Winter Escapes
My dreams these wintry days are crowded with images of a fly fisher stalking sunlit flats. I tie Gotchas and Crazy Charlies as compensation behavior. I long to jump on a plane to the right place.
I’d like to walk a coral-sand beach at sunrise. The waves lapping the shore would be the only sound. I want my eyes to hunt the flats for that glint of tails and dorsals catching the sun . . . tailers. I’d like to stand barefoot on the deck of a skiff and feel my fly line under my toes as the guide poles and I squint and look far off to glimpse a sickle-shaped dorsal—permit!
My hands and legs would slowly brown, and they would get that good crinkly feeling where the line cracks form in the tanned creases of my fingers. I’d wet wade alone across sand flats. I’d glimpse a gray ghost, a lone shape, partially imagined, then seen . . . 100 feet, but approaching. My breath would catch. I’d crouch. . . strip line . . . wait. A feeding bone . . . a big one!
I’d counsel myself “Cast now . . . ahead of him . . . yes, that’s it! . . . let the fly sink . . . let him find it . . . now hop the fly . . . now lift! Yes! Let him run . . . get him on the reel. Oh my, what a bonefish! Away, far away . . . 100 yards. He’s double-digit. Please, God, no sharks now . . . let this fish be mine.”
There are winter places where I can find what I want. Each has something different—wadeable sand flats, where I can fish without a guide; mangrove islands, where snook and tarpon hide; 10-weight-size fish. There are permit traveling channels, where shots come fast and you cast furiously, and mangrove pockets, where small laid-up tarpon cruise in gin-clear water and take the fly retrieved to the rod tip-top. There are long, wadeable, continental-shelf flats where thousands of bonefish tail and schools hold as many as 500 fish, none of them over two pounds.
One place to find it is Ascension Bay. Go to Cancu´n and enjoy the bright lights (overnight). Then travel 120 miles south by car to the Bahia del Espiritu Santo Reserve de la Sian Ka’an (Mayan for “where the sky is born”). At that point you are just north of Ascension Bay, the largest bonefish continental-flat rearing ground in North America.
What you will find there is unspoiled—the Laguna Compechen, 12 miles of marl-bottom mangrove flats with small bonefish, small tarpon, small permit, and snook up to 25 pounds. These flats are serviced by some of the most experienced and best Mayan bonefish guides in the world. They fish the extensive flats every day; thus, the bonefish are educated. This is no place for the poor caster or the beginner, but the lodge boats make the 1.5-hour boat ride to Ascension Bay, which is where all beginners should start their bonefish experiences—the fish are many, small, and easy. Success creates lifelong bonefishers; frustration creates golfers.
Here’s what to expect on the Laguna Compechen flats. The fishing is from flats prams to wade-fishing. Casts are long to these experienced bonefish—60 to 80 feet—and buff-colored bonefish flies are a must. Weedless flies, weighted and unweighted, allow you to crawl flies across turtle-grass flats. Unweighted flies allow you to drop flies softly in shallow, calm water to tailers. The fish can be spooked by the crash of a fly or fly line onto the water. Experienced fly fishers crouch and use low side-arm casts.
“Permit Alley” extends from the bridge at Boca Paila shoreward onto the first flats. It’s the travel alley for small permit moving from the ocean flats to the inside lagoon flats, where they feed. The permit are small, up to 20 pounds, with a 5-pound average. They must be cast to long (from 40 to 80 feet or more) when skiff fishing. Nothing beats Del’s Merkin or Anderson’s McCrab (#2-#1/0 weedless) for the fishing, and the Scientific Anglers (8-, 9-, or 10-weight) Bonefish line or Rio Quick Shooter (saltwater) lines are made for this fishing.
The Boca Paila guides are perhaps the most experienced permit guides in the world. When you fish permit, the guides insist on a quick two-stroke horizontal-rod presentation, casting ahead of the advancing permit and letting the fly drop, then making two-foot, slow strips. Lining fish with inaccurate casts is a recurrent problem for inexperienced fishermen—and the guides’ bane (they get verbal about blown casts). Clear (9- or 10-weight) monocore-type intermediate lines help in making fast, relatively long casts.
Inside the Laguna Compechen flats, the mangrove islands extend for three to five miles inland. The largest are home to frigate birds, roseate spoonbills, cormorants, snook, and small tarpon. Fly fishing to the fish requires hand/eye casting coordination, like manipulating an electronic driving game at an arcade. The fish lie and cruise inside the mangrove roots, waiting for the bird guano (food) to drop into their shaded lairs.
On those days when the snook cruise the island perimeters, your guide spots a fish and you skip-cast your fly into pockets and under overhanging mangrove limbs to a shadowy gray shape. The fly lands; the shape glides forward; you twitch the fly (a #1/0 white Lefty’s Deceiver), and it disappears as the snook flares its gills and sucks water back through its gills.
You must hammer the hook home instantly (pull hard with your stripping hand to set the hook) and pull back on the 9- or 10-weight rod to turn the fish (up to 25 pounds) before it can charge into the mangrove roots and break off. Small tarpon (5 to 20 pounds) hold under the same mangrove islands, and you sight-fish to them in the same manner.
Copyright © 2012 Intermedia Outdoors
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