Fishing Report
April 02 – 09, 2023

man kissing esb permit

Welcome to the Caribbean!

We have had a very interesting week, where we have had great adventures and where every day, we had things to highlight making this week a lot of fun.

The weather, continuing in line with previous weeks, started with uncomfortable easterly winds and passing clouds that affected our guides’ almost superhuman abilities to see, identify, and predict the trajectory and speed of the fish in the bay.

This week we were honored with a visit from Jim Rector, Tony Ankar and Webster Ray, a famous duo that visits us every year with the best attitudes that added to the cheerful spirit of Mike McVay and Steve Dyer guarantee laughs, anecdotes and jokes for the whole week. In our line of work, we cannot control, guarantee or modify neither the weather, nor the attitude of the fish, but believe me that if at some point you find yourself traveling companions of Mike, Steve, Tony and Webster you will be left with a smile more marked than Jack Nicholson and the first film adaptation of the Joker character in the movie Batman.

man with esb tarpon

No less relevant was the presence of Bob Manriquez and Rodger Nye who completed this week’s group of seven guests.

Fishing
As I mentioned at the beginning, the conditions during the first four days of the week were not optimal, but Jim started off on the right foot on the first day with a Super Grand Slam and the most outstanding catch was a beautiful Tarpon. I don’t think I need to describe the magnitude of the celebrations for such a feat.

The second day of the week Bob punished the bay’s bonefish population, leaving his hook marks on over three dozen of them and this was just the warm up for his first permit which came the next day giving us new excuses to continue the festivities over dinner.
Webster and Tony had an innumerable number of good shots and chances with a great school of permit who, despite all their attempts, showed they had more escape skills than Harry Houdini.

man with esb permit

Halfway through the week, Steve and Mike both ticked their respective permit boxes on their cards and we had no choice but to keep celebrating.

Thursday dawn found us discussing at the breakfast table what target could motivate that night’s festivities and at the traditional Happy Hour at 17:30, with the lodge’s renovated Palapa as a witness, we gave as reason enough the new permit caught by Steve, Tony and Webster and yes …we had to celebrate.

Almost without realizing it we reached Saturday and the joy went beyond the maximum levels of the “Happymeter” (imaginary instrument used to measure the levels of joy and happiness of a person or group, I cannot make public more data because we are processing the patent) to know that each and every one of our guests would end up with one or more Palometas (Permit in Spanish) in their account.

Maybe most of you know the TV series River monsters, where the main character always catches the species he is looking for and the size he is looking for the last afternoon in the last hours of fishing and surely you must have thought, as I did, “TV things that take everything to the extreme to make it more dramatic”, well I don’t know if it has ever happened to you, but throughout all these years I have lost count of the number of times this happens and this week was a clear example.

man with esb permit

Weather
As I have already mentioned, the uncomfortable winds of 15 to 18 miles from the east were predominant the first 4 days of the week and then gradually dropped to about 10 miles the last two days, but without varying their direction.
Unpredictable or non-existent tides due to the effect of the wind were the classic of the week.

Sunny days with scattered cloud gaps that appeared capriciously with the sole mission of disturbing the vision of our guests and guides by rain brought nothing.

Flies
Permit: Whoever first said “Classics never die” was probably thinking of the peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but it is perfectly applicable to the ESB Yellow Eyes Raghead and Casa Blanca flies. I’ll ask our next week’s clients to take a few shots with some Flexo’s and see what happens, surely Dane will be happy to read this.
Tarpon and Snook: Although the snook have not been seen much these last weeks, they did not reject the white, red and green baitfish imitations. The tarpon had a similar behavior except for those in rocky or dark bottom waters where purple and black are still the way to go.

man with esb permit

Bonefish: Shrimp and small crabs are still doing the job. If you are visiting us in the next few weeks bring a woolly Bugger on hook #6 or #8 black, green or tam with or without rubber legs, if you catch a bonefish with it, I will give you a cap with a drawing of a bonefish chasing a woolly Bugger.

Our staff is relentless in their efforts to make our guests’ stay truly memorable by attending to the smallest details and preferences. I am beginning to suspect that Emanuel, Freddy and Pancho are not human.

Luis and Angel continue to work wonders in the two kitchens they run, one for the guests and the other for the guides and staff. Believe me, it is not an easy job at all.

man with esb permit

See you next week with a new report and do not hesitate to contact our friends at The Fly Shop® so they can tell you first-hand what life is like in Espiritu Santo Bay, the Sian Ka’an biosphere reserve (which means “Where the sky begins”, in the Mayan language).

Taak ulak k’iin and Ka xi’ik teech utsil!!(See you later and good luck! in Mayan language)
Martin Ferreyra González and the entire ESB family.

man with esb permit

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