Writing my travel journals is always a pleasure for me. It is a chance to revisit my trip and it’s an easy writing exercise. That is, it was easy until Campeche. The conundrum lies in the separation of two unique experiences rolled into one, and trying to decide which was my favorite. The fishing is an awesome adventure that cannot be mimicked or compared to anywhere else in the world, and the city is a cultural and refreshing experience that is quaint, modern, and yet old beyond belief. It is a place where the Mayan took up residence, then the Spanish, and now the Mexican. Throughout all these civilizations the constant has been the presence of the Silver King, the Tarpon.

I have been bonefish fishing a lot the last few years, but not on Andros. I long to get back to her shores and fish there again. I still see myself there standing on a flats boat somewhere along the fabled west coast of the Island. White sands and green mangroves abound, and the blue of the sky and the white of the clouds intoxicate the senses with primary colors. Before long, more subtle colors begin to emerge. The reds and blacks of the mangrove stems, the many shades of turquoise and azure formed by various water depths, the grey of a very distant thunder storm, the pink of wading Flamingos and the yellow of the constantly patrolling lemon sharks. The colors will all reflect on the mirrored side of the bonefish, the reason for coming.

Yucatan Peninsula - My eyes are telling my brain that a fifteen pound Baby Tarpon just ate a Monarch Butterfly off of the water’s surface in the backcountry of Ascension Bay, in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. In the same instance my brain is telling the muscles in my arm to deliver my fly two feet left of the butterfly. The fly lands softly and sinks, the Tarpon gulps the butterfly and submerges. He sees my offering immediately. Even if I had wanted to, I couldn’t have taken my fly away from him once he saw it. He grabs the fly, I set the hook, and he goes airborne instantly shaking every muscle. His elongated body is a massive pliable mirror reflecting everything into a blur of wild silver flashes.