You don’t really book a fishing trip, you book a patch of weather and hope some fishing sneaks inside it. Everyone pretends otherwise, of course. We circle dates, send deposits, and picture the Caribbean flats under postcard skies. Then, sooner or later, the weather laughs in your face.
In early October, a handful of us headed south once again to one of our favorites: Kay Fly Lodge in Punta Allen, Mexico. The crew included James Ryan, better known as El Camello, whose birthday landed mid-week; Robert Woodruff, a Presbyterian minister with the patience of a saint and a prayer of double-haul; Woody Woodruff, a Wyoming trout guide who works alongside me; Uncle Woody, the actual uncle of both preacher and guide, on his first Ascension Bay adventure fresh off finishing a feature-length film about Scow sailboats; Zack Barrett, a.k.a. Zeta Bravo, who, also a trout guide, running trips in the Teton/Snake valleys of eastern Idaho all summer and chi-lounging in Punta Allen perfecting his Spanish, fly-tying, and dirt-bike mudding techniques over a few winter months; and me, Clark Smyth, the fool who still believes “hosting” means anything more than worrying in two languages.
We landed in Tulum under blue skies, already daydreaming of tails glowing like coins over white sand and of cold beer waiting beneath Kay Fly’s palapa bar. What we got, at least for the first half, was weather that made us question our hobbies, our gear, and occasionally our sanity.
The first morning broke gray and sullen, the sky pressing low enough to touch. We launched anyway, because that’s what anglers do. Stubborn optimism disguised as professionalism. By noon the drizzle had matured into real rain, wind teasing the mangroves, and visibility somewhere between poor and delusional. Still, we found a pocket of rolling baby tarpon and jumped a few before the squall swallowed us again. Lightning cracked, thunder answered too soon, and we all did the math on how tall a twenty-eight-foot push-pole actually is. That was enough to convince us to pull anchor and look for bonefish near the lodge – a fair trade for not dying spectacularly.
Even under bruised skies, the flats were beautiful – paradise doing its best impression of a well-masked hangover. Almost as soon as we arrived to look for a few macabí, bonefish tails winked between raindrops in the reflection of the mangroves. We caught a few, never too gracefully, and not without an errant cast or twenty-two, but with enough persistence to make it feel earned. Then a snook slid out from under a mangrove edge, a somehow quick but rather clumsy change of rod to offer a non-shrimp pattern on stouter tippet, a chartreuse tarpon toad to be exact, and as the fly landed the snook ate like the surrounding storm had personally offended him. By the time we headed in, soaked but grinning, it felt like we’d made the right kind of mistake – the kind that still gets you out there, still hands you lessons wrapped in lightning, and leaves you a little better, or at least wetter, for the effort.
If Day One had offered lousy conditions, Day Two brought its meaner cousin – darker skies, a dismal forecast, and rain that came sideways during breakfast, hammering the seaside windows so hard it drowned out conversation. That is, until Woody’s third cup of coffee kicked in and his joke-telling instincts overpowered the storm. Each of us sat hunched over our phones, checking different weather apps, each insisting on its own version of misery. Rob Woodruff (Father Bob, as Camello liked to call him) smiled into his breakfast enchiladas and said, “The Lord made weather for character development.” So, without hesitation we took his word for it and pushed off into what looked suspiciously like the inside of a car wash. Even in that madness, we found a few baby tarpon holding tight to the mangroves, rolling just enough to prove they were real and to give us a flicker of hope. That seemed like victory enough – until the outboard motor wouldn’t crank up. We sat there in the downpour staring at the motor, then at each other, then back at the motor as if one of us might suddenly remember being a mechanic. No such luck. The battery was shot, and, naturally, there wasn’t a single piece of rope aboard to pull-start the 60-horse Yamaha. Someone suggested the chinstrap from a sun hat. It wasn’t a great plan, but it was the only one we had. Miraculously, it worked. The engine sputtered to life and we limped to a nearby muelle (Spanish for dock) with a thatched palapa, hoping to find a patch of dryness and maybe a place to eat something that wasn’t damp. After lunch, we checked a few honey holes on the way back to Punta Allen but came up empty handed and called it early in favor of some down-time in a hammock.
The morning of Day Three brought a rumor of lighter gray to the east – hope in diluted form. While to the west, thunder grumbled close enough to make itself part of the conversation. The air was still thick and heavy, but for the first time all week we thought we might actually see our shadows. Zeta and I decided to take our time, convinced that patience might finally pay off. We delayed an hour, then waded – literally – through ankle-deep puddles that used to be the Punta Allen baseball field on our way to the marina. A few boats had already launched through the winding mangrove channel, taking advantage of what passed for a lull. We lingered another fifteen minutes under the corrugated tin of the makeshift boathouse, congratulating ourselves on our wisdom – right up until the mosquitoes found us. They came in squadrons, the kind that make you question your place in the food chain. When we finally couldn’t take it anymore, we pushed off, hoping to steal a shot or two at something that swam. The skies had other plans. Within minutes the rain returned in tropical sheets, the kind no R&D lab at Gore-Tex has ever successfully simulated. It was relentless.
Soaked and shivering, we motored through a narrow creek that joined two lagoons, and there, against all odds, Zeta spotted a tiny snook, a robalito barely longer than his hand. He caught it on pure optimism and a well-placed cast, and we cheered like he’d landed a grand slam. “No Pachuca hoy,” he laughed – no skunk today. That small victory was enough. We turned the bow toward Kay Fly, dreaming of hot showers, dry clothes, and maybe a cold beer to balance the equation. After a small snooze in a hammock on the porch, with evening came a notably settled rain arrived as if it had finally tired of tormenting us. The sky still hung low, but there were hints – small, fragile ones – that tomorrow might look different. Steam rose from the puddles around the lodge, and even the mosquitoes seemed sluggish, full and satisfied. Over dinner, nobody wanted to jinx it by talking about clear skies, but there was a quiet shift in mood, the kind that happens when damp gear starts to dry and someone finally laughs for no reason. We shared chile rellenos that tasted like they’d fallen straight from heaven. Somewhere between the laughter and the perfectly baked flan, the skies finally began to open. For the first time all week, we saw our own shadows – cast by a full moon climbing over a calm Caribbean horizon. It felt like a small miracle, and maybe, just maybe, tomorrow would bring something other than more rain. We went to bed not exactly optimistic, but no longer beaten – just ready, in that stubborn angler way, to try again.
Thursday morning broke still and strangely calm, the kind of quiet that makes you forget the last three days ever happened. Woody and I launched early with José, hoping to catch that fragile window of visibility before the weather changed its mind. Not long after pushing off, the wind died completely and the clouds lifted to a reasonable altitude – finally giving us a chance, however slim, at looking for permit. Sure enough, after a short stint checking the usual haunts, we started to see nervous water and the occasional black tail cutting through the surface like an envelope knife. “¡Bájate, bájate!” shouted José. “Get in the water!” With the agility of an ice dancer and the grace of a piano falling off a pulley, Woody slid over the gunwale with Jerry, the junior guide, and waded after a tailing fish moving fast to the right. They got into position, gathered slack line, and waited for the shot. Then, nothing. The permit glued itself to the bottom and vanished, leaving only the kind of silence that makes everyone stare at the same empty patch of water.
We didn’t see another fish until after lunch, when a change of scenery, and a parting sky, finally tipped the odds. The sun came out for the first time all week, hot enough to require sunscreen, which felt like a small victory in itself. The light spread across the flat, and suddenly there they were: two schools of permit gliding in six or eight feet of water, moving slow and deliberate, tipping occasionally on the surface like ghosts feeding on tiny shrimp pushed up by the commotion below. Woody led with a size 4 spawning shrimp, dropped it neatly in front of the first school, and before the fly could even settle, one of the fish peeled off and inhaled it. His reel started to sing and we whooped like fools. Then José pointed with the push pole. “Look. On the ray! Fish on the ray!” I followed his angle and saw not one but two permit trailing the shadow of a big stingray and one was a tank of a fish pushing thirty pounds. I grabbed my rod and scrambled onto the bow, stripping line as I went. Woody was stepping down with a sincere bend in his rod while still tethered to the surging fish. I tried to move carefully, matching his rhythm so we didn’t both end up in the drink. I feathered out a couple of careful false casts to get some line moving, made a quick measure of distance to the ray, and I let one go that felt decent – until it wasn’t. It fell short. “Shit” I thought – out loud. Then internally, “should’ve reconditioned my line last night.” I peeled off another ten feet and sent a desperate backhand toward the ray. This one landed just ahead of the ray, good enough considering the window of opportunity was nearly closed. I couldn’t see the fly, but I gave it a moment to sink, then bumped the fly once slowly. On the second, faster, strip, the smaller fish darted forward. I stopped, smoothed out the next pull, short and slow. The fish flared its fins, gave a quick flutter of the tail, and the fly vanished – proof again that permit occasionally make bad choices. Two casts. One heartbeat. Two rods bent! For a few chaotic minutes, the flat erupted in lines singing through the water, laughter, and overlapping shouts in two languages. Somehow Woody half-lost his shorts. Which made us all laugh a bit more. Both fish ran hard, crossing paths and nearly tangling us into disaster on the motor trimmed off the stern of the boat. Somehow we managed to bring both fish to hand. Two permit from two different schools. No sharing, no luck of proximity, just the improbable and highly memorable rhythm of a day that finally decided to go our way. José grinned from the platform for about 5 seconds before turning his focus back to the water, relentlessly searching for more opportunity. The day faded but the fun didn’t really cease. By dinner, the tale had already grown by more than a slice.
Friday was El Camello’s fiftieth birthday, and fittingly, it came with the best weather of the week. Mid-eighties, a gentle west breeze – rare for Ascension Bay, and just enough sun to make us believe again. The morning, though, was dead. The ocean looked half asleep: no birds, no ripples, nothing that even hinted at life. We joked that our odds of spotting a zombie were better than finding a fish. So, over lunch, we did what anglers always do when the fishing’s bad – we moved. Twenty miles across the bay to the windward side, where the falling October king tide, helped along by that west wind, was spilling out of the backcountry like a river. We drifted along a promising edge, the boat sliding quietly with the current, everyone hopeful that the next patch of nervous water might change our luck. It didn’t take long. Orlando, the junior guide, called out and pointed. Tails. El Camello was over the side in seconds. A few quick casts later, he was tight to a permit pumping his fist in the air, a birthday gift straight from the gods. While the whooping and laughter rolled over the flat, the rest of the school veered toward the boat, skittish but still visible. Tino, our guide on the platform, kept us close enough to watch the show but far enough to avoid spoiling it. That’s the beauty of wading shots — when fish are in shallow enough water, an angler can step off the boat, hunt them on foot, and be part of the flat instead of just floating and slapping loudly above it. With the school threatening to come into casting range, I grabbed my rod, stripped some line, and fired a shot in front of the remaining, now slightly fettered fish. They ignored the crab completely and kept swimming like they had safety somewhere near Cuba on their minds. Tino dejectedly spun the boat with the quiet resignation of a man who’s seen this movie before. In permit fishing, you learn to live in the present and get over your losses quickly and look to the next – there’s always another fish that won’t eat your fly, somewhere.
We turned our attention back to James and Orlando, waist-deep and grinning over the permit still bending Camello’s nine-weight. Almost immediately Tino perked up and rotated the bow of the boat toward shore, he had spotted another school of permit pushing shallow water close to a nearby beach. I didn’t think; I just moved. I cast my line out to clear it from the deck, reeled in twenty feet of line (because I know my wading shot will be closer than from the boat), then I hopped over the side into thigh-deep water, easing forward toward a half dozen fish feeding on a clean stretch of tan sand, working into the current and swimming right toward me. I gathered the slack line near me on the water, and offered a cast that purposefully landed eight or ten feet in front of the lead fish, a little slack curling on the surface. I stripped once to come tight to the crab, now lying in ambush on the sandy marl bottom. “Wait, wait!” Tino called from the poling platform behind me. He could see the fish better from his perch so I listened, and waited, rod tip down, calmly ready. Then from Tino in a calm and confident voice: “¡Jala!” (strip. In Spanish). I slowly swam the crab with one long slow pull and watched three fish promptly charge it, all tipping hard. I felt the tic, came tight, and lifted. The line came alive. Another permit. Another double! “Happy Birthday Camello!” I shouted across the flat while noticing four wide grins echoing across the bay.
Across those final three days, six anglers landed seven of nine permit that ate our flies. For those not in the know, these are numbers that verge on the magical even under postcard skies for six days angling and ten or twelve rods in pursuit. Add in a handful of snook, tarpon, and bonefish, and suddenly the rain felt like a necessary prelude rather than any kind of curse. Most people think fly-fishing is about the fish. It is not. It’s so much more about uncertainty and how gracefully you face it. Bad weather teaches us more than good ever will. It tests gear, patience, and the quiet part of you that came for something deeper than a grip-and-grin photo.
If this trip proved anything, it’s that determination still counts. So does length. A week in the tropics sounds long until the first two or three days blow out. Short trips are gambles; longer ones give luck time to find you. We booked six days. Half were miserable, half were magic. Looking back, I can’t decide which half we’ll remember more. Between storms, I watched our group adapt and I learned that hosting a trip means trusting chaos.
What we carried home weren’t just photos of fish or stories of birthday dances in luchador masks. It was the reminder that fishing, like most worthwhile things, lives on a spectrum somewhere between discomfort and joy. The trick is sticking it out long enough to travel from one to the other. So, if you’re planning your own journey, book more days than you think you need/want. Pack a rain jacket that actually works, a sense of humor that definitely does, and maybe a spare luchador mask just in case the sun decides to come out on someone’s birthday. Because sooner or later, it will.
