A tournament at El Pescador featured tagging of bones, permit and tarpon. Sounds kind of awesome.

The final installment of my Grand Slam Reflections.  The Getting There. The Permit.  The Bonefish.

The Tarpon

We had been at the point of the caye for a while when Katchu looked at his watch and said “If we want to get your Grand Slam, we better go now.”

It was then I realized that this might actually happen. It had been running through the back of my mind since I got the permit. I had two of three in the books, so it was conceivable at the very least, but it still sounded a tad ridiculous. We got back in the boat and headed off in search of tarpon.

Five minutes after getting back in the boat we found ourselves weaving along an ancient mangrove lined canal carved by the Mayans thousands of years ago. To our left was Mexico, to our right was Belize. Bait and boils were everywhere… this was clearly a very fishy place. There is something amazingly cool about going through mangrove lined channels in a boat in pursuit of fish.

We reached a small, enclosed lagoon and Katchu killed the engine and poled us into position. I got up on deck needing only a tarpon to complete the Grand Slam. We were going after ‘baby tarpon” which was a good thing since I had royally botched my first ever adult tarpon grab the day before. I was 0/1 for tarpon in my life.

Shane spotted a tarpon heading into the mangroves. There was no cast to make. We waited. Out of the mangroves and 40 feet from the boat emerged five “baby” tarpon. These fish were 30-60 pounds. I suddenly felt very unprepared.

I made the cast and gave some strips to the black cockroach. One of the tarpon attacked it. It just swam up to it and opened its gaping mouth and inhaled the fly. When you haven’t done this a lot a tarpon eat can make you instantly stupid. I set, still in disbelief and a bit awestruck. It felt a little more believable when I then raised the rod tip and the fly parted ways with the tarpon. I was now 0/2.

Despite just botching the job, the fish were still there and it looked like they wanted to eat. I cast again. I stripped again. The damn fish charged the fly and ate it hard. I set (at least twice), I kept the rod down. This fly wasn’t coming out. The fish, however, decided to split and charged into the mangroves. The fish was out of sight, but I was still attached to it. As I stood there, a little dumbfounded, the tarpon shot back out into the lagoon ten feet from where it had disappeared. It jumped about 5 feet in the air, still attached to the fly line which was now hopelessly wrapped around the mangroves. When the fish jumped I got a really good view of how big it really was and I’d put it at about 40 pounds of pure silver fury. The tarpon splashed down and zipped right back into the mangroves to complete a nice wrap around several mangrove limbs and, predictably, the tugging stopped. I was off the fish and had to break off the fly. I was now 0/3 on tarpon.

While I was re-rigging Shane got on deck. These baby tarpon were in a very playful mood and it wasn’t long before Shane had fish to cast to. He made the cast and the fish smashed it. This baby tarpon was around forty pounds and, just like the permit earlier in the day, the tarpon spit the hook. If it were another day, Shane would have stayed on the deck, but this had turned from a normal day to a possible Grand Slam Day. I was going to be up again.

My hands still trembling, I continued to re-rig as we entered a narrow, nearly fully enclosed mangrove chute. This was a one shot stop as the chute dead-ended just 50 feet in front of us. Katchu knew these waters very well and as we entered the small clearing we found a single tarpon milling about. With mangroves behind and to the right of me I had to cast off shoulder, but somehow I made the cast. I stripped the fly. The fish saw it. He charged. I kept stripping. He ate as I had just finished a long strip and I had no way to move the fly but to sweep the rod tip. I was now 0/4 as the fly came out of the fishes mouth.

I stood there shell-shocked, having just missed the third tarpon that would have given me a Grand Slam. The fish, however, was still interested. While I had pulled the fly away from the fish, the fly was still in the water and near the fish. I stripped. He ate. I set. I set again. I set again. I didn’t raise the rod tip. I didn’t let the fish run into the mangroves. I held the line hard with my stripping hand and the 15 pound class tippet held to the 60 pound shock tippet. The fish jumped. Now… I’m 6’3” and was probably at least 2 feet above the water on the casting deck. The fish jumped over my head, an image that will forever be seared into my memory. Somehow, deep in my brain, a couple of cells fired and I reactivity bowed to the king. The fish stayed on.

Quickly the fish was in. I had just completed an Inshore Grand Slam by landing my first tarpon ever on the heals of landing my first ever permit.

For a job well done.

A special thanks to El Pescador for hosting Shane and I for three days of fantastic fishing and story making.  You guys have a first class operation there.

– paid ad below –

Learn everything about boating safety at BoaterExam.com

After getting there and getting the permit and now…

The Bonefish

The bonefish were easy, at least when we had the light. We were playing a school of bones that really, really wanted to cruise past us. All we had to do was cast a line ahead of the school and they would turn around, head down the beach about 50 feet and then slowly come back to us. They just kept coming back and we just kept catching them, trading off on the bow and having a great time.

bonefish... lots of 'em.

As Shane was up on deck things got suddenly very tense as the guide spotted a school of permit just beyond the bones while Shane simultaneously spotted three or four permit mixed right in with the bones. Katchu was saying “Cast! No, not that school, the other ones!” while Shane was saying “I don’t want to cast to that school! I’m going to cast to this school!” The debate was a tad heated and Shane ended up casting to the fish he had found. He made the cast, made the strip and the fish ate. He stood there, relaxed and happy as the fish peeled off line at top speed. Then the pull just stopped. The line went slack. The fish had come off.

Shane... hookset.

Shane didn’t understand it. I didn’t understand it. Katchu said something about “you must have hooked it just a tiny bit,” although I don’t know why you’d say that to an angler who has just lost a decent permit. For whatever reason, Shane’s permit didn’t stay on. Another 20 minutes of looking in vain for more permit and we were ready to get back to the bonefish.

Katchu finally took us to the point of a little cay we were fishing and presented us our opportunity to wade. We could see bonefish milling around over a rare patch of white sand below the point of the cay. This was going to be fun. Shane set off to find his own fish, which really is when he’s the happiest. The guide wanted to reposition him but I told him just to let him fish. He continued on his own and his rod was bent plenty.

We could have stayed there caught bonefish for a good long time. The fish weren’t monsters, but bonefish in Belize don’t tend to be scale tippers. What they lack in size they make up for in numbers and we were finding enough bones to keep us interested. It is this kind of action that really draws me to bonefish. When you are finding the fish and they fish are happy, there are few other things I’d want to do more.

I was told that fish in Belize grow slower than fish in other parts of the Caribbean and the current thinking is that this has to do with the size of their prey. The crabs and shrimp are smaller in Belize when compared with Andros or Abaco and so the fish grow at a slower rate. That four pound bonefish in Belize is probably a bit smarter than the four pound bonefish in Grand Bahama because it is likely a couple years older. The smaller prey phenomena has impacts when you are looking at what flies to pack as you’ll be filling your box with more #6′s and #8′s than you might for other Caribbean destinations.

Bones in Belize are different in another way. They tend to be darker in color and there is no surprise why that would be the case. Turtle grass is almost everywhere down in Belize, waving in the tidal currents and snagging your flies if you don’t have weed guards. If you love wading over hard packed white sand flats… well… you should probably go somewhere else.

The bonefish were really what I had come to Belize to find. Ever since I had seen my first bonefish back in Hawaii a few years earlier, I had been fairly obsessed with them. Coming from a small river/pocket water background, I was enthralled with the hunting and visual nature of flats fishing which was such a departure from what I had come to think of as fly fishing. Going from a thousand casts a day to forty casts a day and from never seeing the target to only targeting those fish you see… it was a revelation and a beautiful one at that.

Next up… The Tarpon.

Carried over from Grand Slam Reflections… The Getting There.

The Permit

On the third day of the trip Shane and I were in the boat of Katchu, a guide from El Pescador, headed up to the Bacalar Chico Marine Reserve. We were looking for more action than we’d had the previous day on the tarpon flats of Savannah Cay. We wanted to catch fish, which is sometimes not what happens when you are hunting permit or tarpon.

Chillax'n on the boat ride north.

We set up on the inside of the lagoon, drifting silently over turtle grass, Katchu on the poling platform with his long, wooden push poll in his hand and his eyes scanning the distance. We were looking for permit. Shane and I didn’t really want to look for permit. We wanted to wade for bonefish. Katchu wanted us to look for permit and it was his boat. Katchu told us that the bonefishing would get better later in the day and we should drift along the permit flat first. I think, largely, the line about the bonefishing getting better later was fiction, but Katchu had a plan and he was going to execute on it no matter what we told him we wanted to do. So… we were on a permit flat looking for big black tails and not silver or blue ones.

I was up on deck first with a ten weight in my right hand, the fly in my left and fifty feet of fly line on the deck. I was scanning the water, looking for tails or nervous water. Now, a tail is a damn hard thing to miss on a wide open flat, but the stirring of the fish below the surface that creates “nervous water…” well… I have a hard time spotting that. My brain just isn’t trained that way. Every breeze that came up looked like fish. Every current that ran into a clump of turtle grass looked like fish. What doesn’t look like nervous water, though, is the flash of permit in the sun and that is exactly what I saw.

“Permit, 12:00!” We had found them and they were on the move. I had one shot and, well, it was the first cast of the day. It didn’t all come together and the fish passed out of range, heading up wind and away. There would be more, I was told. I didn’t really believe it.

Katchu.

As I stood on the deck, thinking back just a few minutes to me botching a good permit shot, the guide spotted two bonefish cruising the mangroves. I was very conscience that I had a 10 weight in my hand and I was thinking that the presentation would be too heavy. It is a dangerous thing, thinking. I made the first cast to the bones and tried to ease up on the power so the line wouldn’t smack on the water. Totally underpowered, the cast landed in a heap. I cast again, but my head was too much in the game and the result was the same.

My friend Shane, who is a certified casting instructor couldn’t hold his tongue. “Those are the two worst casts I’ve ever seen you make.” he said. It was pure truth. Those casts were just horrible. I couldn’t help but give a little laugh at the ridiculousness of the casting and the degree to which I could rain on my own parade. It was also glad that Shane had just shown that he wouldn’t hold back the truth and when you are out there to learn, you need the truth.

There wasn’t too much time to dwell on things. Permit were again spotted. “Permit, 1:00!” said Katchu. I pointed my rod. “More right! More right!” The rod passed 1:00 to 2:00. “More right! More right!” I was pointing at 3:00 now. We joked that Katchu’s clock went something like 12, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 6, 11, 11, 11, 11, 11. I pointed my rod at 3:00, but saw nothing. “Where?” I asked. “Nervous water, don’t you see it?” I didn’t… I didn’t see anything. “There, 800 feet, do you see it?”

“WHAT? Of course I don’t see it!” Again, I could do little but laugh. I might not be catching fish, but at least I was seeing the humor in it.

Just as I was about to step down and give the bow up to Shane we saw more nervous water, permit, moving at speed. Downwind. Moving our way. Katchu said “Cast Now!” and I did. The fly, a Christmas Island Special, landed in the middle of the school and the school parted. I let the fly sit for a second and then started stripping as if I were casting to Jacks. The school came back together and balled up around the fly. As the fly swam fast out of the school one permit broke off and followed it. The fish chased the fly down just an inch below the surface, water sheeting over it’s face as it opened its mouth and ate the fly. I saw every detail. I set the hook. The fish was on, the line was cleared and the reel began to sing its beautiful song. Soon the permit was in.

Per Mit. Not a big one, but an honest to god Permit.

This was my first permit ever. Someone later told me that there are two kinds of permit. There are “permit” and “big permit.” I had caught the former and I had done so pretty much completely to the contrary to almost anything you will ever read about how you cast to and catch permit. There was no crab pattern. There was no leading the fish and letting the fly sink or settle. I cast on top of the fish and stripped as if I were trying to keep a strip of bacon from a hungry dog.

This is where the guide shines and local knowledge burst to the fore. On my own I never would have selected that fly. On my own I never would have made that cast. On my own I never would have made that retrieve. On my own I never would have caught that fish. Katchu knew. I think Katchu has been down this road more than once and also knew that first permit and first tarpon tend to come with first big tips. He may not be able to read a clock, but he knows his waters and he knows how to catch fish and thank god for that.

Next up… the Bonefish.

– paid ad below –

Learn everything about boating safety at BoaterExam.com

I’m going to do this in parts… a look back at my Grand Slam down in Belize at El Pescador.

My Highly Improbably, Practically Impossible and Totally Ridiculous Grand Slam

First off, I need to say that I didn’t deserve it. It was way more than I expected, a feat for an angler who has put in some serious time in the salt. My casting isn’t good enough, my knots are sometimes suspect, my tarpon flies are “not there” yet and I was fishing with a buddy who can outfish me blindfolded. I may not have deserved my Inshore Grand Slam, my fish may not have been too large and I may have nearly squandered it all, but I’ll tell you what… I’ll take it.

An Inshore Grand Slam is a big deal because it is difficult. Permit are damn hard to find and nearly impossible to catch. Tarpon, with their boney mouths are notorious hook spitters. Bonefish are, by some distance, the easiest of the three. When bonefish, the gray ghost, is the easiest accomplishment… well… like I was saying… a Grand Slam is difficult.

As the plane crossed from Mexican airspace to Belizean airspace rain started to streak my window. As the plane touched down I could see giant puddles… the kind of puddles that don’t come from a passing thunderstorm. This was rain. Hard rain. Cats and dogs rain.

I hung my head and wished I had thrown back a couple of cocktails in the air. “It is what it is,” I told myself. “You just have to make the best of it” I repeated in my head. “The worst day fishing is better than the best day at work.” I thought, but I knew what I really meant was “Shit. Shit. Shit.”

This wasn’t a long trip, three full days, book-ended by a couple of half-days. If the storm lingered I could end up spending a lot of time in the bar and little time on the flats. I spent enough of my 20′s in bars and there are no bonefish flats in the SF Bay. I wanted to fish. I’d just have to see how things went.

The tiny plane that took me from Belize City to San Pedro on Ambergris Cay never got more than about 300 feet off the ground. It gave a great vantage of the endless flats in the lagoon between Ambergris and the mainland. I didn’t see fish from that high, but I did see muds… lots and lots of muds. There were fish down there on those flats… light green mottled flats with clumps of turtle grass and long prop scars. The flats… beautiful and abused and still alive.

I met up with my fishing companion, Shane, at the San Pedro airport and when I saw him, all we could do was just shrug and say “What can ya do?” Shane is about 5x the angler I am (and that’s probably being kind to myself in this particular bit of math). He’s a fly fishing guide working 200+ days a year and has 350+ days of bonefishing under his belt. He’s seen a hell of a lot more than I have, his casting is an order of magnitude better and he had a Grand Slam under his belt from Ascension Bay back in 1999. He’s been there and done that. I’ve just thought a lot about it, which is in no way the same thing.

We met Lori-Ann Murphy, Director of Fishing at El Pescador Lodge, at the dock in San Pedro. She has one of those jobs you dream about while desk-bound or snow-bound. She was standing on the dock in the rain and quickly offered a beer, which was quickly accepted and quickly drained. The boat ride up to El Pescador took about 10 minutes and was my first real look at Ambergris. The thin strip of solid land that separates the Caribbean from Chetumal Bay is covered with developments… resorts, condos, private homes… one after another squeezed along side each other. Most are beautiful places, some are not, but they all face the Caribbean, sheltered by the normal waves of the sea by the barrier reef just a couple hundred feet off-shore. Between the reef and the land is a solid blanket of turtle grass swaying in the tides.

Belize is a popular place these days. Retirees are moving down in droves from the States and in the booming days of the US Real Estate bubble the bulldozers and dredgers were doing heavy work down in Belize clearing mangroves and digging channels for all that US Cheese that was coming down. Developments moved from solid land to infilling the tidal flats and mangrove swamps. Belize remains a breathtakingly beautiful place, but when the US economy recovers (it is going to recover, isn’t it?) the bulldozers will be close behind. It is a fight that is going on right now… in Ambergris, in Turneffe, in Placencia. It’ll be a damn shame if we lose all that… a damn shame indeed.

Next up… The Permit

–

The follow up to Pirates of the Flats, Buccaneers and Bones moves channels and locations and looks to be every bit as interesting.  One of the sites this year is… you guessed it, El Pescador Lodge.

The new show starts DECEMBER 26!  Set your DVR!

The fourth day of the trip and the third day in Belize saw us heading out with a guide for the first time.  El Pescador had a stable of highly respected guides and this day we would head out with Katchu.  We met him on the dock at 7 and got on the panga, heading south to head through the passage in San Padro.  From there, we’d head north to the tarpon hunting grounds of Savannah Cay.  That is what we thought was happening anyway.

As we made it through the mangrove and shack lined cut to the bay side of Ambergris we surprisingly went south and in a few minutes the guide stopped the boat and, frantically, said “Where’s the permit rod?!”  We weren’t rigged for permit, we thought we were headed to fish tarpon.  Katchu was a big agitated, but we finally got rigged up, I was up first and I made my first cast to a school of marauding permit.  They didn’t eat.  We probably spent an hour chasing nervous water, but the fish were just not in range most of the time.  We called time on Permit and headed North for tarpon.

The Savannah Cay flat is 16 miles long, all water 3-6 feet deep.  The bottom is a mixture of white mud and turtle grass/aquatic plants.  When we got there we saw 4 other boats.  On a busy day, Katchu told us, there can be FORTY boats there.  I really can’t imagine that place with 40 boats… it wouldn’t be good/fun I have a feeling.

Shane... waiting.

We had cloud cover when we got there, but the skies to the west were mostly clear.  It was going to be a good weather day.  I was up on the bow first and I surprise myself by spotting the first two tarpon.  They were a bit too close to the boat.  Casts were made.  Fish were not eating.

Katchu spotted nervous water heading toward the boat.  A school of tarpon was headed for us.  I made the cast.  I stripped.  The fish ate.  I set the hook hard. I raised the rod to clear the line.  Ummm… turns out you don’t clear the line like you are fishing bonefish.  The fly popped out.  I was 0/1 and had botched the job on my first tarpon.

Shane was up next and the first fish to the boat would be coming soon.  It wasn’t a tarpon, however.  Nervous water, moving fast, relieved a school of jacks.  Shane cast in the middle of the school and all hell broke loose.  As he stripped his fly fast one fish left the school to chase the fly.  Water was sheeting it over it’s head as it chased down that fly.  It ate and it started its run.  A Jack is a bull dog.  It doesn’t jump, it doesn’t head shake.  It just picks a direction and goes there.  A few minutes later and Shane landed a Jack that ran about 15 pounds or so.

A nice jack, first fish of the day

I was up.  Tarpon fishing is long stretches of inactivity, punctuated by frantic moments.  I stood there for a while, maybe an hour, without a fish to cast to.  Then… nervous water, a school of tarpon coming towards us.  I made the cast, but my strip was too fast and the fish turned away.  Shane was up again.

Soon, we saw a single tarpon.  Shane made the cast and even I saw the fish turn, see the fly and just go up to it and open its massive mouth and eat the fly.  Shane did everything right and after a few good jumps the fish was in.

Fish On!

That's what we were after

A cool animal

I was back on deck.  We went to the north side of Savannah Cay, but the wind had churned up the water and it was too hard to see the fish.  We moved back to where we had started.  Most of the other boats had left at this point and there was just one other boat, also from El Pescador, left on the 16 mile long flat.

As I was on the deck, Katchu again spotted nervous water.  We weren’t sure if they were jacks or tarpon, but I was going to cast at them regardless. “As long as you can, get as much line as you can out and cast as far as you can!” Katchu barked.  I stripped line of and started pounding false casts out to get all that line out.  Just as I was about to lay down the cast I saw the fish.  They were Jacks and they weren’t 80 feet away, they were 20 feet away.  I tried to drop the cast short and it all didn’t go well.  I had way too much slack out and couldn’t get tight to the fly.  The fish moved on.  There were some tense words between Shane and Katchu about the difference between “As much line as you can” and 20 feet.  I think Katchu even said at one point “I can’t believe you fucked up that cast.”  Katchu just wanted it all to happend and he wanted it so bad that if you screw something up, he’s prone to tell you about it.

While we were still having our conversations about exactly how it all went wrong the school of jacks reappeared. I made the cast and the school went insane.  The school of fish balled up in a feeding frenzy.  I couldn’t see into the school, as the chaos had churned up the bottom.  I just kept stripping, felt weight and set the hook.  The jack just took off.  I stood up there on the deck watching the line just rip out. The run lasted maybe 60 solid seconds, taking about 200 yards of line out.  If ever there was a workout for a reel, this has to be it.  The Nautilus NV 10-11 did the job very, very well.  The Sage Xi3 10 weight we bent at the cork on this fish. Jacks are just amazingly strong and more fun than is reasonable.

And it is off to the races.

Nautilus... good job.

Damn nice fish.

The Jack probably went 25 pounds, making it my largest fish ever.

There were no more tarpon.  There were no more jacks.  We were done for the day.  Even though I didn’t get a tarpon, it still felt like a good day.  He had lots of fish to cast to.  I had hooked my first tarpon.  I had caught my largest fish ever.  It had been fun.  I had learned a lot.

The next day was going to be about production on our last full day in Belize.

The weather was set to continue being crappy and that didn’t seem like a good day to go out with a guide, so we decided this would be our DIY day.  El Pescador is on the beach, but in the back, it has a small dock that leads to a lagoon… in the lagoon are bonefish.  Instead of walking the beach, we set out by paddle.  El Pescador has a rough map with some spots marked and we used that as a starting point to get to the fish.

Stormy skies and the red canoe

The first shore we patrolled was devoid of anything resembling a bonefish, so we moved on.  Shane moved further down the beach and I stayed closer.  Twenty minutes on I saw a bonefish cruising out of some flooded mangroves.  I threw a brown gotcha in a #8 and the fish saw it and charged it.  I set, the fish was hooked and it started its run.  I tried to clear the line, but… well… the line still jumped up and wrapped around my hand. I was now 0/1.  Rumor has it that I dropped a couple of f-bombs at this point in the trip, but those reports are unconfirmed.  About 5 minutes later and Shane was hooked up… first fish of the trip was in the books.

The seal breaker.

One more move and my rod was finally bent all the way to conclusion.

Get bent.

Well, isn't (s)he cute?

Turns out what you’ve heard about Belize bonefish is largely true… which is they aren’t very large.  This little guy was about the size we caught.  We did see a few bigger fish and even caught some (mostly Shane), but there are a lot of smaller fish here.  They are still very, very fun and it does present an opportunity to down-size on your rod selection.  You could easily get away with a six and, ya know… maybe even a 5.  That means if you want to get into bonefishing and don’t want to go out and buy a new rod for one trip, you could grab your trout gear and head to Belize.  Just say’n.

Out in the lagoon for the rest of the trip we had a simple rule… before you dip into the cooler for a beer, you have to land a fish.  So, this was a nice beer.

Mmmm... good.

Belikin is the beer of Belize and we drank a fair bit of it… 58 of them according to the bar tab.  Here’s the thing about Belikin… they are a LIE.  The bottle is heavy… very heavy… the weight of each bottle is roughly 95% glass and 5% beer.  They are about 2 ounces each… or 9.6 ounces as it turns out.  You can grab and empty bottle and the weight makes you think it is full… but it isn’t.  That is a tragedy.  When you have a Belikin you are largely holding glass.  Someone said when you buy a Belikin you also buy a weapon… and I can see that.  In my totally imagined feud between Kalik and Belikin, I’m going to raise the Kalik on sheer volume.  Hope that doesn’t offend anyone, but really… a beer should be AT LEAST 12 ounces… AT LEAST.

I only managed a couple of fish that day, Shane had about 7, which was a sign that things were as they should be.  Shane’s a much better angler than I am since he’s a guide on the water about 200 days a year and he has about 350 days of bonefishing under his belt.

It seemed appropriate with it raining that hard... to have a beer.

The rain came and went… and then came again.  Our paddle back to El Pescador was a wet and windy one.  Just as we got to the mangrove chute we’d take to get to the dock Shane was mentioning that this particular environment looked ideal for baby tarpon.  Then I saw one roll.  So, we fished for some very small baby tarpon for a few minutes.  I cast from the canoe while Shane stood in the back of the canoe trying to locate the fish.  I had one eat, but didn’t hook it.

When we got back the light was failing and we were both wetter than seemed possible.  It had been a challenging day, but we had made it work.  The best time to go fishing, after all, isn’t when the weather is perfect.  The best time to go fishing is when you can.

wet, wet, wet

We made the right call and had a fun day under the Belizean clouds.

Small? Sure. Pretty? You bet.

The third day of the trip and the second day in Belize were done.  Dinner was fantastic… Lobster and Chicken Parmesan.   They treat you right at El Pescador.

The next day was going to be with a guide and a trip to the tarpon flats.

I didn’t expect it.  But it happened.  Amazing.

Bonefish

Tarpon

Permit

A Grand Slam at El Pescador.

My Grand Slam Pin from El Pescador.

The first day of my El Pescador trip was pretty much a normal day… woke up to the shouts of “DADDDDYYYYYY!”  These verbal explosions take place about 20 minutes too early, but it isn’t a bad way to wake up, really.

From there… store, swim lessons, store, cooked up my totally awesome and unhealthy Mac and Cheese (there’s bacon in it… 4 cheeses, butter, milk, flour, cream, garlic, onion and corn… damn good), Grandparents came in, Thanksgiving Feast for Pre-school… started getting a little anxious and finally the luggage into the car and a trip up to SFO (two hours early).  My daughter, dressed in her Princess costume from Halloween (she wears it about 2-3 hours a day) sacked out on the way up, so I didn’t get to say goodbye to her, which was the only part of the day that didn’t go to script, but at least she didn’t cry.

At the airport and I’ve heard so much about the stepped up security. What’s the fuss?  I was through in a matter of seconds, really.  No groping, sadly.  No body scanner.  I know it isn’t the universal experience, but it was really totally painless.

Now… the waiting.  Board a flight to Miami, arrive at 5:something, wait… flight to Belize City and then on to Ambergris to meet up with Shane and the good folks from El Pescador.

I’ll keep things as up-to-date as possible.

Need a rod carrier... old soccer sock and a couple of cam straps. Done.

Good times are here… the trip is here… let the adventures begin.

Before I even get out of the Miami Airport and on to Belize , I see my first bonefish… in fact, a whole school.

A good omen?

Met up with Chris Lewis in the airport… he saw me post the above pic on my facebook page… turns out he works here.  We got to chat about bonefish for a bit and the fishing in Biscayne Bay. Always nice to meet folks who take the time to follow the blog and who love bonefish like I do.