The first thing you notice when visiting Los Roques to fly-fish is the abundance of life in the ocean around you. Lying just off the coast of Venezuela, the waters surrounding the island of Gran Roque are simply teeming with baitfish. With these extreme numbers at one end of the food chain, you can be sure that there’s a strong presence at the other. Flats of all shapes and sizes with immediate depth of water surrounding them provide a great environment for any predatory feeding fish. With bonefish of good average size and numbers, tarpon that feed hard on the excessive bait, plus a surprising amount of large and difficult permit, there’s all one could wish for in a flats fishing destination.

Hard-bottomed flats make for great stalking. Creep up on a permit that you’ve watched with your guide making its way towards you in knee-deep water, stopping occasionally to tip its huge fork tail proudly into the air while searching out small crabs from the bottom. This is a moment in flyfishing never forgotten, an occasion to relish that, whether you get a hook-up or not (and more often, you won’t), you know you’ve experienced something quite special. To be so close to a fish so majestic and of such size both humbles and excites all saltwater fly-fishers.

The bonefishing is done with either small crab and shrimp imitations on the shallow pancake flats or imitative baitfish patterns from the sandy beaches of the many small islands in this atoll. Bones here pack on weight fast due to the high proportion of small baitfish in their diet. It’s not uncommon to witness pelicans dive and clumsily emerge with fish pouring from the sides of their bills, only to be pestered by greedy bonefish, heads out of the water and reaching up to snap at the fish dropped by those huge bait scoops. Casting your fly in among this chaos may not seem like classic flats fishing, but leaving it static or slowly stripping back often results in a strike, and it may just be the biggest bonefish you’ll encounter.

Tarpon can run big in Los Roques. Off the beaches in deep water most fish are just above ‘baby tarpon’ size (30-40lb), but with enough fish approaching 100lb and possibly more, perseverance could result in a trophy, fly-caught specimen. Sinking lines and good bait imitations offer the best chance of a hook up.

Tackling up correctly for these species and the many more flats inhabitants will make the most of your trip. For bonefish, a fast actioned 9ft #8 rod is advisable for dealing with the strong Atlantic winds. For permit, a strong 9ft #9 or #10 rod with plenty of power in the butt section is necessary to deal with the painfully long fight they’ll give. Fish of this shape and size are hard to turn and slow to subdue. With tarpon in mind, don’t go light. In deep water these huge fish can be tough to tame and will give acrobatic, gill-rattling displays, long hard runs that will strip a reel of backing under the strongest of drag settings and, overall, seriously put your outfit and rigging to the test. Go with a #11 or #12 saltwater fly rod.

Reels and lines need to be tough enough to handle all this, too. Your lines should be of tropical design and reels need capacity for a huge excess of backing as well as a drag system capable of smoothly stopping a train – and in a saltwater environment.