Tournament competitors take part in a pre-event parade

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On the second day-"my last, since I had only expected to be here for a two-day tournament-"Samuel once again takes me fishing because of his commendable wish not to disturb the other anglers. Once again, I'm using his baitcaster, while he uses the big spinning rod. I tried the latter for a couple of casts and disliked it. It's too big, too heavy, not particularly sensitive, and a lot of work to crank. He hefts the rod. "It's what every Cuban asks his family or friends in the States to bring him," he says. "Seven-foot medium-heavy UglyStik spinning rod with a Penn 7500 SS."

"Why?"

He hefts it again, working a topwater. "Durability," he says. "An UglyStik is like a '57 Chev-rolet. Almost indestructible." I look at the Penn reel, all 25.5 ounces of it, with its measly three ball bearings. "A Cuban would take this over a Shimano or a Daiwa every time," he adds. "Very dependable. Goes forever. And easy to work on." He grunts, sets the hook, and pulls in a 5-pounder. "Time to move. Look for the big ones."

We don't find the big ones, but we do tire our arms out on the 2- to 4-pounders. And there are worse ways to spend a day. As we head back toward shore, we pass not too far from one of the two teams from Granma province. One evidently has a big fish on because he is excitedly telling his co-angler to get the net. But the net man lunges at the fish awkwardly, frightening it. The fish jumps close to the boat, and the line goes slack. Both men slump back to their seats, despairing at having lost what was obviously a huge bass. Samuel shakes his head in commiseration. "It's just because they're not used to boats, not used to nets. We don't carry nets when we wade or tube. That fish, it could have won them the tournament maybe."

It could have, but it didn't. A few days after I arrive back in the United States, I get an e-mail from Samuel. Las Tunas won the tournament with a two-day, 12-fish total of 78 pounds 8 ounces. Granma was just 5 ounces behind. The fifth-place team, he writes, from his home province of Villa Clara, should have finished in third place. "They had an 11- or 12-pound fish on a big Husky Jerk. But it made one last run by the boat and opened the treble hook and escaped."

On my last evening in Bayamo, I am once again sitting on the end of a bed drinking beer with the guys while a bottle of rum slowly laps the room. I have brought an entire duffel bag of plastics, lures, and line cadged from Yamamoto, Berkley, and Rapala. I dump it out on the floor, and it vanishes in the time it takes a school of piranhas to clean a cow carcass. The only problem is that most of the plastics are tiny, 6 inches or less. No matter. Some anglers are even now squeezing the packs to gauge how well they will melt down to be recast into larger baits.

One of the guys from Granma can't even wait that long. He pulls a 4-inch Senko (green pumpkin) from its pack, studies it, hefts it experimentally. Then he cuts the first 3 inches off one of his 9-inch black worms with a knife, carefully heats both the cut tip of the worm and one end of the Senko with his lighter, and presses the two together until they cool. The result is a 10-inch, two-tone hybrid ribbon tail. He smiles, wiggles it seductively, lifts it for my inspection.

"Beel?" he asks. "What you think?" I give him a thumbs-up and a smile, already vowing never to throw away a chewed-up worm again.

"Oh, yeah. They'll clobber that thing."