by Trey Reid

We left the dock at 6:30 a.m., a relatively late departure by the standard we had set over the previous four days of fishing around Ambergris Cay, Belize. By any definition, the trip was already an unqualified success—so productive that it’s awkward even now to recount it. I had landed four permit and recorded two Grand Slams—the most productive saltwater fly fishing trip of my life—and my friend John Bracey, with whom I fished most of the week, had caught his first two permit, the first coming on the same day as his first tarpon and closing out a Grand Slam. Over a breakfast of San Pedro Jacks and fresh mango, we agreed that we couldn’t complain if we didn’t catch a single fish on the last day, a sentiment we shared with our guide as we idled away from the dock.

“Everything today is gravy,” said Captain Gordy Marin, who had guided us all week and who was now steering his boat, Silver Ghost, beneath the Boca del Rio Bridge in San Pedro.

We idled out of the river channel into the lagoon on the west side of town, rounding the southern point of Turtle Island before heading north on the bay side of Ambergris. Ever vigilant, Marin scanned the turquoise waters as we glided across the surface. We slowed to an idle upon reaching an area where we’d found permit the previous afternoon. But the fish weren’t there, so we continued northward to another flat next to a small island. Marin pointed out a school before the boat came off plane.

Nervous water sold out the school, which materialized fully in copious dark shapes and random silver flashes. Tips of dorsal fins and tails punctured the gently rippled surface less than a hundred yards from the boat. Bracey scrambled over the panga’s starboard side as the anchor found purchase on brilliant white sand. Marin eased into the water behind him, and they made a quick but cautious approach to get ahead of the blithely feeding school.

Bracey had several good shots about 75 yards from the boat before the school made a hard right turn toward the rising sun—well above the horizon now but still low in the eastern sky. Their course was bringing them straight toward me and the anchored panga. I pulled my 9-weight from the rod holder and stripped line off the reel as I climbed out of the boat and scurried into casting position.

The school was moving right to left about 50 feet in front of me, and it was massive. I laid a Raghead Crab in front of the lead fish and slowly stripped it. Nothing. I sent another cast into the front-left portion of the school and made long, slow strips. They were on it, turning hard to track the fly straight toward me. My heart rate accelerated with every inch of the gap they closed: 30 feet … 25 feet … keep stripping, man … 20 feet … eat it, you bastards!

I imagined a watery demise, being overrun by a school of a hundred feeding permit, flogged to death by black tails, puffy lips sucking on the remnants of my floating corpse on a Belizean flat—poetic retribution, perhaps, for the zeal with which I’ve pursued their kin. But with just a few feet of fly line outside the rod tip, the school slowly peeled to its right and reversed direction.

“Let’s go find another school,” Marin said.

We barely had time to plane out the panga before another big school appeared a few hundred yards north of where we had just been refused.

Ignominy and Incredulity

I’m not sure it’s possible to feel guilty about catching fish, but I came close last April in Belize. I still struggle to describe the sensation; a lingering fear of misunderstanding and wrong assumptions about my motivations makes me hesitant even now to mine the experience too deeply.

Like most permit anglers, I’m familiar with failure. I live in landlocked flyover country, more than 1,000 miles from the nearest permit water. As my evolution as a saltwater fly angler has progressed, I’ve spent a considerable amount of money and time with modest returns in the way of permit. But that changed drastically—and dramatically—during five days in northern Belize.

I landed a permit within the first hour of fishing on the first day of the trip, and I was truthfully content not to catch another fish all week. But the fishing only got better. Two days later I watched Bracey catch his first tarpon, a hefty resident fish in the 50-pound range, and then I subdued a similar fish an hour and a half later. A few hours after that, I climbed atop Marin’s poling platform to behold him and Bracey wading toward a school of permit under a leaden sky. Minutes later, my friend was admiring his first permit, which was also the final element of his first Grand Slam. Certain that I’d have to experience that rare thrill as a vicarious witness, I was surprised when Marin told me to grab my fly rod and get my ass in gear to intercept the school again. After two missed eats in quick succession, I was hooked up to my second permit in three days. Thirty minutes later, I was overjoyed to catch a scrawny bonefish that gave me my first Grand Slam.

We were breathing rarefied air, but I wasn’t reticent about sharing tales of our good fortune with friends back at El Pescador Lodge. I had never tasted this kind of angling success, and I was inebriated by the mysterious elixir. So this is what success feels like?

The next day, elation almost imperceptibly gave way to ignominy and incredulity. We started early again, and I was treading water to take a picture with another solid tarpon before the San Pedro waterfront was fully awake. Bracey and I both landed bonefish before lunchtime as we awaited our turn to board the permit carousel on the flat where we’d both caught them the previous day. The word was out among Ambergris guides, and the school was getting pounded, with guides lining up their boats to have their anglers take turns wading onto the flat.

Marin had seen enough, so we left to look for less-pressured fish, finding them a few miles away. Bracey hooked up on his first cast to a school of big permit, but the fish slipped the hook 30 seconds into the fight. Marin spotted another school a few minutes later, and we waded toward them under the bright midday sun. They ignored the first presentation, but after my second cast and a few long, slow strips, the line came tight. It was my third permit of the week, a bruiser leaning toward 25 pounds, and it capped a second Grand Slam. Bracey caught the day’s second permit just a few minutes later, and I added my second of the day and fourth of the trip before we headed back to the lodge.

I was ecstatic, but conflicted thoughts crept into my head. This isn’t supposed to be happening. Is this what impostor syndrome feels like?

Bracey, who’s unflappably modest, must’ve felt something, too. “You know, maybe it’s getting to the point that we shouldn’t say anything about this when we get back,” he said. “I mean, if somebody asks for details about our day, I’m not gonna lie about it. But maybe we shouldn’t volunteer anything.”

Moonwalking up the dock was out of the question. Until it wasn’t. But we were the first boat back to the lodge, and only our wives and Marin witnessed my shameless spectacle. Just getting it out of my system, you know. And we still had one more day of fishing.

So much gravy

It was the last of five days on the water, the last Friday of the month, the day before a new moon. Permit were everywhere, but we hadn’t yet fed one despite several good early shots. That was about to change.

Marin got the boat well ahead of another big school. More than a hundred strong, it was pushing northward parallel to an uninhabited cay. We dropped anchor in knee-deep water and all three bailed out of the boat to ease into position. Bracey hooked up quickly, line peeling off his reel as the rest of the fish stayed tightly together and slowly reversed course via a wide arcing turn in slightly deeper water. Marin and I took off to intercept the school, and there was no easing into position this time. We rushed southward, sporadically sinking into loose silty pockets in the sand. I covered the hundred yards through thigh-deep water and sucking mud in a time best measured by a sundial, my heart pounding from a combination of exertion and excitement, but we were in position.

I cast in front of the school at a perpendicular angle. It wasn’t my best presentation, and Marin made sure I knew that. The captain and I had reached a shaky détente by the last day of the trip. He had revealed himself as a demanding young guide on the first day, brash almost to the point of insolence at times. But he had put us on the fish, and we were improving as a result of his prodding and pressure. He wanted perfection and expected at least something approaching excellence; mediocrity was intolerable. “I’m not gonna lie to you,” he said. “That cast wasn’t good.”

I reminded him that I was literally twice his age, and that I didn’t usually run the 100-meter dash in water and mud before casting to a school of a hundred permit.

“It’s not easy to catch permit, man,” he said. “You got to work for it sometimes.”

Fair enough. We quickly went back to work, getting into another school, or maybe the same school, a few minutes later. Marin got in on the action and doubled with Bracey, and I brought the morning’s fourth permit to hand 15 minutes later. My second fish of the morning gave us five before 9 a.m. And it was all gravy.

“Yeah, man,” Marin said. “But we got so much gravy, it’s gonna get so deep it’s gonna cover up the turkey.”

Our metaphorical gravy, a fly fishing dream made of glimmering slabs with forked black tails, indeed grew deeper. We spent the next four hours chasing two big schools of permit that roamed back and forth along the cay, wading into the water for stealth when we could and casting from the bow of Marin’s panga when there wasn’t time to scramble over the side. Together, we hooked six more permit, bringing five to hand. The sixth should’ve been landed, but it was part of a triple hook-up that Marin lost in his zeal to make it a quadruple.

I hooked up with a dinner-plate permit from the front of the panga during the day’s last frenzy, jumping over the port side to fight it while Bracey crawled over the starboard gunwale to chase a portion of the school that veered right when it split in two. Marin also waded into the fray, grabbing one of my rods and sending a cast toward the part of the school that lingered with my fish. He stripped and set the hook on Silver Ghost’s tenth permit of the day. Meanwhile, Bracey covered about 150 circuitous yards through soupy sand, still in the game, advancing and retreating, drifting and dancing in all directions as the permit dictated. He had numerous good shots that didn’t yield eats. “Run, John,” Marin coached and cheered. “More right, man. More right. Go, John! You can do it, man! I trust you, John. Run, John!” I couldn’t hold back laughter. Or my opinion, yelling, “Don’t die, John!”

Now a dozen yards left of the boat, I kept the smallish permit tight but wasn’t rushing anything—if I’m being honest, to prolong the chance of a triple hook-up. Bracey’s effort was rewarded, and line surged off of his reel as the day’s 11th permit bowed the rod. I gulped from the cup of permit glory, taking in the spectacular sight of three fly fishers with bent rods, pulling against fastidious fish and long odds. I was still incredulous, but no longer sheepish. I reckoned that I had paid my dues in money, sweat, time, and disappointment. It’s supposed to be fun, and right then, I couldn’t imagine it ever being better.

Marin broke my reverie when he shuffled back to the panga, still fighting his permit, and grabbed another fly rod out of the rod holder. “What the hell are you doing?” I asked. “I can’t help it, man,” he said. “I’m greedy.”

Our cocky young guide tucked the fly rod with the fish tethered to it between his thighs and laid out a long cast with the second spare rod. It was too much gravy. The quadriceps method of fighting permit caused tension on the line, and Marin’s fish broke off. Bracey and I landed our fish, kneeling down in the water to release the fish together as Marin snapped a photograph.

I might never pass this way again. I certainly don’t expect to. And that’s okay. I’m Southern; I know a thing or two about gravy—it’s delicious, but too much of it isn’t good for you.

Topwater Permit

Ruben Martin’s Epoxy Crab: Permit Fly

Fly Fishing For Permit & Bonefish in Tulum, Mexico

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The post Permit guilt, creeping conflict, and fly fishing ecstasy in Belize first appeared on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

The post Permit guilt, creeping conflict, and fly fishing ecstasy in Belize appeared first on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

• Vector-borne diseases account for more than 17% of all infectious diseases. 

• They cause more than 700,000 deaths each year.

• More than 3.9 billion people in over 128 countries are at risk of contracting dengue.  There are an estimated 96 million cases per year.

• Malaria causes more than 400,000 deaths every year globally, most of them children under 5 years of age.

Many of these diseases are preventable by taking protective measures before being exposed.  Since so many saltwater anglers travel to areas where mosquitoes are endemic, this information could help you prevent serious health issues.  Even if you do not travel to remote places, some of these diseases can be contracted within the continental US. In our globalized society, there is even a phenomenon known as airport malaria when a mosquito simply enters a plane and travels to places where it should not be. It feeds on an unknowing person who in turn contracts malaria or any other mosquito-borne disease. This is a rare but frightening reality.  The following is a comprehensive but not entirely complete list.  It contains the most common mosquito-borne illness contracted around the world.

CHIKUNGUNYA (CHICK-GUN-GOON-YAA)

DESCRIPTION

A viral illness that presents with symptoms of fever and severe joint and muscle pain, headache, nausea, fatigue and rash. Joint pain can be debilitating and can vary in duration, which is very similar to dengue. After a mosquito bite, the onset of symptoms of chikungunya usually occurs between four and eight days, but can present in two days or as far out as 12 days. Symptoms can be very mild and the infection may go unrecognized, or misdiagnosed in areas where dengue also occurs. Most patients recover fully, but in some cases, joint pain may persist. Rare cases of eye, neurological and heart complications have been reported, as well as gastrointestinal complaints. Serious complications are uncommon, but in the older population, it  can lead to longer duration arthritic pains and rarely, death.

GEOGRAPHY

North and South America, Europe, Africa, Asia and the Indian subcontinent. Chikungunya is in over 60 countries in Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas. Originally believed to be isolated to the tropics, mosquitoes carrying this virus have spread to Europe and the Americas. There was an outbreak in northeastern Italy in 2007, and outbreaks in France and Croatia in 2008.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

There is no specific vaccine or treatment for chikungunya. Treatment is aimed at relieving symptoms, using anti-pyretics, analgesics for pain and fluids to maintain hydration. There is no commercial chikungunya vaccine. You can protect yourself with repellents, clothing that covers exposed skin and use of nets when sleeping.

ZIKA VIRUS

DESCRIPTION

Zika is also a viral disease, but the symptoms are usually mild and can include mild fever, skin rash, conjunctivitis, muscle and joint pain, malaise or headache. These symptoms normally last for up to seven days and seem like an ordinary virus. Zika infection during pregnancy is particularly bad because it can cause microcephaly and other fetal brain malformations, so if you are planning to get pregnant, it should be a consideration if you are traveling to an endemic area. In rare cases, Zika is also a cause of Guillain-Barré Syndrome – a neurological condition that can lead to paralysis and death.

GEOGRAPHY

Outbreaks of Zika virus have been recorded in Africa, North and South America, Asia and the Pacific. Female mosquitos carrying the virus are found in over 130 countries. 62 countries and territories have reported mosquito-transmitted Zika virus in the last five years. There has been a rise in local Zika transmission in the USA since 2015. The World Health Organization announced a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on 1 February 2016.  Mosquitoes infect humans but this one is also transmitted via sexual transmission from person to person. Zika has been detected in blood, saliva, semen, spinal and other body fluids. Mother to child transmission in early pregnancy has also been reported and causes fetal demise.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

There is no specific treatment or vaccine currently available. Personal protection with repellents, clothing that covers exposed skin and use of nets when sleeping.

To reduce the risk of sexual transmission and pregnancy complications related to Zika virus infection, people living in/traveling to/or returning from affected areas should practice safer sex, and consider abstinence or condoms.

DENGUE

DESCRIPTION

Flu-like symptoms occur 4-10 days after the bite of an infected mosquito; high fever accompanied by severe headache, pain behind the eyes, muscle and joint pains, nausea, vomiting, swollen glands or rash may occur. It is also called “breakbone fever” because of the excruciating joint pain, which I can attest to, having contracted dengue in the Maldives in 2013.  The disease can develop into a more severe form, which is a leading cause of serious illness and death among children in some Asian and South American countries. Symptoms of severe dengue include decrease in temperature, severe abdominal pain, persistent vomiting, rapid breathing, bleeding gums, fatigue, restlessness and blood in vomit. Medical care is critical for the first 48 hours after symptoms appear to avoid complications and risk of death.

GEOGRAPHY

Dengue is endemic in more than 128 countries, with 3.9 billion people at risk. It is found in Latin America, the United States of the America, Europe, Africa and Asia. Dengue is widespread throughout the tropics, in rural and urban areas. Recently, cases were reported in Florida, the Yunnan province of China and in Japan. Dengue is very also common in Central and South American countries and has been reported in the Cook Islands, Fiji, Malaysia and Vanuatu.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

There is no specific treatment or vaccine for dengue. Early detection and access to proper medical care lowers fatality rates to below 1%. A dengue vaccine has been licensed in a few countries by some National Regulatory Authorities for people 9-45 years of age living in endemic settings, but it not recommended for travelers who visit these endemic areas.

WEST NILE VIRUS

DESCRIPTION

West Nile virus can cause a fatal neurological disease. Approximately 80% of those infected will not show any symptoms, but after 3-14 days, 20% of people infected may develop symptoms of severe disease including headache, high fever, neck stiffness, stupor, disorientation, coma, bleeding, tremors, convulsions, muscle weakness, and paralysis. People over 50 years old, and the immunocompromised, are at highest risk.

GEOGRAPHY

The female Culex is 1 of 3 of the most common mosquitoes to be found worldwide, except in the extreme northern parts of the temperature zone. West Nile virus is found in Africa, Europe, the Middle East, North America and West Asia. The Culex also transmits Japanese encephalitis.

These mosquitoes feed on infected birds and transmit the disease to humans and horses. They bite from dusk until dawn. In 1999, a West Nile virus circulating in Israel and Tunisia was imported to New York, producing a large and dramatic outbreak that spread throughout the continental U.S. in the following years.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

No vaccination exists for humans. Recommended personal protection and mosquito control includes repellents, clothing that cover exposed skin, window screens, and destruction of breeding sites, especially polluted water bodies. Treatment for patients with neurological type of West Nile virus includes hospitalization, intravenous fluids, respiratory support, and prevention of secondary infections.

MALARIA

DESCRIPTION:

Symptoms appear seven days or more (usually 10-15 days) after the bite of an infected mosquito. The first symptoms are fever, headache, chills and vomiting. These symptoms may be mild and difficult to recognize as malaria. There is one particular type of malaria that is concerning and fatal called P. falciparum malaria.  It can progress rapidly to severe forms of the disease, especially in the immunocompromised. Severe P. falciparum malaria is almost always fatal without treatment.  Travelers are susceptible to this type unless they have had some type of exposure and immunity.

GEOGRAPHY

In 2015, more than 3.2 billion people were at risk, and ongoing malaria transmission was found in 95 countries and territories. Sub-Saharan Africa carries a disproportionately higher share of the global malaria burden, with 88% of cases and 90% of global malaria deaths. P. falciparum is the most prevalent parasite in Africa and is responsible for most malaria deaths globally. The Anopheles mosquitoes are the primary vectors and bite mainly at night, from dusk to dawn.  If you’re going to western Africa for a record tarpon, bring your bug spray.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

Antimalarial medicines can be used to prevent malaria. For travelers, malaria can be prevented through chemoprophylaxis, the act of treating yourself prior to contracting the disease.  This is a common practice when visiting places like western Africa, Central America and South America.

YELLOW FEVER

DESCRIPTION

After 3-6 days many symptoms begin, including fever, muscle pains, backache, headache, shivers, loss of appetite, nausea or vomiting. Roughly 15% of patients enter a second, more toxic phase within 24 hours. Symptoms of this phase may include high fever, jaundice (yellow discoloration of your skin from bilirubin building up), and abdominal pain with vomiting. Bleeding can occur almost anywhere but mainly from the mouth, nose, eyes or stomach.  Blood usually appears in the vomit and feces as well, and kidney function can deteriorate rapidly. Half of the patients who go into the toxic phase die within 10-14 days, the other 50% make a full recovery.

Yellow fever can be difficult to diagnose and is confused with severe malaria, dengue, leptospirosis, viral hepatitis or other hemorrhagic fevers, like West Nile virus and Zika.

GEOGRAPHY:

Yellow fever is found in Africa and Latin America, in urban, jungle, forest, semi-humid conditions, and around houses. In May 2016, an emergency committee of the World Health Organization called for intensified national action and international support for yellow fever outbreaks in Angola and Democratic Republic of the Congo. The sylvan yellow fever (AKA jungle yellow fever) occurs in Central and South America, Trinidad, Brazil, and Argentina and is carried by infected monkeys. Mosquitoes infect monkeys and then go on to transmit the disease from monkeys to humans, and from human to human.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

Vaccination is available for humans and if you did time in the military, you were vaccinated. A single dose of vaccine provides life-long protection against yellow fever disease.  If you aren’t sure, you can take a smaller dose of the vaccine (1/5 dose) which provides 12 months of immunity.

Sources:
CDC – Washington DC www.cdc.gov
The World Health Organization – www.who.org

Holiday in Holbox

The Westside of Andros

Pulling The Trigger

The post MOSQUITO-BORNE DISEASES – A THREAT FOR TRAVELING ANGLERS first appeared on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

The post MOSQUITO-BORNE DISEASES – A THREAT FOR TRAVELING ANGLERS appeared first on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

Story by Michael DeJarnette
Photos by Patrick DeJarnette

Our flight arrived about an hour late in Cancun. It was the Sunday before Christmas, and it had been snowing in Utah. Airports and airlines had been working through significant staffing issues related to the Omicron variant of Covid-19, causing flight cancellations nationwide. Although 6 p.m. doesn’t seem like a late arrival, there was still a two-and-a-half-hour shuttle ride followed by a half-hour ferry boat trip. It really starts to feel late when the journey winds through rural Quintana Roo in a drizzling rain in the dark.

Our ultimate destination was Isla Holbox, an island just off the northeastern tip of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, where the waters of the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico intermingle to create a rich marine ecosystem. The island remains laid-back and car-free. There’s enough tourism infrastructure to make it comfortable, but its relative inaccessibility means it isn’t overrun with visitors like some popular beach destinations along Mexico’s Caribbean coast. It would be a welcome holiday getaway for our family—and for me and my son, Patrick, it would afford an opportunity to include fly fishing for baby tarpon in the family vacation plans.

But we weren’t there yet. Ivan was a great driver, although he drove a bit faster than what seemed humanly possible in the wet conditions. The aging Volkswagen van had seen better days. A perpetual oily glaze streaked by the windshield wipers added even more excitement to the drive. When Ivan learned our group was happy to pony up the 175 pesos for the toll road, which would shave half an hour from the trek, there was genuine joy in his eyes.

Our plans hadn’t taken into consideration that the last ferry between Chiquila and Isla Holbox left at 9 p.m., so we were surprised by the fire drill that erupted as the Volkswagen bounced into the ferry station. “Five minutes, five minutes, the last ferry!” We quickly grabbed our bags, bought tickets, and loaded onto the Holbox Express Fast Ferry.

On the other side of Laguna Yalahau, the boat was unloaded without delay. The port was lively for a rainy Sunday night. Yellow golf carts with lifted suspensions and balloon tires stood in a line, awaiting passengers in the muddy street. We loaded onto two of them, facing backward as we splashed from pothole to pothole through the town center toward the beach road and our hotel, where a long day was followed by a long sleep.

With poor fishing conditions on the horizon, we waded through the mire to explore the town on Monday. Holbox is a small fishing village, not unlike many others that time had forgotten until an Instagram-fueled tourism boom washed over small beach towns in the Yucatán. Pictures in front of colorful signs with the names of towns—blue water and white sand in the background—have emboldened even the previously less adventurous to leave the traditional cruise ship ports like Cancun and Cozumel to crowd into sleepy towns like Playa del Carmen and Tulum and startle them awake. Holbox is blessedly still off the beaten path enough to retain its identity as a fishing village. We were reminded of this as we saw an American family walking through soupy, ankle-deep sand in the town center with their shoes in hand, the mother walking as quickly as her bare feet would take her while yelling repeatedly that she was “over this!” I smiled.

There are still street vendors and markets where English isn’t spoken and credit cards aren’t taken. Prices are in pesos, and cervezas cost about 40 or 50 of them. Culinary highlights include cochinita tacos at the stand at the end of the mini mercado across from the air strip, the empanadas a few doors down, lobster pizza at Roots, and the “meat in its own juice” at La Tapatia.

Holbox is a place where a beachgoer can walk a couple of hundred yards from the shore and still be in ankle-deep water. The loudest sounds on the island are the gas powered golf carts. You can swim with whale sharks, explore mangroves by kayak, and check out the area’s abundance of marine and bird life. You can also fish.

I connected with Kevin Webb and Darwin Vega Cruz on social media prior to our trip. Having never been to Holbox, I sent messages to a few guides who had pictures of gamefish and fly rods on their feeds. Kevin was the first one who replied, and we eventually booked a few days to chase tarpon and snook on the fly.

Wind and weather didn’t cooperate, but after ongoing conversations with Vega on WhatsApp, the forecast finally became more favorable for fishing on Tuesday. This was set to be a father-son fishing trip like many before it. Patrick was on break from his first semester of college in Boise, and he seemed genuinely excited to be here. Vega was waiting for us at our hotel at 6:15 a.m. We loaded our equipment into his Can Am and drove to the brightly lit port on the south side of town. The ferries and fishing boats had already started their day. Vega loaded us up, untied the Hells Bay, and pointed it into the darkness.

I doubt there’s ever a bad sunrise over the mangroves while going out to fish, but you know it’s exceptional when the guide pulls out his phone for a picture of it. Vega added a couple of images to his phone and then set a course for the mangroves. We approached an opening in the mangroves at full speed and didn’t slow down, effortlessly winding through the trees before coming out into an opening.

Vega chose a red and white Seaducer from my fly box. We cast at the mangroves for some time and missed a beefy baby tarpon. That empty feeling of missing the trip’s first fish hung in the air for a few minutes. The breeze stiffened as the day progressed, and we moved to a sheltered spot. We switched to a Clouser and waded barefoot in soft sand along the mangroves and missed another baby tarpon. Just as frustration started to creep in, we hooked and landed a snook. But our luck was short-lived; the wind continued to increase and was approaching a gale when we ruled the conditions impossible and called it a day.

We returned the next day, only this time, the sky was clear and the wind speed was in single digits. We were developing a good rapport with Vega and he insisted we call him “Darwito,” the name by which most of Holbox knows him. A lifelong resident of the island, Darwito opened up to us about his battle with grief after losing his wife to cancer four years ago. He said the first three years were dark, but a year ago he got sober and started focusing on the health of both his body and mind. He told us he works out everyday, which was obvious when he showed us the story in black ink on his left arm, an extensive tattoo telling an artful story of triumph and tragedy through images of fly rods, skiffs, and tarpon.

We arrived at the mouth of a creek in the mangroves and saw the baby tarpon rolling. The mosquitos had started to bite, which seemed to excite Darwito. He told us that the mosquitos bring the tarpon. He was probably just trying to make us feel better, but we went along with it, and after a few overly excited casts, a yellow and white Clouser finally found its mark in a cut in the mangroves. The tarpon ate, and the dance had begun. We call them baby tarpon, but they feel bigger than babies when they jump. The silver prince earned his bow before I brought him to the boat. Somehow my 9-weight snapped at a ferrule just as we landed the fish, but I considered it a small price to pay for the experience (and the rod has a good warranty), and it didn’t dampen the celebration.

We moved to a canal in the middle of the mangroves and backed into the trees, making long casts across the channel as tarpon rolled by. We lost a few flies in the tricky back casts, but we were rewarded by a good-sized shiny silver specimen. The tarpon fought hard to get into the mangrove roots, but finally relented as a young sea turtle looked on.

We fished more and talked more, but once again the wind picked up and sent us to port. My wife and daughter thought this was a beach vacation and not a fishing trip, so there were family obligations. But any time a family vacation during the week before Christmas can be tweaked to include a few days of skiffs, tarpon, and fly rods, it’s a success. Holbox is a place where this can be done.

Hopefully, Holbox never paves the roads. It would be a shame for the traffic to get to the levels that are now seen in Tulum and other previously unknown beach destinations. For now, it’s still an escape for both the vacationer and the angler who prefers to be away from crowds and is willing to give up a bit of comfort to do so.

Fly Fishing the Lowcountry – Part Three: Migratory Species of the Lowcountry

Remembering Josie Sands

September – George V. Roberts Jr

The post Holiday in Holbox first appeared on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

The post Holiday in Holbox appeared first on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

Honolulu–Hawaiian bonefish, called O’io here, have shoulders. They’re bigger, beefier and warier than their Caribe cousins. Not to worry If one of these silver wraiths of the coral flats breaks your line and your heart, there are other pursuits just onshore. Where else can you blue ribbon fly fish a few hundred yards from one of the most fascinating, densely populated cities on this planet? My brother Rick and I are here for family reunion and related business issues, and to celebrate a birthday, mine. I’m turning 80, and frankly in no mood to cheer my ongoing decrepitude. Rick’s four years younger but we’ll both need a break from this sort of thing. We still live to cast flies so we signed up with guide Jeremy Inman at Oahu Fly Fishing for a go at these magnificent missiles, these “boners” we ended up nicknaming them. Nothing salacious intended.  If you think so at least your mind is in the right place.

Who knew Hawaii had bone fishing grounds?
The old Hawaiians knew, they still do, but because they’re, well, boney, they’ve never been highly prized as luau fare. Add to that fortunate species protection it’s only in recent years a few local haole (that’s white guy in Hawaiian) catch and release fly fishermen discovered the mystery, beauty and woeful challenge of the O’io, the big silver ghosts that risk the shallows of the reef flats to feed, and occasionally inhale a favored fly here called spam and eggs, and rip at otherworldly speed fly line and backing, and then the angler hears the doleful tink of the spool going empty; over, gone, and then experience the afterglow of catch and release au natural.  It’s why we love fly fishing. It’s the ones that get away that live in memory, and it’s why we get narcoleptic listening to how many you caught and how big they were.

Ok, right to the bad news. Jeremy caught a positive Covid test and had to cancel. We tried to book another guide but to no avail. What to do? Forget this story lead, or give you the lowdown of what went down during our no fishing week in Honolulu? The latter course seems a little nutso but as all  wannabe writers know, the need to write is like an abscess under your second lower molar, it’s absolutely undeniable. We’ll get after those magnificent fish in the future, but in the meantime dear reader, suffer the foregoing.                                                                       

Immediate hassle at the Honolulu airport, Daniel Inouye International Airport.
If the late Senator Inouye, a highly decorated, as in Medal of Honor, WW II American Japanese veteran of the European theatre of that conflict, knew how bad things are now, he’d probably want his name scrubbed off the place.  Despite being triple vaxxed, despite jumping in advance through all the hoops required by the state tourism bureaucracy, I’m held up because I don’t have my docs and code uploaded on an iPhone because I don’t own an iPhone, I don’t want to be an iPhone zombie, and my old trusty clam shell cell phone isn’t cutting the mustard. When I indicate some impatience and frustration with the nice young native Hawaiian woman interrogating me, who was actually doing her level best to get me released, she asked “You wanna get quarantined?.” So I shut my pie hole and an hour later I was a, har de har, free man.

My eldest son John picks me up curbside and ferries me to the hotel where brother Rick and I and the whole fan damnly are booked, the Kamaina Hotel, located at the far east end of the island of Oahu, in the shadow of Diamond Head, just across the street from the spacious green belt of Kapiolani Park. John is ravenously hungry. He teaches surfing for a living, an enterprise that requires daily physical energy akin to a triathlon, so we promptly load the whole fan damnly in his van and head for revered  since 1978 Yanagi Sushi on Kapiolani where the sea fare and the service rivals that I’ve had anywhere in Japan. Their maguro (bluefin tuna sashimi) is a Mishima novel in one bite, Japanese perfection. And since we live to eat, that brings up what we love most about Honolulu; you don’t need a plane ticket to enjoy the best of Japan, China, Thailand, the Philippines, Korea, Viet Nam, and throw in Portugal and Cambodia and Taiwan and, if you know where to go, and John does, local style Hawaiian specialties most tourists only know dimly from awful commercial group luaus sponsored by a predatory cabal of travel agents.  And thus it is way too many nice people from Toonerville and Mayberry who remain clueless what they’re missing at little joints like Jack’s in Aina Haina (since 1964) where Set A Fish and Eggs on the menu is a “juice battered” Hawaiian style filet of Mahi that’s so over-the-top terrific fresh you know it was swimming only hours ago.

My birthday bash is held in Korea at the Seoul Garden also on Kapiolani. Everyone’s there. My brother, my sister, my daughter, my three sons and their wives and a horde of wonderful grandchildren, and a best friend, John, from wild teenage years together, who’s hot for my sister, and great local friends Sheldon and Gwen Zane. Sheldon is helping me navigate “related family business issues” mentioned above, actually a problematic real estate investment that’s become pin the tail on me the donkey. The Seoul Garden shares the same building, although appropriately cordoned off from the restaurant, with its other business, the Femme Nu Strip Bar. Perhaps another birthday. Anyway, Korean barbecue, marinated pork belly strips, cuts of kalbi beef, sizzling aromatically right in front of you, you’re going to eat way too much, and enjoy every bite, and maybe also order the killer ice cold noodles in piquant broth, naengmyeon it is in the language of the peninsula, a favorite on hot, muggy evenings. And save room for the whole yellow corvina grilled so well you’ll munch on the head, and in true Korean fashion if you prefer, served with some of the fish’s selected stomach contents remaining to be enjoyed.

At the urging of my second son Joseph, we do some road tripping around Oahu. He’s here from Denver for my birthday, and for some distance from a nascent marital crisis at home, which I won’t get into except to remember a Nicholson line in a movie in which he’s playing the role of a successful writer of female dialog. When asked how he accomplishes that, he says, “Easy, I just omit reason and accountability, and think like a man.” Joseph is a New Age entrepreneurial success story, he alone runs High Desert Marketing, a one-man organization that locates products lost in outdated business models that made us human, like going to the store, and distributes and sells them via the huge virtual octopus of Amazon.com.

Our road trips include the crest of the Pali where in 1795 King Kamehameha unified his power by defeating a rival army. It’s known in Hawaiian as “The Battle of the Leaping Mullet”, a reference to the number of warriors driven off the cliff, a victory attributed in large part to artillery gifted to the king by British Captain George Vancouver during his Big Island visit in 1793, he of course with additional British territorial claims in mind. We paid for a tour of Iolani Palace where in 1895 Hawaii’s Queen Liliuokulani was imprisoned in her upstairs bedroom for eight months, and the monarchy was expunged in favor of European and U.S. pro business interests that controlled the legislature, a move that led to U.S. annexation in 1898, and finally to Statehood in 1959. One sparkling afternoon we drove up Oahu’s west shore to the end of the road, to escape the crowds of Waikiki and luxuriate on the sand at Yokohama Beach, one of the most beautiful and least visited on Oahu. It was great respite, but honesty demands divulgence we were not unmoved by lines of homeless encampments we saw along the way, and we weren’t cheered up by the presence of one of the new U.S. Space Force bases there, the latest military force established by executive order from former President Trump to apparently ready the nation to launch belligerence up to the heavens. Guess he never saw the classic 1951 film “The Day the Earth Stood Still” which fictionally poses an oddly credible result of such a move.

All in all, it was a great week, disappointing of course that our fly lines stayed dry, but are you ready for the capper?
I got an iPhone for my birthday.

* Long time Hawaii surfer son John advises O’io is indeed a favorite at true local Hawaiian luaus in the form of Lomi O’io, an ancient Hawaiian version of ceviche, that constitutes the spoon scraped raw meat of the fish combined with rock salt, green onion, Limu Koho, or local red seaweed, Imanoma, or roasted Kukui nut, and Hawaiian chili peppers and served ice cold. 

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The post Uh Oh, No O’io! (Bonefish Hawaii) first appeared on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

The post Uh Oh, No O’io! (Bonefish Hawaii) appeared first on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

When tales first emerged from Farquhar Atoll in the Seychelles of these massive beasts being caught on fly, the angling community was pretty skeptical that parrotfish ate crabs, and fly anglers believed that, like milkfish, most parrotfish were foul-hooked. I can dismiss this, as I have seen it with my own eyes: bumpies tracking off the school, tilting over sideways to eyeball a tasty morsel, and then eating it. Also, things have also come a very long way since then regarding approach and tactics when presenting to these densely packed schools (which I will detail later).

The best places to target bumpies are huge, open turtle grass flats, such as those found on Providence or Farquhar Atoll in the Indian Ocean. You will see them playing in the surf line amongst the coral heads, waiting to come onto the flats.  Occasionally they will tail around coral bommies. If you were to hook one here your chances of landing it would be very slim, as your line likely would be cut on the coral almost immediately. Bumpies are also fond of gravel bottoms, which seem to relax them, especially those located in the middle of turtle grass. Here they can spend the day lazily moving along as a herd, grazing as they go.

The setup for bumpies is normally a 9- or 10-weight rod. More are caught on 9- weights primarily because that is what anglers tend to be carrying on those flats (interchanging them with a 12-weight for giant trevally). Modern 9-weights such as the Hardy Zephrus work well, as they have the power to battle a parrotfish but still have the finesse of presentation. If you’re out to target bumpies specifically, I recommend a 10-weight. Bumpies are big, powerful fish, so you’ll appreciate the added backbone as it heads for the ocean. The presentation made by any outfit larger than 10-weight might spook them. The only time I’ve ever deviated from this was when targeting bumpies in Sudan. The school was on the edge of the reef, and every fish in it was  well over 100 pounds. In that instance, not even a 12-weight could stop the fish when it ran, and the entire episode ended quickly and in tears.

Bumpies can be line- and leader-shy, so, it’s imperative you have a reel with very smooth start-up inertia, for when hooking these tanks you’re going to do it on a relatively light tippet. Ideally your tippet should be 40-pound fluorocarbon. If the fish are spooky the guides will often make you scale down to as little as 20 pounds. These days we use furled leaders for bumpies for several reasons. The furled leader takes a lot of the shock as well as providing extra abrasion-resistance for the harsh habitat you’re fishing in. Alternatively, tapered permit leaders will suffice (20-pound test minimum). Again, fluorocarbon works best, as it’s harder for the fish to see whilst providing a little more resistance against those big choppers. 

Connect your leader to the fly line with a standard loop-to-loop connection. Choose floating lines only, and pick one with a long belly and gentle front taper. Good turnover matched with as subtle a presentation as possible is the way forward. 

When it comes to choosing flies to cast at these behemoths, two aspects are vital. The first is a really strong hook. If you think triggerfish can mess up a hook, it’s nothing compared with what these guys can do. The Gamakatsu SL12S works well. Due to their mouth structure—beak and not much gum—hooking bumpies is difficult, so a hook with a nice big gape helps. The second vital aspect is that all of your flies need to have a weed guard, as the areas you’ll fish in—turtle grass and coral—will dictate it. The weed guard will prevent you from becoming very frustrated as well as help you avoid foul-hooking fish. Weed guards need to be 25- to 30-pound Mason hard monofilament tied in behind the hook eye and reaching back to the point. Weight of the fly is also key, and water depth will determine this. Ideally your fly will be weighted with a medium dumbbell eye, as large dumbbell eyes will tend to spook fish on landing. When fishing for bumpies you tend to find yourself in water that’s knee-deep to mid-thigh. In shallower water, simply scale down the weight. White Merkin patterns and white Flexo Crabs have proved to be the most effective. Tan works also, but the white flies contrast better with the turtle grass. The bumpy is a visual creature so the fly needs to pop. 

Bumpies don’t wish to swim in strong currents as they will expend too much energy. Therefore, neap tides are preferable; they like slack water when they can spend lots of the time on the flats. Spring tides will require more energy of them to remain in the areas they like. If I had my choice, I think my favorite tide would be a neap tide on a new moon. The full-moon cycle can be very good, but there seem to be times when they vanish from the flats. This could have something to do with their spawning cycle, but we still know very little about them. What we have learned has come from guides’ observations based on trial and error on the flats.

Presenting the fly greatly depends on your ability to anticipate the fish’s movements. When fishing for bumpies you don’t strip the fly. The fly sits in position to intercept the moving fish and the angler simply maintains tension on the fly. This sounds simple, but when a school is bearing down on you and you have a current pushing across the flat, keeping contact with the fly can be a challenge. The true skill in hooking bumpies is in anticipating their line of movement and putting the fly in the right spot. The guides I have fished with on Providence and Farquhar have this dialed in. I will warn you now, though, that bumpies can be the most frustrating fish. You could hook many in a day and not land one. Be prepared. 

I remember one incredible afternoon several years ago on the east side of Providence Atoll where there were at least four massive schools tailing across this one giant turtle grass flat. We hooked many, and I and one of the other anglers managed to land one each—so we were ecstatic. The third angler with us proceeded to hook eight in succession, and each time something went wrong. We followed him along the flat, taking turns passing him rods with new leaders and rigged flies—it was a bit like a production line—only to have the flies and leaders destroyed and the rods passed back. We were running out of crab flies when finally, as the sun was slipping down the sky, he hooked one last fish. The battle was fierce, taking us all the way to the edge of the flat before our guide finally waded out chest-deep and managed to net the fish. The jubilation was immense as our team returned to the mothership that night. But I digress…. 

So you have arrived on the flats to be greeted by big flopping bluey-green tails. As we touched on earlier, your approach is vital. You need to approach from the right direction, and if you get this wrong it can dramatically reduce your chances of hooking up. If the bumpies are moving from the deep water into shallow, you need to get high on the flat and present the fly down to them. It’s a bit like feeding a fly downstream to an ultra-spooky trout. This allows the school to move up on the fly without your spooking them. Essentially it’s an ambush presentation. Ideally you want to present the fly head-on. Presenting from the side increases the chances of lining them, foul-hooking one, or if you do hook one from the side it increases your chances of being cut off by another fish in the school. Think of it as trying to swim your line through a parade of wire cutters. It’s so much better to feed them head-on and allow them to come up onto the fly. Often they will feed past you, and frustrated anglers often will try to fish from behind. The chances of hooking one this way are very small. It’s far better to relocate entirely and move around to the front of the school.

When you have cast your fly to the ambush point you must let it to sink. Pick up all the slack line and simply maintain tension so that you can feel if a fish picks the fly up. If you feel your fly is out of position relative to where the school is moving, strip it into position or recast, but then allow it to sink again. Don’t strip it over their heads or you’ll spook them.

You’ve presented the fly correctly, the fish picks up the fly, and now what…? It’s vital for you to remember that you’re fishing a thin-gauge hook on a light leader—not a GT rig—so make sure you don’t give it a GT strip set or you’ll pop the leader straight away (this often happens to anglers who’ve been fishing for GTs all week).

As soon as you set the hook, all hell will break loose. The school tends to explode and moves off like the proverbial stampeding herd of bison. Clear the slack line onto the reel; if it catches on anything it will break off immediately. Once the fish is on the reel, take a moment to become aware of what’s around you on the flat. This will prevent you from falling into white holes or deeper water—as I have in the past! Once the fish is on the reel, anglers can get spooked as the fish has stripped off 150 yards of backing and just keeps going. Don’t be tempted to change the drag or you’ll pop the leader. It’s best to set the drag tension before you start fishing and then just leave it. Occasionally fish will run into a depression or turtle grass lip and just sit there, but most of the time they run with the school and keep on running. For the first ten minutes you’ll have no control at all, which takes some getting used to. Once the fish tires a bit you need to try to separate it from the school. Your guide will head out in front to try to keep the line clear and prevent you from being cut off.

Once the fish is separated from the school, the second stage commences. Keep the rod tip high at this point; with the length of line you have out, side pressure will have no impact. Once the fish is within 30 or 40 meters you can start working angles. Bumpies are incredibly powerful fish, so be patient and maintain constant pressure.

The third stage comes when it is time to try to land the fish. This can be tense, especially when you have lost a few beforehand. To land a bumpy you really need a net and a big one at that! Alternatively, you can lanyard them through the beak, which can sometimes require a rugby tackle on the flat. They are extremely slimy, making them hard to grab, and the caudal compresses, providing no wrist to gain purchase on. The best way is to cradle it, but I highly recommend you let your guide do the honors as he is going to get bullied. These fish tend to release really well as they are so strong.

The feeling of landing one of these wonderful creatures and watching it swim away is hard to describe. I think because landing one proves so hard with the odds stacked against you after a hard, prolonged fight, each fish you actually touch is a bit of an emotional rollercoaster. It becomes a shared experienced with those you are with and one you’ll never forget. Are they the weirdest fish on the planet? Probably. Are they one of the coolest to land on fly? Definitely!

Bio: Peter McLeod is the Travel Editor of TFFM. As the founder of Aardvark McLeod, international fly fishing specialists, it is a position for which he is perfectly suited. For more information on fly fishing for parrotfish or any other gamefish in the fly angler’s world, you can contact Peter at peter@aardvarkmcleod.com or visit his website at www.aardvarkmcleod.com.

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The Leaky Palapa | Xcalak, Mexico | Trey Reid

The post Bison Of The Flats: The Bumphead Parrotfish first appeared on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

The post Bison Of The Flats: The Bumphead Parrotfish appeared first on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

Chef Marla Stiles and her wife Linda Loo have been feeding locals, expat Americans, and snowbirds at the southern end of the Mexican Yucatan since 2004. With fly fishers descending on Xcalak in growing numbers, the Leaky Palapa has gained a reputation among saltwater bug-flingers as a gastronomic attraction that’s as irresistible as the area’s bonefish and permit.

“I’ve lived and traveled all over the world and have eaten at some of the best restaurants in some of the foodiest cities, and the Leaky Palapa is in my global top ten,” says Rob Mukai, a Utah native who runs the Acocote Eco Inn a few miles north of town. “They would be competitive in Tokyo, London, New York, Sydney—you name it.”

Veteran restaurateurs from Canada, Stiles and Loo have crafted a menu that merges Mexican culinary traditions with French and Italian techniques, elevating customary Yucatecan ingredients and flavors from delicious to magnificent. The food remains familiar and approachable while simultaneously inspiring admiration and wonder. The portions are satisfying, the prices shockingly reasonable.

The Leaky Palapa balances refined fare with a casual atmosphere. Situated on the ground floor of its owners’ home, it radiates a warmth that isn’t merely the result of its tropical locale. Guests rarely enter without a cheerful greeting and a hug. The cozy dining room’s garnet-hued walls, dimly lit by small lights encased in gourd lampshades, create a mood that’s as inviting as the proprietors.

Loo runs the front of the house and tends the bar. Her signature cocktail is the chile-pineapple margarita, in which sweet, sour, and picante mingle in salt-rimmed glasses—but she’s just as deft at crafting classics like the old fashioned or recommending a bottle from the wine list.

The libations are useful lubricants to help with the diner’s difficulty of deciding what to order. From appetizer through dessert, everything on the menu is intriguing. Popular main dishes include pasilla chile-crusted pork tenderloin with a bourbon and ancho reduction; ravioli filled with huitlacoche, a mushroom-like corn fungus that’s sometimes called Mexican truffle; and the pork ossobuco, slow-roasted with a chipotle tomato broth until it peels off the bone.

Being about three or four long casts from the edge of the Caribbean Sea, the Leaky Palapa naturally excels with seafood. Besides the Campeche shrimp that’s dusted with dried chiles and served atop squid-ink pasta, the restaurant’s fish and lobster come from speargun-wielding Xcalak fishermen. Whether it’s the local spiny lobster tails (grilled on the barbecue or poached in coconut milk) or one of Stiles’ myriad fish presentations, there’s a good chance the food on your plate was still swimming earlier in the day.

(If there’s a can’t-miss appetizer on the menu, it’s the caramelized ginger-seared lobster bites. The lobster is divine by itself, but the sauce that pools around it has caused diners to forsake their manners. “Somebody told me I should serve a squeegee with this thing,” Loo says, “so you don’t leave anything on the plate.”)

It’s no wonder the Leaky Palapa is a favorite hangout of traveling fly anglers. From across the globe, they descend on Xcalak as a home base for guided and DIY trips to Chetumal Bay’s flats, the area’s intricate lagoon systems, and beachfront fishing inside the Mesoamerican Reef. Fly fishing travelers, Stiles says, account for about 40 percent of the Leaky Palapa’s business.

As far as it is from Cancun, Xcalak attracts a different kind of traveler than the all-inclusive resorts on the northern Yucatan beaches or the full-service fly fishing lodges around Ascension Bay to the north or Belize’s Ambergris Caye to the south. People visit Xcalak to get away from crowds. If they’re not in search of bonefish, permit, tarpon, and snook, they’re likely looking for solitude on the Costa Maya’s sparsely populated beaches, or seeking underwater adventure via snorkeling or scuba diving. That’s how Loo and Stiles stumbled onto Xcalak while escaping the Canadian winter in January of 2004.

“We were camped on the beach in a motorhome we picked up in Texas,” Stiles says. “We had been traveling through Mexico, camping on beaches and diving. We had all our equipment plus a compressor, as well as an inflatable diveyak. An American couple whose daughter owned a place in town came by our campsite to ask if we would be interested in renting the space and operating a restaurant.”

Stiles and Loo returned to the Great White North, sold their house and restaurant in London, Ontario, and went back to the tropics on a somewhat impulsive, unplanned adventure to open a restaurant in a tiny Mexican fishing village on the edge of the Caribbean. “Once we made the decision, it was easy,” Loo says.

Starting a new restaurant in remote Xcalak wasn’t as easy as the decision to do it. The restaurant’s first space consisted of a small building with a tiny apartment, a cramped kitchen, and a larger open area for the restaurant covered by a palapa, a classic Mexican shelter with a palm-leaf thatched roof.

“We had rented this building without looking at it very carefully,” Stiles says. “While sitting inside the palapa making our plans, we looked and realized we had a large problem: The palapa needed replacing, and we didn’t have the cash to do it. So we thought for a minute and we decided, no problem: We would buy a bunch of umbrellas and put them over each table and call it the Leaky Palapa.”

At the time, Xcalak’s electricity was supplied by a generator that ran for three or four hours a night and rarely at full power. Fate intervened in the form of CFE, Mexico’s state-owned electric utility, which installed transformers and put Xcalak on the electrical grid just as Stiles and Loo were set to open in October 2004.

There also were problems stocking the restaurant’s larder. Xcalak has no grocery stores, too small even for the type of central mercado that’s ubiquitous in many Mexican cities. Local fishermen kept the restaurant stocked with fish and lobster, but other ingredients were hard to get. Grocery trucks came in from bigger towns a couple times a week, but supplies were limited and their schedules unreliable. Stiles and Loo had to make weekly trips to Chetumal, a five-hour round trip drive—with no guarantee vendors would have needed ingredients.

“It was crazy some days,” Loo says. “We’d get to Chetumal, and there wouldn’t be any lettuce.”

The Leaky Palapa staggered forward nine years in its original space. Loo and Stiles found relief for their stress by kayaking back in the bay, fishing and camping and watching roseate spoonbills, crocodiles, and wood storks. Being accepted and welcomed by the local community, and seeing their customers’ reactions to their restaurant, made it worth the frequent hassles.

In 2013 they finished construction on a new home and restaurant, where they serve customers Thursday through Sunday between US Thanksgiving and late April. The restaurant closes during the low season while Loo and Stiles return to Canada.

They still face hardships operating a restaurant of the Leaky Palapa’s caliber in a remote corner of the Mexican Caribbean, but it’s easier than it used to be. They built the new digs with a dining room and kitchen closer to their specifications. They still make weekly five-hour round-trip drives to Chetumal for ingredients, but Quintana Roo’s capital city now has a Walmart, a Sam’s Club, and the large Mexican grocery chain Chedraui. Electricity is more reliable these days, although Stiles and Loo still turn to a backup generator at times. The salt and humidity are hell on kitchen equipment. But the force that propels the Leaky Palapa and its owners forward is the same thing that makes the restaurant so remarkable: It’s the challenge of creating something extraordinary where you least expect it. When people respond to that, it’s the stuff of dreams.

“The best thing about running a restaurant here is the people,” Stiles says. “Our customers come from all over the world. They have worked all year for their holiday, and now they are on it. They are in the best frame of mind, as they are here doing what they love and what gives them joy.”

For many Xcalak visitors, that includes dining at the Leaky Palapa.

Bio: Trey Reid has written for numerous newspapers, magazines, and websites, and is a former field reporter for ESPN. He works in public and media relations for the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, producing and hosting the agency’s television show Arkansas Wildlife. He also hosts the outdoor radio show The Wild Side on 103.7 FM The Buzz in Little Rock, which can also be heard as a podcast.

Photos: Trey Reid, Michael DeJarnette, Bob Haines, Lee Reddmann, and Kaettie Wenger

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The post The Leaky Palapa | Xcalak, Mexico | Trey Reid first appeared on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

The post The Leaky Palapa | Xcalak, Mexico | Trey Reid appeared first on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

—Carlos Castaneda, Journey to Ixtlan

On numerous fly fishing trips to Mexico over the past 13 years, I’ve brought home all sorts of souvenirs. But until a trip in March, I had never brought back toilet paper.

It’s called papél sanitário in Spanish, and back home in the United States people were hoarding it in panic as COVID-19 and lockdowns spread across the country. I had been chasing permit, bonefish, and tarpon for several days in rural Mexico. During nine days of fly fishing and travel in the Yucatan Peninsula, the novel coronavirus went from being a faint American concern to a full-blown national emergency.

Harboring fewer than 400 souls at the far southern tip of Mexico’s Caribbean coast, the small fishing village of Xcalak was arguably one of the best places to ride out a pandemic. My friends and I, however, were headed away from elective recreational seclusion and toward the forced isolation of quarantines and social distancing.

The only sure thing was uncertainty. But we had TP.

Return on Investment

The journey to Xcalak requires more work than similar Caribbean destinations, but the effort yields abundant rewards. From the continental United States it takes a flight, a rental car, a five- to six-hour drive, and two extra travel days to break up the drive to and from Cancun. The payoff is reduced fishing pressure, an opportunity for cultural immersion, and one of the best travel fly fishing bargains you’ll find.

Xcalak isn’t for everybody. Outside of fishing, diving, and snorkeling, options are limited. There’s no nightlife or kitschy tourist attractions. It’s as far from the all-inclusive resorts of Cancun as you can get, a place with off-grid accommodations where you won’t find air conditioning.

But you’ll discover countless miles of Chetumal Bay’s sublime saltwater flats with lightly pressured bonefish and permit. There’s also easily accessible fishing along the Caribbean coast, where the planet’s second-longest barrier reef protects the beach from heavy surf. Brackish lagoons with tarpon and snook present additional opportunities. Independent guides run trips out of the village for a fraction of what you’ll pay in other popular destinations. Anglers interested in blazing their own trail will find some of the most accessible do-it-yourself saltwater fly fishing prospects on the Yucatan Peninsula.

I found Xcalak (pronounced ISH-kah-lahk) in 2007. I booked a half-day guided trip with Captain Victor Castro, who no doubt needed all of his skill and patience—as well as a measure of lucto lead a rank neophyte with a borrowed 8-weight to his first bonefish. It was the first evolutionary step toward a fixation with Trachinotus falcatus, commonly called “black-tailed devils,” or by their Spanish name, palometa, but sometimes known by more contemptuous monikers like “f****** permit.”

On the Road

Our crew flew into Cancun on a Friday afternoon. Lee Reddmann, an accountant with fly fishing obsessive disorder, and Casey Hughes, a trout fishing guide who represents several outdoor-industry companies, arrived with me from Little Rock. Michael DeJarnette, a friend since childhood, came in from Park City.

With the back of our rented Dodge Caravan looking like a mobile fly shop, we took off on the hour-and-a-half drive to Tulum. Unless flights arrive before noon, it’s best to break up the trip from Cancun to Xcalak. The route consists mostly of well-maintained federal highways, but animals, pedestrians, and long stretches of remote roadway can make nighttime driving sketchy.

The stop in Tulum leaves three-and-a-half hours of driving for the final leg to Xcalak. It also serves as a traveler’s decompression chamber, where the city’s bohemian ethos and tourism scene offer a transition zone between regular life and Xcalak’s extreme isolation.

We found food trucks and filled up on nachos, quesadillas, and empanadas, a solid base for multiple rounds of various social lubricants. Things got fuzzy after we drank the pox (pronounced poash)—a traditional distillation of corn, wheat, and sugar cane that’s like Maya moonshine. The shamans used it to connect with the spirit world; we used it to disconnect from the actual world.

Fortified by coffee the next morning, we headed to the Chedraui supermarket for food, beer, and booze. Xcalak only has a couple small stores and a grocery truck that delivers on a loose schedule, so it’s best to pick up provisions on the way down.

The road carried us through the heart of the Maya world. We passed the ruins at Muyil, a vestige of the Maya civilization’s bygone splendor and its remarkable achievements in astronomy, mathematics, art, and engineering. As we slowed down through small towns, their inhabitants were a reminder that the Maya still walk upon this big porous limestone slab.

About two hours after leaving Tulum, we stopped at the Pemex outside Majahual to top off the van’s gas tank, and another hour later we were looking at a big sign that read, “Bienvenido Xcalak,” where the Caravan’s tires rolled over the last patch of asphalt they’d touch for a week.

The Inside Scoop

Using a guide dramatically increases the odds of success in Xcalak. Local knowledge and experience aside, another factor is the accessibility afforded by their boats. While the wading DIY angler finds abundant opportunity around Xcalak, the guided fly angler can cover more water and reach otherwise inaccessible spots. Boats also make it easier to spot fish.

We arranged two boats for five days with Victor Castro and his crew at Osprey Tours (xcalak-flyfishing.com). More than a fishing guide, Castro has become a valued friend. We met him and his nephew Felipe Miravete at eight a.m. the first day. “Mucho viento” were Miravete’s first words, but the 15- to 20-mph wind wasn’t the only issue. Clouds obscured the sun and showed few signs of breaking up. The southern Yucatan was experiencing a norte, and while the cooler north wind and lower humidity made for great sleeping conditions, it would probably hurt the fishing.

Hughes and I climbed in Miravete’s panga and motored south, turning west into the Zaragoza Canal, a manmade cut connecting the Caribbean with Chetumal Bay about three miles north of Bacalar Chico, a narrow, serpentine waterway separating Mexico from Ambergris Caye, Belize. Miravete killed the Yamaha outboard on a massive flat within sight of the canal.

Although he stands barely 5 feet tall, Miravete’s eyes and intense determination make him a giant on the flats. He’s a jokester, usually smiling and laughing away from the water, but in the stern of a panga he takes on a resolute mien. With a light drizzle dimpling the shallow water, Hughes struck the trip’s first fish: a solid bonefish, macabí, that Miravete spotted in spite of the miserable conditions.

Sábalo Sorrow

The wind was still strong out of the northeast the next day, but we had sunshine. Hughes and I hit the water with Miravete again, making a longer run north in the bay. About 45 minutes after shutting down the motor, Miravete spotted two big, murky shapes swimming parallel to the boat at 75 feet.

“Big tarpon,” he said.

With a 10-weight rigged for the smaller tarpon we anticipated, we needed to scale up quickly. Hughes used a heavy leader from Miravete’s tackle bag, chaotically re-rigging in the floor of the panga.

“It’s like tying a knot with Weed Eater line,” Hughes said.

Pushing the panga with a pole fashioned from a sapling, Miravete chased the fish across the flat. Hughes fastened a red streamer from Miravete’s box to the leader and stepped up to the casting deck. Ten minutes and 400 meters after initially spotting them, the two tarpon were again parallel to the boat.

“Nine o’clock,” Miravete said. “Forty feet. Cast now.”

Hughes delivered the shot perpendicular to the pair, stripped once—and the line went tight. Miravete shrieked at the top of his lungs. Hughes strip-set with his left hand and then grabbed the rod butt with both hands to jam the hook deeper into the tarpon’s hard mouth. The fish ripped out the slack line and was on the reel fast.

The sábalo exploded out of the water, a writhing silver hulk, its scales reflecting the golden morning light. Hughes bowed to the behemoth, which looked to be close to 100 pounds. Seconds later the tarpon breached the turquoise water again. Less than 50 feet from the boat, it sounded like somebody shaking a bucket of silver dollars.

Hughes jumped the fish a third time. The line went slack. Hughes stood there silently shaking for several seconds before breaking his vigil of dejection. At a volume that could’ve been heard 25 miles away in San Pedro, Belize, he screamed an exaggerated version of the granddaddy of all profanities.

Miravete shared an observation in Spanish, but I waited several hours before translating for my despondent friend: In eight years of guiding, this was only the second time Miravete had seen a tarpon that big outside of the migratory runs in July and August.

DIY Dreaming

Back at our digs at Acocote Eco Inn, about 5 miles north of town, the satellite Internet allowed us to stay somewhat connected to news from home. The first sign of trouble came Monday, when the US stock market experienced its biggest daily point drop in history. DeJarnette, who works in global finance, skipped a day of fishing to deal with the fallout. But aside from that hiccup, we fell into a rhythm of fishing, eating, and drinking—followed by merciless trash talking.

We convened in Acocote’s palapa on the second night for Rob-a-ritas, proprietor and innkeeper Rob Mukai’s eponymous riff on the Margarita. It’s a tradition Mukai keeps so guests can meet and mingle, and it served as our introduction to new friends Bob Haines and Kaettie Wenger, who were down from Colorado for a month of mostly DIY fly fishing.

The couple’s success is an example of Xcalak’s DIY potential. Haines scored with a hefty permit from the beach north of the inn during our stay, and Wenger followed a few days later with an impressive bonefish. They also used stand-up paddle boards to fish the brackish lagoon on the west side of the beach road, landing multiple small tarpon in a single day.

DIY anglers also can fish Chetumal Bay. Xcalak sits on a narrow peninsula jutting south between the Caribbean and the bay, so it’s just a few miles from town to the bay’s eastern shoreline. With roads leading to a defunct ferry terminal and a rock jetty, anglers can park and wade miles of flats.

The Longest Silence

“What is emphatic in angling is made so by the long silences—the unproductive periods,” Thomas McGuane wrote. “No form of fishing offers such elaborate silences as fly fishing for permit.”

Decades after publication of The Longest Silence, McGuane’s words still ring true. The angler passes countless hours scanning the surface for the slightest sign of nervous water and straining optic nerves to scrutinize cerulean shallows. Long periods of inactivity are punctuated by ephemeral moments of exhilaration upon actually seeing a permit—and almost always are followed by pangs of rejection.

In three trips to Xcalak since 2018, I’ve spent about two-and-a-half weeks of my life in search of my first permit. I’ve had good shots at scores of them. I’ve turned them toward my fly. I’ve even vicariously felt the thrill of capture, watching Reddmann bring a permit to hand last year.

Although still feeling the effects of the norte, our third fishing day dawned with better conditions. Castro returned from hiatus to guide DeJarnette and me. We made a long run north in the bay but didn’t see anything for three hours, so we reeled in and ran back south to a flat on the east side of Cayo Chelem. Castro announced we would try for bonefish.

I spent half an hour in the bow and made a couple of casts to solitary cruisers that showed no interest. DeJarnette took the next turn as Castro slowly pushed the panga down the flat. It appeared as barren as anything we had seen—until suddenly it wasn’t.

“Permit,” Castro said, looking at the darker green water where the flat sloped imperceptibly toward the open bay.

I took my 9-weight with a tan crab from its holder and extended it toward DeJarnette.

“You take the shot,” he said.

I stepped up on the casting deck and stripped line off the reel so it piled next to my bare feet. A wedge of six or seven permit appeared, swimming toward us. My first cast was 60 feet at two o’clock, presented precisely and delicately. They ignored the fly but kept coming. The next cast, 10 to 12 feet shorter, landed 5 feet in front of the lead fish, straight off the nose of the boat. I made long, slow strips, the fourth producing resistance. I pulled back hard on the fly line, and it came tight.

The permit raced toward deeper water, peeling line off the reel as it ran toward a dark, rocky patch. I raised the rod higher and moved the fish. It swam right to left at 50 or 60 feet, and I saw two other permit from the school swimming next to it.

“Es el jefe,” DeJarnette said.

“Yes,” Castro said. “I think he is the boss.”

The permit swam perpendicular to the bow, stunning and glorious against the flat’s sandy white bottom. Castro eased over the side of the boat and followed the fly line to the leader. The startled fish surged and took back 40 feet of line, but two minutes later Castro ran his hand down the fluorocarbon leader and seized the fish by its forked black tail. I yelled like a lunatic and slipped out of the boat to release the fish.

We watched the permit swim slowly away, and I climbed back in the boat, my arms and legs still shaking. Sitting under the high noon sun with my friends—one since Little League baseball and one since my first trip to Xcalak—I recognized the value of long silences. Without the countless refusals and fruitless hours, the moment wouldn’t have been so potent. That it happened with my friend Castro elevated it to a transcendent realm.

Lessons Learned

By the time we packed the van on Friday morning to head north to Tulum, the stock market had experienced a second record decline, businesses and schools were closing, and toilet paper and disinfectants were flying off store shelves back home. The president would declare a national emergency a few hours later.

That evening, sitting in a Tulum bar and sipping mojitos made with freshly pressed local sugar cane, we speculated about pandemic life. The next morning we hit the supermarket and loaded up on papél sanitário.

Weeks later, it’s clear we didn’t have a clue. We didn’t know months would pass before we could sit down for a restaurant dinner, go to a movie, get a haircut, or work out at the gym, or that the words “social distancing” would become more common than handshakes and hugs.

But maybe there’s a lesson from McGuane, or at least a measure of comfort: Maybe this is the longest silence; with luck, then, what is emphatic in life will be made so by it.

Bio: Trey Reid has written for numerous newspapers, magazines, and websites, and is a former field reporter for ESPN. He works in public and media relations for the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, producing and hosting the agency’s television show Arkansas Wildlife. He also hosts the outdoor radio show The Wild Side on 103.7 FM The Buzz in Little Rock, which can also be heard as a podcast. 

Photos: Trey Reid, Michael DeJarnette, Bob Haines, Lee Reddmann, and Kaettie Wenger

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The post Journey to Xcalak | Saltwater Fly Fishing | Trey Reid first appeared on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

The post Journey to Xcalak | Saltwater Fly Fishing | Trey Reid appeared first on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

Our January 2021 issue features TFFM’s Travel Editor, Peter McLeod, writing about one of his longtime passions in “For the Love of GTs.” In this companion video, Peter offers a crash course on where you can find GTs, what tackle you need, favorite fly patterns, where to target them on the flats, how to strip the fly, and how to fight them. If you have any interest in fishing for GTs, you’d do well to listen, as Peter literally wrote the book on the subject. GT: A Fly Fishers’ Guide to Giant Trevally is available through Amazon by clicking here: AMAZON.

Cover spread of Peter’s Article from the January 2021 issue of Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

For more information on fly fishing any international destination, you can contact Peter directly at peter@aardvarkmcleod.com or visit his website at www.aardvarkmcleod.com.

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Giant Trevally taken in the Seychelles on fly.

Another Giant Trevally taken in the Seychelles on fly.

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The post Saltwater Fly Fishing for GTs first appeared on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

The post Saltwater Fly Fishing for GTs appeared first on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

BELIZE

The Philip Goldson International airport (BZE) is now open as of October 1st, 2020. Land borders will remain closed.
Limited flights to Belize will be available from  United Airlines, American Airlines, and Delta.

BAHAMAS

• The Bahamian government has confirmed multiple cases of COVID-19 in The Bahamas.
• Due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, entry requirements for The Bahamas are subject to change at any time.
• Restrictions and regulations can change without notice; before traveling carefully review the guidance directly from the Bahamian government at the Office of the Prime Minister’s webpage and Facebook page, the Bahamas tourism page (and that page’s FAQs), and your travel vendors (airlines, hotels, etc.)

Entry and Exit Requirements:

• Are U.S. citizens permitted to enter? YES
  • Before traveling, each traveler must go to travel.gov.bs, select “International,” and submit a Travel Health Visa Application. The application will require a negative RT PCR nasal swab COVID-19 test result (see below).
  • Applications take up to 72 hours to process, after which each traveler will receive a confirmation that their application has been approved.
  • Each traveler must present their final confirmation document upon arrival in The Bahamas.
  • 14 DAY QUARANTINE****

HAWAII

Hawaii reopened to U.S. travelers on Oct. 15.

As of this time of publication, international travelers from CDC-prohibited countries are still banned from entering Hawaii. That said, Hawaii is reportedly in talks with Japan to develop a reopening plan for travelers.

The state has launched a pre-travel testing program, which requires all visitors to take a nucleic acid amplification test, such as a PCR test, from an approved testing partner no more than 72 hours before departure to Hawaii. However, not every island in Hawaii has the same rules once you arrive.

MEXICO

Open for air travel only as of October 21. Land borders remain closed.

PUERTO RICO

Open as of September 12, 2020.

COSTA RICA

As of November 1, U.S. citizen tourists for all 50 states and Washington D.C. may enter Costa Rica on flights departing from the United States.  U.S. citizen tourists from these states wishing to enter Costa Rica must complete a digital epidemiological health pass, obtain a negative PCR-RT coronavirus test taken within 72 hours of their departure from the United States, and purchase travel insurance that covers accommodation in case of quarantine and medical expenses due to COVID-19.

CUBA

• The Ministry of Tourism in Cuba has confirmed that Havana International Airport continues to be shut down with airport reopening to be anticipated for the beginning of November, 2020. Airlines flying into Havana such as American Airlines (Miami International Airport) has opened up bookings to Havana starting November, 2020. NO DATE SET YET.

The post Covid -19 Travel updates first appeared on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

The post Covid -19 Travel updates appeared first on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

The Bahamas is somewhere I never thought I would get to visit until later in life. Family, work, bills, yard work. . . the list goes on and on. I would feverishly scroll though images of Bahamian bonefish dreaming of when I would get a chance to have my time on the bow stalking bones. I live in central Ohio, so I spend most of my days chasing the working man’s bonefish (carp), waiting for my time. 

Last winter, a trip with friends to South Andros fell from the cold Ohio sky and landed in my lap. I couldn’t pass it up. With a three-year-old at home and the blessing from my expecting wife, I somehow got the green light.

I didn’t really know what to expect. I had heard stories of 20 fish days and giant schools of bonefish that came in with each tide. I also know from years of tarpon fishing in the Keys that you have  to keep your expectations realistic.

The morning of my departure, the weather dumped about 8 inches of fresh snow on Ohio. My first thought was about flight cancelations. My next thought was that I would be barred from the house if I didn’t shovel. I managed to do what was quite possibly the worst/fastest shoveling job in human history and then set off for South Andros.

Perhaps the best part of going to South Andros is connecting in Nassau to the rickety, small plane that takes you to Congo Town airport. Getting on that plane was one of the few times where I truly felt as if I were leaving everything else behind me.

Over the months leading up to my trip I had become fascinated and borderline obsessed with the famous west side of Andros island.  I wanted to fish there all three days. It’s a long, beautiful and invigorating ride to the west side from the dock. As soon as you leave the dock and take a hard turn down the canal, there is not another sign of civilization. The west side of Andros  is a Bahamian national park that abuts one of the world’s largest reef systems. It’s a spider web of lagoons, canals and tidal creeks: bonefish heaven.

The first morning was tough. Low clouds made spotting fish very difficult. I was fortunate enough to be fishing with one of my best friends who let me have the bow till I brought my first fish to hand. After a few very long hours (and some morning refreshments), the sun decided to make an appearance and the true glory of the west side opened up. At that point, the guilt of hogging the bow set in and my friend Joe immediately hooked into a nice bone. Seeing my first bonefish in person that Joe brought in was an amazing experience. The beauty of these fish is something that cannot be put into words. After a quick change, I got my opportunity. Within minutes I was on. Of course, I get the one that takes me deep into the mangroves. Without any hesitation Joe jumped off the skiff and chased him down, determined not to lose my first fish in the groves. Minutes later, I was holding my first bonefish, something I will never forget. The day continued with fish after fish.

The second day of my trip gave my friend Josh and I full sunshine but intense 20-25 mph sustained winds. It was tough spotting fish with white capped flats but I managed to get a few. What I learned was the value of a good guide who could position the boat in a way that gave me a down wind casting advantage. What really made the second day though was the cuda. After a long walk with our guide Charlie, we decided to head back to the boat for lunch. Charlie decided to go check out a lagoon on the other side of the boat on foot. He waved me over and I grabbed the spinning rod (no judging) to get a chance at one of these big cuda hugging the far bank. I threw out the plug and it quickly started to get the attention of the big cuda. On my second cast, I caught the plug on the tip of my friends borrowed 8 wt, sending the tip flying and in the process losing the plug somewhere in the mangroves. After all this commotion, the cuda were on the prowl looking for something to crush. I decided to make the 100 yard dash in shin deep water to get my 11 wt rod. I quickly rigged up and then ran back hoping the cuda was still around. This time it was even closer,  feverishly looking for a quick meal. I stripped out my line and sent a cast out towards the cuda. My  fly landed on the water 20 ft from the cuda. It turned around and instantly went towards my fly. I tucked my rod under my arm and did a two handed strip as fast as I could and the cuda took a big swipe at my fly and missed. I picked up and cast again, intentionally slapping my fly on the water. This time the cuda didn’t miss and ate the fly 30 feet in front of me.  Seeing a massive cuda eat a 7” fly in front of your face is sick. After the take, the cuda took off running like a favorite in the Kentucky derby. As my line screamed off my reel, two things happened: my guide was yelling at me to get back to the boat because rumor has it that cuda will sometimes come after you if you’re on foot and that my reel’s drag was still set from the last tarpon season and this thing was ripping line off with ease. I started my sideways shuffle through the lagoon back to the boat to land the thing safely. When I reached the boat, I noticed its size. It was huge. You know how this goes…as soon as we got him close to the boat, he broke off. I learned quickly that day who the real boss of Andros is. Barracudas are the apex predators of the flats on Andros, eating anything they want and not taking shit from anyone—apparently anglers as well.

On the last day of my trip, my friend Matt and I decided that we wanted to get a bonefish  on foot. That morning the winds were blowing at a consistent 20 mph and we knew we were in for a rough day. We linked up with legendary guide Torrie Bevins to make sure this could happen. After we bubbled into a lagoon, we managed to get into some fish early from the boat. But we both really wanted to get one on foot. To me, stalking bones on foot is the pinnacle of bone fishing. Torrie knew it was our last day and decided that we should pack a snack and take a long walk to one of his thousands of holes. On the walk to his spot we each managed to get into some nice fish, one pushing 8 pounds. Torrie managed to get us pretty deep into the lagoon and hidden out of the wind as much as possible. As we approached the spot, the tide started to pour out. He put us in position with him in the middle and us off to his sides. “Get ready,” he said. Within minutes, a parade of bonefish started pouring in from around the corner. At one point I lost count of how many doubles we had. For two hours it’s was fish after fish. As fast as you could get them off you would have another one on. It reminded me of fishing in northern Minnesota for sunfish with my father when I was younger. With the day ending, we had to leave fish, but I wasn’t a bit disappointed because I had truly experienced the west side in all its glory. I couldn’t wait to have one of many cold Kaliks in the boat waiting for me.

Shawn Abernathy

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Fly Fishing For Permit & Bonefish in Tulum, Mexico

North Andros – From Top to Bottom: PART 1

North Andros – From Top to Bottom: PART 2

The post The Westside of Andros first appeared on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

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