[thumper]

It’s been a long time since I was in my early 20s and lived on Tortola for months at a time, but I fished it quite a bit - free food! Walk and wade in the grass flats and fish the open sand holes for bones. Bring your goggles and build a simple snare stick, (just an 4/5’ stick and a wire loop) and you can snare little spiny lobsters that live under the grass flats where the ‘turf’ edges spill onto the sand holes. Look for their long antenna sticking out. If wading the reef edges, make sure you have good wading shoes - the black-spined urchins are common and the coral is very sharp - mind the ‘fire coral’ in deeper water if snorkelling/diving. You will rub coral with your line - choose a good running line and as long a wire leader as you can manage. There’s lots of barracuda, so gloves are a must- also if you stumble, you can catch yourself without cutting up your hands on the coral. For some reason, coral cuts seem to take a long time to heal. I’ve used those plastic ‘fish grip’ lock pliers on everything up to 4’ sharks, so I don’t have to tear them up using steel pliers when releasing. They’re cheap, light in your luggage and don’t get attention in airport x-ray scanners … On steep drop-offs you might also hook up parrotfish. Lots of them - and big ones too! Near the airport, where the access road crosses a narrow channel, there used to be some very big ‘cuda’, - and pairs of them would often follow me as I snorkelled along reefs, while snaring larger lobsters hiding in coral caves.They used me to flush out prey fish, and would dart in quite close to me to grab them. They swim with their mouths hanging open and teeth gleaming! Don’t tempt them with flashy rings or shiny diving watch-bands! If you’re getting frustrated, smash a couple of winkles from low-tide rocks and tip your fly with a little bait! Winkles are tough and stay on the hook well. Or, smash a small land hermit crab’s shell and hook on a live ‘naked’ hermit crab! I never saw permit in the shallow flats I was in, and I could never afford fishing charters in those days, so I never got off-shore to chase mahi-mahi or other blue-water fish. Fish, lobster and even small octopus supplemented my mainly chicken protein diet - beef and pork was far too expensive! I even once tried one of the feral goat kids that wander everywhere - once! There weren’t any species/size/catch limit regulations then, or license required that I knew off. That’s probably changed now. Hope that’s a help!