Hi everybody. Sorry for the long silence, but regular readers will know that we have been very busy doing the annual renovations, painting, decorating, besides looking for lost ducks, building our iguana habitat (I’ll talk about that at a later date) and all the other things we have to do.
Our wet season, nominally May to November, is also the low season for holidays, including anglers. Quite why this should be so is a mystery to us. Ah but the rain… well yes it does rain here, spectacularly. Yes 14 feet a year. BUT. Most of it falls at night while we are tucked up in bed.
And while we are talking about rain, consider the upside. Yes, rain does have a significant upside for anglers. Monkey River floods, every baitfish for miles around comes to feed in the coloured water and guess what? So do the tarpon and snook. Small wonder then that the wet season is the prime time for both these species.
Anyway the self named “ Four Old Fogies”, Roger, Ted, Alan and Adrian from England defied convention and came out to stay with us for a week, in October, announcing on arrival that none of them had ever caught a bonefish or permit before and wanted to remedy that situation.
My heart sank. Bonefish, OK we have loads of bones grazing around our offshore cayes and reasonably competent fly fishermen can (and do) catch them till they never want to see another bonefish. I understand however that that feeling wears off very rapidly when one is back behind a desk on a cold wet day in London, Chicago, Quebec etc
But as everyone knows, permit are elusive, difficult and above all fickle. Permit can become an obsession. To locate them down here is a near certainty, to get within casting range a few times in a day is probable, to hook a fish is an achievement. To land it, well, permit take grave exception to being hooked and are likely to take you on an extended tour of the surrounding cayes before coming to the boat
That said, Southern Belize has one of the world’s highest populations of permit running well into double figures, so the prospects are very good especially when you are in the boat with one of our guides who know where the permit are likely to be on a given day. Even so, permit are not a fish to cut your warm salt water fly fishing teeth on. So this was a challenge for the Four Old Fogies.
So to the good news. The bones duly cooperated and the guys all had a great time chasing bonefish around. One boat managed over thirty bones in one day, and reckoned they could have had many more.
And the bad news? Well both boats found permit, but getting a fly in the right place at the right time proved very hard.
So one boat went off trolling and came back with the usual haul of barracuda, kingfish, snappers etc. The other boat went looking for tarpon and duly landed a number into double figures including one from our “secret lagoon”. It was that boat which hooked a tarpon on a lure in Deep River and got towed 2 miles up the river before the line parted. The lure? Yo Zuri Crystal Minnow of course. No I don’t have shares in Yo Zuri (but wish I did)
So the week wore on with bonefish, more bonefish, tarpon and more tarpon until the last cast of the last day up Monkey River saw one of the guys hook into a log. The log then started swimming upstream. Some minutes later a huge snook came to the boat and was weighed in at 21lbs 12oz. This is the best ever caught by one of our guests, and the lure? Well what do you think? Correct. Yo Zuri Crystal Minnow again.
So the week ended on a high note. Bone fish ambitions satisfied, but despite some close calls the permit won the day and will await a future occasion.
Coming soon: Chris and Brian in the secret lagoon.