Liquid Horizon : Fly Fishing : Cape Town
OFF THE BEATEN TRACK?
MEXICO, June 2009
Text by Graeme Field
Photographs by Graeme Field & Jeremy Stewart
A question I am often asked by my fly fishing clients, in fact, a question I often find myself pondering, is when one is planning one's next fly fishing trip whether it's is a better idea to re visit a specific destination, or to head off into the unknown and discover somewhere totally new. I'm not referring to local weekend trips, but rather more expensive or exotic locations, and this question is usually money driven. You have worked hard and saved up for your (second) trip of a lifetime and want to make sure you get the best value for your money. So do you roll the dice and venture into the unknown or do you play it safe and stick with what you know? There is no easy answer: on one hand if you have visited somewhere before you will be better prepared and have a much clearer idea of what to expect, but, like a bad movie sequel, you may have higher expectations and find yourself disappointed – especially if you had an outstanding trip the first time round. Things also change, and sadly in our natural environment very little of this change is for the better, so re visiting a place few years later may well turn out to quite different from how you remembered it when everything was all new and exciting.
This is the quandary I recently faced when we decided to head for Mexico after our recent foray into Cuba. Back in 2005 good fishing friend Paul King and I spent a week at Isla Holbox on the north western to of the Yucatan Peninsula where we experienced some explosive fishing as we hunted and hooked big tarpon in the open ocean. The trip culminated in Paul landing a magnificent fish of around 100lbs. Four years later the opportunity arose to visit Isla Holbox again, but at the same time we had an opportunity to head to a different area of the coast that we hadn't been before, to Campeche, a renowned baby tarpon fishery. So there it was – decision time. Do we go with what we know, or do we try out somewhere new? Well we couldn't decide, so we did both! It was agreed that the journey was to start in Campeche with some shallow water baby tarpon fishing in the mangroves, followed by a few days of going hard for the big tarpon offshore of Isla Holbox, and hopefully going out with a bang.
Plans were quickly hatched, boats were organised, cars and accommodation were booked and so began a good old boys road trip through the swine flu ridden and tourist free province of Yucatan, Mexico.
I already had in tow a group of legendary fly fishing adventurers - Neil Ford, Dougie Taylor and Jeremy Stewart, but on arrival in Cancun we gathered more troops in the form of Paul and his friend Fred Reeves, who just had flown in from the USA. This resulted in a motley crew of South Africans, Scots and a couple of Americans – a fine mix of characters to squash into an undersized SUV sweltering in the tropical heat. After many sweaty attempts to fit ourselves and our (completely excessive) luggage into what was clearly far too small a space, we finally traded our car for a massive orange gas guzzler and hit the road.
Eight hours and some deserted Mayan ruins later we arrived at the quaint Mexican town of Campeche, its cobbled streets and brightly coloured houses a welcome change from the grey drabness we had just come from in Cuba. Straight into Hotel America (!) we went, and very soon it was gin, tonic, lemon and tackle time.
Not long after settling in to our rooms, the head guide arrived at the hotel and prepared us for the fishing the following day. Following his advice, the 12 weights remained in their tubes, and out came the 9 weights, floating lines and 1/0 tarpon flies. He made the fatal mistake of brining his own fly box to the party and his prized flies were soon depleted and spread between our greedy little fly boxes. With a scheduled 4:30am start in the morning, we put the lid back on the gin and hit the sack, ready for whatever Campeche had to throw at us.
The fishing in the Campeche area centres around an extensive mangrove shoreline bordering on extremely shallow flats, weed beds, and peaty coloured water. The tarpon are generally in the 2 – 15lb range, but there were a few 30lbs fish around and Paul even managed a cast at a fish estimated to be close to 80lbs – not that he had much chance with a 9 weight and 20lb tippet!
Each morning dawn broke over perfect, glassy conditions, the classic mirror smooth surface broken only by the tantalising dorsal and tail fins of rolling tarpon. The period between first light and the moment when the sun crept over the mangroves was by far the most productive, and everyone cashed in on “golden hour”. Unfortunately by 8am it was already unbearably hot in the windless mangroves and everything just seemed to slow down to a crawl. The tarpon glided lethargically under the mangrove roots, showing frustratingly little interest in our flies, and the mornings seemed to drag on forever. Some of the guys did get into some fish during mid morning, finding small pockets of tarpon and even some baby snook that were willing to take the fly, but the summer heat still made it pretty tough going. I'm a big believer of fishing smarter, not harder, and would have been quite happy to head back to shore by 10am each day. But hiring guides and boats is expensive, and there is a tendency to want to squeeze everything you can out of the time you have paid for – even if it means a few hours of hot, fruitless and unproductive fishing.
Paul and Jeremy, after a few beers one evening, arrived back at our hotel dressed like banditos in brightly coloured bandanas and enormous sombreros, and for a laugh, went fishing in them the following day. Turned out that they had inadvertently stumbled on the perfect answer to dealing with the debilitating heat – while the rest of us were melting away in the unrelenting sun, those two hombres were happily fishing in the comfortable shade of their massive straw hats! When we got back to the jetty at the end of the day a very hot Dougie took one look at them and pronounced in his characteristic Scottish accent: “Aaaah, ya poachin' bastarrrrds!”, and hurried off in search of the nearest sombrero store...
After a few days of baby tarpon fun, we piled once again into the orange monster and aimed northwards, towards that cute little laid back island, Isla Holbox, home of trophy tarpon.
Wow, things can change in a short space of time. Holbox used to be so great because it was low key, unknown and un-commercialised. Now its gained popularity as a destination that is 'off the beaten track', which is ironic as it seems that now people flock there to get away from people, and seem to have forgotten where the appeal of the place lay in the first place.
One of the attractions of Holbox is the high numbers of whale sharks that frequent the area, and when we first visited there were only one or two local boats that would take divers out to swim with these gentle giants. There were also only a handful of local boats that would take fly fishermen out to the tarpon areas. Well, four years later and the Westerners have moved in, prices have shot up, and the tourists have arrived. European run restaurants and fly-fishing operations have popped up, a million whale shark diving operators now compete for business and the fly fishing boats charge around out at sea, racing each other in an attempt to cut off the fast moving schools of tarpon.
The tarpon are still there though, and the excitement of seeing these big fish crashing and rolling will definitely bring a flutter to the heart and a shake to the knees. But it is clear that there is much more pressure on these fish nowadays, and they are noticeably more skittish and erratic, and much more difficult to get close enough for a decent shot on fly. We spent two mornings chasing the schools around, and had a few half shots at them but only Neil was able to elicit a take, and after a relatively short fight landed a wonderful fish in the region of 60lbs.
Being more exposed out in the deeper water of the Gulf, the fishery is easily wind affected, and our last day was all but blown out so we headed into the shallows to search for smaller tarpon on the flats. This is quite a productive fishery and we were just starting to hook into a few 10lb fish when a massive storm moved in and put an end to proceedings, for the day and for the trip.
As our ferry chugged towards the mainland the following morning, I looked back at the low rise of Holbox and thought with some melancholy that I had been fortunate to experience it while it was still relatively unknown, but that I probably would never be back again. It's still a fun place to hang out, and you will get some fish if you put in the time, but for me it's just lost it's appeal and I no longer felt like I was fishing 'off the beaten track'.