people wanting to fly fish. Clay just stayed. He rolled out his bedroll in the guide compound and started working as a swamper.
Since then, Clay and I have fished together, hunted together, and trained together. He has fished the Florida Keys with me extensively, traveled to Mexico, The Bahamas, New Zealand, Belize, and now Cuba. I trust his read on a destination completely. When Clay tells me a place is great, it is great. When he says it was not worth it, I cross it off. Cuba is 90 miles from my home in Key West. I have daydreamed about fishing there for years. Clay just got back. I needed to hear every detail.
Press play in the YouTube player at the top of this page to hear the full conversation.
I have stared south from Key West more times than I can count and thought about what is on the other side of that 90 miles of water. Clay came back from the Gardens of the Queen and told me it looked like the Florida Keys before anyone got there. No tiki bars. No jet skis. No other boats. The same species I chase every week — permit, bonefish, tarpon — in water that has barely been touched. The way he compared the two places, and the specific moment when he described pulling up to a flat and seeing nothing man-made in any direction, is worth hearing in his own words. Listen to that section.
I had one other friend who fished this same area before Clay went. That friend lost almost two full fishing days to travel problems — an eleven-hour bus ride that was supposed to take seven, delays getting on the mothership, a shortened week. Clay's group solved it by flying into Camagüey instead of Havana and cutting the bus ride in half. The difference between a trip that works and one that falls apart down there comes down to route planning and the outfitter's relationship with the Cuban government. Clay walks through exactly how his group handled it. The details matter if you are thinking about going. They are in the episode.
The trip was not even marketed as a permit destination. Clay told me it was billed as a big bonefish spot. Then he started describing what he saw on the ocean side — singles and doubles, hardcore diggers, big fish turning sideways to squeeze through passages in exposed coral reef at low tide to eat crabs. I know that exact situation from fishing the country reef outside Key West. I know how hard it is to keep a boat positioned there without getting smashed into the reef by the waves. Clay's description of those fish and what the wind did to the casting is the part I keep thinking about. Watch it in the YouTube player at the top of this page.
Clay started as a swamper. He knows what the job looks like from the inside. I asked him to draw the line between a good guide and a great one, and his answer is not what I expected. He did not talk about catching the most fish. He talked about something else entirely — about how a great guide treats a half-pound bonefish and a 25-pound permit with the same reverence. There is a longer version of this answer in the episode that I think every angler and every guide should hear. Listen to that part.
I asked Clay about his perfect fishing moment — the one day where everything was right. He did not pick a big permit or a tarpon. He picked a brown trout on the South Island of New Zealand, spotted from a helicopter, eaten on a size-two cicada pattern. He missed the fish on the first cast and thought it was over. The guide said hold on. The fish was still there. What happened next, and the way Clay describes looking up after he landed it and realizing where he was standing, is one of those moments that does not translate to text. It is in the episode.
Clay is one of those friends where I do not have to wonder if the story is exaggerated. When he tells me a place is the most pristine water he has ever fished, I believe him. When he says the permit there were the happiest he has ever seen, I start looking at flights.
Cuba is 90 miles from where I live. I have thought about it for twenty years. This conversation made me want to go more than anything else ever has. The article gives you the geography and the logistics. Clay gives you what it actually felt like to be out there with no one around for 60 miles in every direction.
Press play in the YouTube player at the top of this page, or scroll back up to watch. Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and iHeartRadio.
Steen · Joe Bressler · Jeffrey Cardenas · Diana Nyad · Captain Tony · Lance Armstrong · Adam Brown · Matt Lawson · Oliver White · Will Benson · Cotton Cordell
Clay Watson is a lifelong angler and outdoorsman based in the United States. He began his guiding career as a swamper for Westler Outfitters on the South Fork of the Snake River near Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Over the past twenty-five years, he has fished extensively in the Florida Keys, Mexico's Espiritu Santo Bay, The Bahamas, Belize, New Zealand, and Cuba's Gardens of the Queen. He is a dedicated fly fisherman with a particular passion for permit fishing.
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