Here's a sight you don't see in the States

---

We move the boat. It is January, and the females are getting ready to spawn, Samuel says. He is looking for a certain water color that he says the bass prefer. "Where it is coffee-colored-"you see over there?-"you will not find fish. And often the big females nest in the open water, away from the pads. Often they like green hydrilla flats. If you are just fishing the structure you see, you will not get them."

We keep moving.

At last he anchors near a big flat off a channel. On my fourth cast, something smashes my lure. "Big bass!" Samuel says. "Big bass!" It bends my short baitcasting rod nearly double before I get it to the boat. It has a mouth like a trash can. Samuel says it's a 7-pounder. That would make it the second-biggest bass of my life. I catch two 5-pounders over the next 15 minutes.

"Having fun?" asks Samuel.

On the way back to the put-in, we cruise by some of the competitors. Most are scattered over a single area, a large bowl surrounded by endless pads. One boat, however, is off by itself, fishing a more distant edge of lily pads. It's the team from Las Tunas, a neighboring province, an experienced duo that is expected to do well here. The guy at the oars stops when he sees us, calls to Samuel, stands and struggles to hoist a stringer that's so heavy it's all he can do to lift it clear of the water. There are about 10 fish on it, big oblong bass. One will go nearly 10 pounds, another just over 7.

In the United States, you no longer see such a sight. That's a good thing, of course. Any lake would get fished out fast if it were subject to a sustained harvest of its biggest bass. On the other hand, it's something to behold. The guys will winnow the catch down to six, three per angler. The biggest looks to be a 10-pounder. There are two others that will go close to 7.

The Las Tunas guys tell Samuel that they lost two big fish, one of which would have gone 10, when the line got tangled up with the anchor rope. They have caught virtually all their fish on big worms. And they are fishing them in a way I've never seen.

The guy in the bow has a 9- or 10-inch dark worm Texas-rigged on what looks to be a 3/0 offset worm hook with about a 1⁄8-ounce sinker. He has a 7-foot spinning rod, which he uses to throw the worm as far as he can. Then he reels it steadily back, just like a crankbait. On his fourth cast, he suddenly stops reeling at what must be a strike of some kind. He pauses for just a second, lowers the rod, reels in slack, then sets the hook hard. His line begins to dance, and soon he is boating another 5- or 6-pound fish.

I have Samuel ask him what the take is like. "Just the sensation of weight, or maybe a tap," he translates. "Nothing strong. They inhale it, not bite it. You give them a moment, take the slack, and hook them." The guy says they fish the worm higher or lower in the water column as conditions dictate. "We fish always this worm," one of them, Onix Hernandez, says. "If I see fish hitting the poppers of other fishermen, I just fish it closer to the surface." They never let it hit bottom and never stop reeling unless they feel a fish. I've never heard of crankbait-style worming. But many things, I'm learning, are different in Cuba. And it's awfully hard to argue with what works.