979 | Fly Fishing Belize with Chris Leeman: Permit, Tarpon, and Bonefish

00:00:00 Dave: Permit have a reputation for making fly anglers earn every eat. But along the coast of Belize, they’re doing something that would have sounded pretty unusual a few years ago. Coming to the surface to eat your fly. Today we’re heading into Belize to look at a fishery that’s changing in some fascinating ways. From permit feeding on Sargasso to full moon fishing, overlooked summer opportunities and research that could help protect these flats for years to come. Chris Leeman is here from Blue Bonefish Lodge, and he’s going to be bringing an interesting background in his work over sixteen years, guiding Alaska in Florida for many years, and now in Belize, running and owning a lodge, a family run lodge. Today we’re going to get into it all, including how this Sargasso has changed in ways. We’ve heard a little bit about this out there, these floating crab patterns. Now you can catch permit on the surface, maybe easier than you can catch them below. Before we’re gonna find out about moon cycles and what he likes and why, a full moon is something to be thinking about and why that might increase your opportunities. Also, why July might be one of the most overlooked months in Belize. And it’s something to think about if you want to find a time when there’s less people, less crowds. July and summer might be the best time. And we’re also going to talk about one number Chris is going to give us. And if it’s your first saltwater trip that you need to be thinking about fifty feet, we’re going to get comfortable with fifty feet and talk about how you can get ready for your first trip, or maybe it’s your second, but we’re going to get you prepared for that. Chris Leeman You can find him at Blue Bonefish, Belize dot com. All right. Let’s get into it. Here he is Chris Leeman. How’s it going Chris? How are you doing today? 00:01:41 Chris: Very good, very good. Thanks, Dave. 00:01:43 Dave: Yeah. I want to get into what you have going at Blue Bonefish. Um, I know your story goes back. You’ve got many years guiding in your program, and I want to hear about how kind of Blue bonefish came to be. Can you give us that story? Uh, run us down through how you started. It sounds like started down in Alaska. Got a number of years starting off. 00:02:03 Chris: Yeah. I started working for rainbow River Lodge, which is out of Bristol Bay, Lake Iliamna area back in my early twenties. Uh, ended up doing about sixteen seasons up there, a few too many seasons too long, I would say. But, uh, about halfway through the Alaska, um, my seasons up in Alaska, I ended up getting the saltwater bug and, uh, ended up starting a charter service down in the Florida Keys and had run that for about nine years out of Big Pine, um, chasing the same species we have in Belize. And during that transition, we started hosting trips down to Blue Bonefish Lodge with the previous owners and having small groups of eight or ten down with Jim and Phyllis Johnson. And, uh, this must have been twelve, thirteen years ago. And towards the end of one of our hosted trips, they had pulled me aside and said, hey, we’re, we’re thinking about selling a place down in Belize, and I’d like to offer it to you first to see if you want to take it over. And long story short, we ended up signing on the dotted line at about twenty nineteen and already rolling off into our eighth season already. 00:03:05 Dave: Yeah, well, if you add up those numbers, that’s a, um, that’s a lot of years, uh, guiding. I mean, right, you’ve got sixteen, nine, eight. You’ve been doing this a while. Is it? How has that been? It sounds like Alaska you put in your time there. What was the between Florida and Belize, is there a pretty big difference between the kind of just everything there. 00:03:25 Chris: You know. 00:03:26 Chris: Very similar fisheries, fish populations vary, you know, a little bit from different areas. I think the the one benefit Belize has is that it is far enough south to where we do not really have cold fronts affect us, you know, and, and guiding the Florida Keys, you know, for many years that I would really be hesitant to book trips in December, January and even early February due to the cold fronts. You know, we’d see water temps drop in the, you know, high fifties, low sixties during those months. And while we’re in Belize, you know, those same cold fronts will hit us. But all water temps will only drop to seventy seven seventy eight degrees. So we’re pretty blessed, you know. And the cold fronts in Belize, we call them cold fronts. And it’s kind of funny, you know, you get a cold front moving through the island and, you know, all the locals are wearing jeans and sweatshirts, you know, thinking seventy five degrees is pretty cold out. And, you know, we’re loving it. You know, it’s kind of like humidity. And, uh, you know, it puts our fishing down for twenty four hours or so, but it warms right back up. You know, it doesn’t take weeks like it does in the keys. 00:04:22 Dave: Right, right. Wow. That’s cool. And what is it? So now as we’re talking, it’s August. We’re getting September’s right around the corner. What’s it like down there this time of year right now. And maybe you can run through your program a little bit. 00:04:32 Chris: Well the fishing’s really good year round in Belize. It, it, uh, we have a few migrational, different patterns that come through with, with a few different species. We catch permit twelve months of the year, we catch tarpon twelve months of the year, we catch bonefish twelve months of the year. I mean, there are obviously a little better times with different migration patterns that come through, I would consider kind of your winter months kind of best for bonefish as they get in skinny and water temps are a little bit cooler. Um, so you’re looking at late November through really March, early April. Um, once the springtime conditions hit, that’s when our permits start aggregating, you know, so everybody kind of is aware, but March and April, even early May. A lot of the larger permit come in off the reef and off the channels and will aggregate kind of pre-spawn on the flats surrounding Ambergris Caye and gives you opportunities to some larger permit. Fifteen twenty, twenty five pounders on the fly during that time of the year. And then our tarpon season really starts firing about that same time, about April, May. Uh, we start seeing a lot of Oceanside tarpon starting to move in. And they’re not large migratory ocean tarpon, but you know, they’re going to average that twenty to fifty pounds and an occasional sixty seven on that ocean side. And, um, that holds pretty solid all the way through the summer months. And, you know, Sargasso is another topic I’m sure we’ll discuss, you know, during this time, but, uh, the Sargassum really starts moving in the springtime and increasing feeding opportunities for both the permit and the tarpon. And we’ve been pretty excited the last few years. While it’s has not been good for tourism, for your beach goers and couples, it has created some really unique feeding environments, uh, for our permit and tarpon as they’re looking in that sargassum as a food source. 00:06:10 Dave: Right? This is a lot, you know, this is the great thing. There’s a ton going we can dig into here, right? I feel like all the species are great, you know, and permit you hear a lot about them being the hardest out there, maybe the hardest fish in fly fishing to catch, you know, because of kind of how they’re they’re just moody, I guess. But how does that, how does it work now on, on when you think surface versus below the surface, are they still hard to catch on the surface or is that has that changed the game a little bit? 00:06:37 Chris: Well, in the right situation, uh, with the right school of fish on the ocean side, I think they’re predominantly looking to feed on crabs on the surface. I mean, it’s, uh, I had a great example. A couple of weeks ago, I was fishing in Oceanside and had found a school of fish, and we were prepping for a tournament. And I said, well, let’s, let’s experiment here and put a weighted fly on and see if, uh, you know, we’re going to get some fish to move out of the school and eat the fly. And I put two good shots in there with a traditional weighted raghead fly and three four followed it. And, you know, school regrouped and we didn’t get a bite out of that group and grabbed the other rod and grabbed a floating crab and first shot into that school. I had three or four of them, you know, chasing it and fighting for it on the surface. So, um, in my opinion, I think if, if it’s that spring to summer months, I think if you have permit on the ocean side, I don’t see any reason why you should not throw a floating crab, especially if there’s Sargasso present, you know, I mean, it is becoming one of their major food sources and, and really what they’re keying in on. 00:07:34 Dave: Yeah. And you mentioned the that time of year when the permit are coming in, the bigger ones, what is going on, you know, during that time? And are the big fish harder to catch or are there few of them? Or describe that a little bit? 00:07:46 Chris: Well, the bigger ones are for sure. Harder to catch. It’s, uh, uh, you know, Belize is known for a lot of permit being caught. A lot of anglers catch their first permit on the fly, but I, I always joke around with our clients that, uh, you know, eighty to ninety percent of our permits that are caught at the lodge throughout the course of the year. And we catch, you know, hundreds of them during a season. You know, most of them are those cookie cutter, three to six, seven pound permit. You know, those are what we’re blessed with. And we’re super fortunate to have those smaller fish around to be able to give these beginner, intermediate anglers their first crack at catching a permit. And, you know, it’s a lot of our our guests are stacking numbers up, you know, as far as getting counts over one hundred fish, you know, during their stays with us over the last four or five years. And a lot of those fish are, are three to six, seven pounds. And, you know, occasionally we, you know, catch one that’s in that fifteen, twenty pound range. And, and that still could happen any time of the year. But I think there’s, there’s areas within our fishery that tend to hold larger permit. And, you know, it’s hard to say going permit fish and hey, let’s just go chase big permit around because that’s not how that game works. You just got to go chase permit. And if you’re lucky enough to come across a big school permit that are feeding, then great. You know, you know, it’s one of those things. It’s catch twenty two. It’s, uh, you know, we love, love chasing big permit, but it’s, uh, you know, they are smarter. I mean, there’s a reason, you know, why these fish get to twenty, twenty five pounds and, you know, a fish of that, that size is, is starting to get in that fifteen to twenty year old age range. And, and they’re pretty home bodied fish. You know, we’ve done a lot of tracking and tagging studies on some of these larger adult fish. And many of them will frequent the same flat for weeks on end, you know, so if you’re seeing that school one day and you see them there the next day, odds are it’s the same school of fish it is. 00:09:27 Dave: Wow. And are all these fish mostly? Are they migrating a lot, you know, between, you know, the flats and out or they’re describe that a little bit. And I know the tarpon maybe is a different thing because they’ve you mentioned the size range. Maybe describe what’s the most out of the three species, which one has the life history? That’s kind of easiest to describe. 00:09:46 Chris: Well, the bonefish are definitely the most home bodied, and you only really research we’ve done down in Belize has been, uh, collaborated with Bonefish Tarpon Trust. And one of their first studies they did was, you know, ten, twelve years ago to where they were tagging and tracking the bonefish migration routes. And most of those schools of bones would stay in the same lagoon for sometimes months on end. And the only thing that would trigger them to leave that particular area was one fishing pressure or two the right moon phase, and they were moving out to the reef to go spawn outside the reef. So they were very, very home bodied. And permit are very similar as well. They, you know, at times if they’re not pressured and they’re, you know, not being fished hard, they’ll, they’ll stay in that same area for weeks on end as well. And I think a lot of times the only thing that moves them is fishing pressure, you know, and then they relocate to a different area. And then, you know, obviously somebody finds those and they pressure them and they move again. Um, Tarpon obviously would be the most highly migratory. Uh, very, very little research has been done about the tarpon in Belize. And it’s something that we’re kind of kind of curious about, you know, where are these fish come from? And a lot of people think that they move into the river systems in the winter months and feed on the bait coming out of the rivers. And then as it warms up and the rivers are too hot and the bait moves out, then the tarpon start coming out towards Oceanside, which is where we start seeing them in April and May. Um, moving out of the rivers and the snook are fairly similar as well. They kind of have that same migration route, but uh, pretty exciting though. We are doing an acoustic tagging project with BTT right now in Belize. Um, they’ve successfully put about fifteen, sixteen tags in permit and then there’s receivers within Mexico and in northern Belize, and this acoustic tag will send out a ping and it’ll actually track the fish and say fish zero zero one was here next to this receiver at eight o’clock in the morning. Um, so it’s pretty exciting that we’re going to be able to start tracking some of these larger fishes migration routes and see what the connectivity is in between Belize and Mexico, where they’re spawning sites are how frequently they, you know, kind of frequent the flats in those same areas. Um, in a very similar study was done in the Florida Keys. And it was, uh, instrumental for having a lot of the habitat protected and changing some of the harvesting, uh, regulations in Florida. So the data that, you know, these guys are going to collect here in the next three to five years with this acoustic project is going to be really instrumental for Belize to move forward with conservation efforts. 00:12:13 Dave: That’s cool. Yeah, that’s and we’re hopeful we’re going to have somebody on from beat to talk about that, um, you know, your area and just describe more of that because I think that sounds really interesting and you’re talking about and that is for permit. That’s the main species. 00:12:25 Chris: Strictly permit project. Yep. It’s an acoustic tagging permit project and it’s a very light budget project. Right now we are looking for some more sponsors and more donations in order to get more tags in order to quickly gather more research and more data. Um, but the tags each are a couple grand, you know, and it’s, it’s an expensive process. And most days we’re capturing one or two permit, you know, so it’s a slow process to put, you know, sixteen tags and permit. You’re talking sixteen days of fishing, you know, unless you have a real good day, you might be able to get two or three tags in. But you know, it’s, it’s a slow process, you know? 00:12:59 Dave: Right. Wow. This is cool. No, this is going to be awesome here. And, and maybe you don’t have to go like high level, but the acoustic tag so that when they plant one of those, can they, they track it like every step of the way. And how are they tracking it? What is the device? 00:13:12 Chris: Yeah. So the only way that the scientists are able to track these permit is when it’s physically swims by one of the acoustic receivers. So acoustic receiver is about a foot long and maybe about eight inches around. And it’s powered by a lithium battery and it’s anchored to a concrete block. And, uh, they basically drop it down in a channel near the flats on the outside of the reef. And the only way that fish is going to be detected is if it swims within a certain radius of that receiver, and that’s when it. This acoustic transmitter sends out a ping, and every time it pings that receiver, it records the data. You know, so it’s it’s a long process. You know, the acoustic tagging project I was involved with in the keys with BTT, I mean, they did five years worth almost seven years with the studies with acoustic tagging, and they were able to get a little over a hundred fish tagged. Um, but the data was incredible to look at, you know, as far as where they moved and how they moved and why. And the one thing in Belize we don’t know is where do our permits spawn, you know, and, and we don’t have a really big threat to our spawn compared to the Florida Keys, where the offshore captains are looking to capture and catch them offshore on heavy jigs and crabs. You know, the the locals really don’t target the permit offshore, which is a blessing for us, but still need that data for future years to come because eventually that’s going to come. 00:14:31 Dave: Yeah. That’ll come that you like the impacts. There will be more impact. So what you’re saying is if you can document that now, protect the habitat, maybe even put sanctuaries or protected areas. That’s going to be a big thing for Belize looking at or the whole area looking ahead one hundred percent. Yeah. That’s great. Okay. Nice. Well, we’re going to I want to get into some maybe some tips and tricks too. We talked about the sargassum and all that, but let’s hear about the lodge. I want to hear about maybe describe kind of where this is sitting at. So again, somebody’s listening. Maybe they’re new, maybe they haven’t been to Belize and talk about that because you’re in kind of this unique part of the world on, on the tip, right? Describe the lodge a little bit. 00:15:07 Chris: Yeah. So we’re located, uh, on the very southernmost end of Ambergris Caye, uh, about four and a half miles south of the downtown area. Um, very easy to get to from the US. Direct flights come from Denver, Houston, Miami, Charlotte, um, even Seattle, Portland, LAX. But for example, you come out of Miami, it’s an hour and a half flight out of Dallas. You’re about two hours and fifteen minutes, two hours and twenty minutes. So very straightforward. You know, it’s not as far away as everybody believes and feels it is so. It’s a one day travel event. You know, if you leave by seven a m, you could be dislodged, you know, as late as three o’clock in the afternoon, which is a blessing, you know, but very straightforward travel. You know, you go fly into Belize International and then from there you have two options. Take either water taxi or a charter flight over the island, and the flight’s about fifteen minutes, and our drivers will pick you up and bring you down to the lodge once you arrive on the island. And then it’s game time, kind of get the rods ready and get ready for fishing. But, uh, yeah, we’re pretty blessed from where we’re located. We’re, like I said, on the south end of the island, so great access to the fishing guides will come straight into our pier and the dock in the morning after our breakfast service, and they pick up right at our dock and fish for a full day and then drop off, you know, right in the afternoon on the same dock. So a lot of our guests never really feel the need to leave the lodge. But if you want to, you know, we do have golf carts at the lodge that you’re able to jump in in the afternoons, do some DIY fishing, go cruise around Bonefish flats, look for tarpon in the small lagoons, or simply go to happy hours in town and cruise around and get some drinks in and listen to live music. So the beauty of Ambergris Caye, I think, is that, uh, you know, there is flexibility with not having to be such a hardcore fishing program. We definitely offer that type of program. But you know, if you want to bring your spouse or your wife, you know, she’s not going to get bored while you’re out fishing. There’s things for her to do around the island and around the lodge, which is a little bit, you know, different from some of the lodges down in southern Belize, where if you’re on a remote island and that’s what you’re doing and that’s what you’re stuck doing. So. 00:17:05 Dave: Right. 00:17:05 Chris: So we’re very blessed in that sense. 00:17:07 Dave: Yeah, that is cool. And San Pedro is the town that’s just north of you up there that you you could go to. 00:17:12 Chris: Yep. Yeah, about a twenty minute golf cart ride. And we’re actually going to be shorter than that as our road is finally getting paved to our lodge, which has been a blessing for about ten years, twelve years of going to this lodge, we’ve had a dirt road all the way down. And, uh, hopefully within the next six months, we’re gonna have that thing paved and we’ll be rocking and rolling, which would be good. 00:17:31 Dave: That’s great, that’s great. And what are some of the things that people are doing? Like if you weren’t fishing, what would be some of the things you could do? Let’s say you took your partner or something like that. What would that look like? 00:17:40 Chris: Well, you know, we do offer a good couples package, but, you know, fly fishing is our main bread and butter. That’s what we focus on. Uh, we have a twenty eight foot boat out front that we offer snorkel tours. And then we also have a twenty five foot boat that we offer reef fishing trips and beach barbecues, and we do sunset cruises. We do eco tours to the marine reserves and also up in the national parks. So bird watching, manatee tours, eagle rays, um, all of that’s an option. You know, we have in-house guides that kind of handle all that for us. Um, mainland tours are also a popular tour for our couples that come in. They’ll, they’ll jump back on a plane and head back over to the mainland and go see Mayan ruins, go cave tubing. 00:18:19 Dave: Yeah. That’s cool. Is Belize City, is that the main like if you went to the mainland, is that where would you be going to check out the Mayan tours. 00:18:27 Chris: Fly back into Belize Municipal and then it’s about an hour and a half van ride back up to Belmopan, and then from there you would visit the Mayan ruins. 00:18:35 Dave: Okay. And is Belize. Is that the main. Where is the main airport? You’re going to fly into Belize International. And that is. 00:18:41 Chris: two airports in Belize. 00:18:42 Dave: Yeah. Gotcha. Okay. Yeah. Perfect. All right. And yeah, I think, you know, one thing, you know, I think Belize. So that would be something that’s fairly. If you kind of were going there with your family, you could do this and it’d be pretty safe going to the to the city. You’ve heard some things about maybe I don’t know if it’s Belize City, but some of those places where you got to be careful a little bit more than where you’re at, obviously. 00:19:01 Chris: Yeah. Never let our guests stay in Belize City overnight. You know, it’s the only reason we’re going to Belize City is to, to head over to for a mainland tour. And it’s on a guided tour. So you’re in good hands the entire time in Belize City. Safe. You know, if you’re out late and late at night and looking for trouble, obviously you’re going to find it. But, uh, you know, we really never suggested our guests, you know, stay there if they if they don’t have to get over the island, you know, and come over here and relax. And it’s safer on the island compared to Belize City. 00:19:29 Dave: Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay, that makes it easy. Perfect. So, yeah, and we were talking, you know, a little bit about kind of the different species. Let’s just start, you know, there’s a lot of different, you know, people out there obviously listening here experience with, you know, different these species we’re talking about. But let’s just take it to somebody who’s fairly new, maybe hasn’t been to Belize, maybe he’s kind of newer to saltwater. And it all sounds like throughout the year there’s times you can fish. So it’s hard to pick a one time. But if we were, if I was picking a time to, you know, go down with a few people, what would that look like? What do you think you’d be telling us if we were asking? Okay, we’re trying to plan this trip in the next year or so. 00:20:02 Chris: Well, I get that question almost every day. When is when is the best time to come to Belize? And honestly, I don’t I tell our guests that are they’re looking to book. I mean, it’s it’s good twelve months of the year. I mean, it’s, it really it’s so hard to throw a dart at a board and say, you know, you’re going to have this is going to be perfect in March because in March, you know, or even August, say June, July, I mean, you can have a tougher weather week. And, and really, I, we see a correlation throughout the twelve months of the year to where our best fishing coincides or aligns with good weather patterns, high pressure systems, and and you can have good weather in January. You can have high pressures all throughout the course of the year, or you could have a low pressure with two or three days of rain and some clouds and wind, and it’s going to put a damper on the fish. And so it’s, you know, moon phases play a little bit of phase, a little bit of roll into our fishing program. Both new and full moons are are very productive, which is contradictory to what you hear a lot of in a lot of articles you read. I’ll tell you firsthand from living down there last eight years and also guiding the keys. I mean, some of our best permit fishing weeks. Come on, full moons. You know, we’ll have twenty, twenty five fish weeks, sometimes thirty fish on a full moon phase. And everybody’s like, wow, you know, I wouldn’t think they would have bit that. Well, you know, you’re tarpon are a little bit more sluggish on a full moon, you know, but bonefish permit, you know, I, I really feel that you get more tidal movement. You’re getting more water movement more fish activity during those big moon phases. So don’t be afraid to book a trip around a full moon. It’s really it can be super productive, but as far as you know, a year round calendar from January to just, you know, the, the end of the year in December, you know, it’s, it’s really good twelve months of the year, your best Bonefishing is going to be probably November through February. As, as the water temps are more favorable for them to be in skinny. And you’re going to find that traditional fish tailing in six ten inches of water in a mangrove shoots. You know, everybody thinks permit fishing is really good March and April, at which it is, but it’s our permit. Fishing is pretty good year round, I think. You know, you have a few larger fish in the springtime. Um and our tarpon game, I would say, you know, kind of the sweet spot of having all three fish available would kind of be that late March, April, May and into early June where we have all three species, you know, really available. I think we probably catch the most Grand Slams in between the months about April and in July would be my suggestion. 00:22:24 Dave: Yeah, April and July. I was kind of thinking. So if we were planning something, maybe in that period, March, April, maybe early April, something like that, that might be a good time to, to lock it down. Okay. And then you’d have a shot maybe, you know, again, it’s fishing, so you never know, but you might have a shot at all three. Potentially. 00:22:39 Chris: You would. You would. Yeah. And it’s, it’s also the time of year that hooks up the quickest. Right. So keep that in mind when you’re, you’re looking for a trip to Belize that, you know, we are already looking at our schedule for twenty twenty seven. And I have limited availability from February through early June already. It’s a, you know, a handful of spots in the month of April. And in each month, you know, it’s, it’s amazing how quick that that time hooks up and, and it correlates with the colder weather up north, you know, and a lot of people are wanting to get down south, you know, from January to May and get out of the snow and cold. So that’s partly why it hooks up quicker too. And, and I think our more serious hardcore anglers that have have fished a little bit in the shoulder seasons are starting to realize that, hey, it’s, it’s pretty darn good in July. Like there’s nobody down here. Fishing pressures light. You know, I’m gonna keep coming in July. You know, I like this time of year. So it’s it’s, it’s fun to see, you know. 00:23:31 Dave: That is cool. Yeah. And Belize is I mean, that’s the cool thing about where it’s at is that it’s kind of it’s equidistant almost right to the east coast and the west coast. Is it about the same getting there from northeastern New York and stuff like that? As it is from the West? 00:23:44 Chris: It’s a little, you know, coming out of New York, new Jersey, that area, you’re going to have to come through Charlotte. So you’re going to add another two and a half, three hours. But it most your travel time is in between seven and ten hours. You know, I think the hardest area to come from is the Pacific Northwest, maybe Oregon, Washington, um, Seattle area. Typically a lot of our guests are Overnighting red eye in Houston or Dallas. And then coming down the next morning, um, we suggest if you’re on one of those legs to come in on a Thursday, come in a day early, get to the island the night before, grab a hotel and get yourself kind of recouped before you come down the lodge on Saturday. 00:24:20 Dave: Yeah, definitely. Yeah. That’s always a good idea to get their day early and make sure your bags are there and there’s no issues. That seems to be the one of the big travel tips. If you’re doing a lot of travel, give yourself an extra day when you’re getting there just in case. 00:24:32 Chris: Yep, yep. 00:24:33 Dave: Okay, good. Well, tell us this on, you know, we’re talking about species a little bit on the on the permit fishing. What is the and I think we might, in a future episode, get deeper into the Sargassum. But describe that what’s going on there and, and maybe a little bit on, on the fishing, how that’s changed the game down there. 00:24:50 Chris: Yeah. 00:24:50 Chris: So it’s kind of been a transition over the last four or five years. Each year we’re starting to see more and more Sargasso come into the Caribbean basin and into the Caribbean coastline. I guess you’d say the eastern sides. And it’s it’s not just Belize in Mexico, it’s Cuba, it’s Florida, the Texas Panhandle. All those areas are getting super affected by Sargasso. But for whatever reason, the pH balance in the ocean and these major river systems that are coming out of these, these continents are are leaching fertilizers into the ocean and has created this chemistry in perfect balance for this Sargasso to bloom. And while it’s adrift down the ocean, it’s multiplying and multiplying and multiplying, and our predominant east wind blows that right into our shoreline. And, um, it’s bringing with it, you know, a couple bad situations, but also some good situations, you know, wallets adrift offshore. It’s great. I mean, the mahi are feeding underneath the baits holding on it. There’s crab and shrimp in it. Tuna are looking for food underneath it. But as it crosses the reef and piles up on the shoreline, that’s when it starts decomposing, creating a low oxygen water. It’s got a sulfur smell to it. So it’s really dampening our, you know, normal tourists that wants to come and lay on a beach. And, and that’s been the sad part of it. But for a fly angler, we’re looking at it going, hey, you know, this is, this is actually good stuff. I mean, so these permits are adapting, these tarpon are adapting to see and figure out how to feed out of this, this grass. And they’ve learned that they can look up and say, hey, man, there’s a Sargasso crab right there. And they’ll come up and pop it, kick it, push it, knows it, and they’ll kick that crab off it. And then they’ll circle back around and pop it right off the surface. And so it’s very visual, you know, and, and it’s a good sign when you see these fish, you know, they’ll swim underneath the grass lines. And when you see that situation, these, these schools of permits that are looking, going from glass to grass line to grass line, it’s like, hey, it’s game on. Like, get the floating crab out and, and let’s put a good shot on them. And they will, they will not hesitate. I mean, it’s I’ve seen more reluctant fish to try to eat a subsurface fly. And they’re real cautious, real cautious. But when they come up and try to get a crab off the surface, it’s like no questions asked come up and they pop it, you know? And so it’s, it’s pretty fun. I mean, I think if you get their attention with it and they want to get it, it’s very rarely do they turn off and say, no, I’m not. You know, if they take the energy to go chase it, they’re going to eat it. 00:27:10 Dave: Yeah, they’re going to go for it, man. That’s amazing. And what is the and is this kind of change throughout the year? Other times where you get more of that vegetation? And maybe you could also describe kind of what it is? Is this something I’m guessing it’s something that’s been there before. It’s just but the quality water quality has made it just bloom more readily. 00:27:28 Chris: Yeah. Sargasso has always been prevalent. I mean, even the Florida Keys, when I was there, you know, in Big Pine, we would on the eastern sides of Big Pine, there’s this sargasso collection area on the eastern side of the island there, and the tarpon would go bonkers there on the shrimp hatches that come out of that grass. Um, so it’s something, you know, even in the keys, I’ve seen the permit in some of the channels, you know, north of Big Pine up there are feeding off the Sargasso. And this was fifteen years ago down there. So it’s not new, but it’s becoming more predominant and more consistent is a good way to put it, you know, and, and in the last three years, four years, our guides are adapting to. And the fish are too, as well that, you know, well, there’s really nothing in the turtle grass to feed on. There’s no green crabs or there’s no blue crabs, because that’s pretty much all died off from our low oxygen. So these fish don’t have a habitat to feed on on the bottom anymore. They’ve got to find a source elsewhere, and that’s where they’ve adapted to. So it’s kind of unique, you know, and, you know, the development of our, our fishery and the way we’re approaching it is we’re learning as we go. You know, we don’t have it one hundred percent dialed yet. I’d love to say we do, but we’re still designing flies. We’re still designing leader setups. You know, we’re trying to figure out how to get it not to sink and stay on top or starting to fish full, clear fly lines because you can visually see the fly on top. So there’s a lot of things that we’re adapting to do that are increasing our catch rates that have been fairly productive in the last, you know, year or two. 00:28:53 Dave: Right, right. That’s awesome. And, and then tarpon too. So you can, if you how does that look differently for tarpon? If they’re the same thing, they’re poking it off and then hitting it. What does that look like. 00:29:03 Chris: Yeah. So the tarpon are also in the Sargasso and they, they cruise in between the dirty water and the clean water. And if you’ve ever fished, you know that situation. You know what I’m describing there. But, uh, you know, the tarpon are more in there to feed on what’s dying off. And there’ll be batches of this red water on the ocean side, uh, that you drive through, and it’ll sting your nostrils. And the carpenter in there feeding on the dead fish and dead shrimp and stuff that are coming out of it. So it’s creating a unique fishery. Early in the morning, you’ll go in, you’ll see birds working in this area, and then you’ll see jacks cruising through. And then all of a sudden, here come the tarpon. And they’re pop, pop, pop, you know, feeding on top. So in that situation we’re fishing a lot of streamers and white toads, black and purples, chartreuse, just something to get their attention. But it was unique. We were prepping for a tournament a couple of weeks ago and I had a floating crab on. We were looking for a permit and, you know, jokingly around saw tarpon roll by eighty, ninety feet through a shot in there on a floating crab and came up and ate off the top and obviously cut me off in two point five seconds. But oh, that was interesting, you know, and, and I saw another one roll and I think I went through five floating crabs that day just because every tarpon I threw, I came up and ate a Sargasso crab that I had the same thing we’re catching permit on those Tarpon are eating the same exact thing in that same situation. So wow. So we’re going to get back onto on advice and try to figure out how to design a little beefier, bigger floating Sargasso crab, you know, right. 00:30:24 Dave: There you go. Wow. And then and then what about the bonefish? Are they are they also hitting that stuff? Are they they got their game. They seem to be the ones that are the maybe the easier fish out of the three to catch. 00:30:34 Chris: They are for sure, you know, and they’re as much as I hate to say it, we’re not seeing the bonefish on the ocean side when the conditions are like that because it is too low oxygen water. They’re used to feeding in skinny. Um, if you find a batch of clean ocean water on the ocean side, you’ll find bonefish in it. But most of our bonefish in the springtime, it’s going to be on the lagoon side, which we have twenty five miles of shoreline over on a basically Chetumal bay on the backside of Ambergris Caye. And that’s where all of our bonefishing is done. 00:31:01 Dave: And oh. 00:31:01 Chris: Okay. 00:31:01 Chris: And we’ve caught some bonefish on floating crabs, but it’s not something that we’re specifically targeting. You know, we’re, we’re throwing our traditional Christmas islands and gotchas, and. But it’s the bonefish and populations have not declined. They’re just moving from the ocean side back into the bay to find areas to feed that are that are healthy for them, if that makes sense. 00:31:21 Dave: Yeah. That does. Maybe you can talk a little about your guides in that area. I know you’re just your operation. I think you think of it as more of a family, you know, atmosphere, right? Describe that a little bit. Who are the guides that you have there? And kind of are they part of the family down there? 00:31:36 Chris: They are very much part of the family. And that’s part of what we pride ourselves on. We have a great group of, uh, full time guides, lodge guides that are strictly work for us, you know, six days a week and they’re there nine months of the year, ten months of the year, and take a couple months off in the summertime. But, uh, but most of our guides that are full time with us have been with us since I’ve taken over or we’ve inherited from the previous owners. And we’ve also developed and brought on a few other guides that I’ve felt very passionate about and strong about that they’re very confident with them, with taking our guests out. So at max we run about seven boats a day is kind of my sweet spot. Six or seven boats, you know, we run in between about fourteen anglers a day or fourteen anglers a week. So seven boats is pretty comfortable, two anglers boat. But they’ve been with us a long time. And they’re, they’re not just bonefish guys. They’re not just a specific permit guy. They’re not a specific tarpon guide. All of them are good at all three species. And that’s something that we pride on it. You know, we, we rotate our guides, which is, you know, not common in saltwater fishing lodges. You know, most time you book a trip somewhere in the Caribbean and they say, hey, you’re going to be fishing with X all week long and you got five days of them. This is your guide. And, um, I don’t set our schedule until I get all of our guests to the lodge on Saturday afternoon. I have a chance to physically meet him in person. We’re blessed. We do have a lot of repeat guests, but the new ones I want to I want to interact with them, talk to them, you know, see what they want to fish for, see what they’re looking to experience for the week and get their personalities. And then not enough guide in Alaska and through the keys, But my lodge owner I work for in Alaska. He rotated our guides every day and I always felt that was super beneficial for the angler to be able to see and feel and be instructed in different ways, be guided, see different areas. So it’s been really good and very well accepted from our clientele. You know that, hey, you know, you’re fishing with Darwin today and tomorrow you’re going to go with David, next day you’re going to go with Marco, next day you’re going to go with Jorge. And then by middle of the week, if you enjoyed fishing with one of our guides and say, hey, man, I’d really love to get back with Darwin tomorrow. You know, we really clicked. And I usually am able to, of course, to schedule out enough to be able to get you back another day or two. You know, with that same guide, if you have somebody just clicked or didn’t click with, you know, and that happens too. I mean, sometimes your personalities don’t mesh. And that’s the worst situation where if you know, you’re at a lodge and you got five days with somebody you don’t enjoy fishing with, you’re not going to come back, you know? 00:33:58 Dave: Yeah, no, I agree. I think from what my experience too, I like that when you switch it up because every day you get a different person, like you said, different perspective. You’re learning probably some different things and it just keeps it more interesting. I think that’s fun. Nice. Um, well, so we’re on this track of, you know, kind of the trip and we talked about getting there. So describe that first day. Are people coming in typically the same day? What is that first kind of day once we’re kind of at the lodge? 00:34:23 Chris: Yeah. 00:34:24 Chris: So arrival, we always have arrivals on Saturdays and our departures are on Fridays. We have a set schedule throughout our entire season. Uh, makes our life easy for myself, my wife, my housekeepers, my kitchen staff. So arrival is going to be typically from about one o’clock to five o’clock on Saturday. Um, once you get boots on the ground at the lodge, it’s check into your room, get your bags unpacked, and then we grab rods, head over to our palapa and then myself. And usually Uzi is his name. Uziel. Um, is there helping us rig rods? So whether you brought rods, you know, or don’t have rods, um, if you did bring rods, you bring them down and then we start stringing them up and getting ready for the next day and putting them on the racks. And we do have good equipment for our guests to use. We pride ourselves in keeping really good care of our fly rods, including all of our packages. We have eight weights and ten weights and twelve weights for our guests to borrow and use at any time. You know, so there’s no nickel and dime and there’s no rod charges for an extra day. You know, if you need to borrow one of our rods, they’re there. Left hand, right hand, retrieve good lines on them, floating lines, sinking lines, etc. so most of that stuff we we dial in before arrival and nine times out of ten, I’ve got them all rigged up, strung up, ready to go before you even step, you know, your feet on the property and they’re ready to go for fishing the next day. But yeah, after we get the rods strung up, we have a happy hour appetizer time around five, five thirty, and then dinner service is typically around six or six thirty and then dessert. And usually it’s crickets around the lodge by eight o’clock and everybody’s ready to go fishing the next morning. 00:35:52 Dave: Right, right. It’s the next morning. Pretty early start. 00:35:55 Chris: Yeah. 00:35:56 Chris: Winter months we do about a seven a m start. And as we transition into the spring, you know, we’ll start departing as early as Early six a m if the winds are flat and calm. You know, sometimes we’ll do a dawn patrol mission and we’re leaving at, you know, five, five thirty in the morning trying to get on that tarpon bite. But, uh, it’s our average start time is between about six thirty and seven throughout the course of the season. 00:36:14 Dave: Okay. And then you go out and are you putting in kind of an eight hour day and then and then come back at the end? 00:36:19 Chris: Yeah. 00:36:19 Chris: Your typical eight hour, you know, tour, so seven to three and kind of come back unwind. We have, uh, once you pull back up the dock and the end of the afternoon, um, we’ll unload the coolers, we unload the rods for you, we wash them down, we put them back on the racks. Uh, we keep all of our rods labeled with your name, how many rods you have, and then, uh, pretty much come back to grab a cold beer, sit in the pool, have some rum punch. And then we do usually, you know, kind of a light snack in the afternoon. And then, uh, we hit the repeat button appetizers around five thirty, dinner. Six thirty. Then it’s crickets again at eight o’clock and on Monday night. So it’s, uh, it’s pretty funny how quiet, you know, everybody’s kind of rowdy on the first night or two. And then by, by Wednesday, it’s, it’s a ghost town right after dinner. Everybody’s beat, you know. 00:36:59 Dave: Oh, yeah. Definitely. Yeah. You gotta, you gotta pace yourself a little bit. Right. That’s the I guess that’s the guy. That’s why it’s nice having guides. They kind of keep you going. What does it look like when you’re out there? I guess everybody’s going to different locations. How far away might you be traveling from your area, or do you guys have kind of this close area you’re fishing? 00:37:17 Chris: Well, it times. 00:37:19 Chris: Some of the best permit and bonefishing is within five to fifteen minutes of the lodge. And I think that is the beauty of us rotating guides. I think a lot of our guides have certain particular areas that they’ve been keying in on, and at times we’ll do short runs. And, you know, if the guides are seeing fish further away, I mean, we’re not afraid to burn fuel. And we have some runs that will do twenty five miles and go up to the northern coastline and Mexico and Belize. We fish the mainland of Belize. We also go south down towards Saint George’s, uh, down towards Hicks Keys. And some of those runs are forty five minutes to an hour. Um, so it’s, you know, it’s neat to get off the beaten path, get away from the island. Typically, the wind dictates a little bit of what we do as far as how far we can travel. If the winds are up, we typically stay closer to home. Winds are calm or turning and burning and we’re exploring, which is fun. 00:38:03 Dave: Yeah, that is fun. No, this is good. So it sounds like and I’m just kind of putting together thinking about, you know, what this trip would look like with a group coming down there and it sounds like, yeah, you guys are would have to check in with you on availability, but, um, you know, if not, I guess, do you also plan things out a couple years? If somebody, you know, was looking at twenty eight, that sort of thing, is it good to call early on all that? 00:38:25 Chris: It is, it is. Yeah. We do give our guests the first right to rebook, which is very common in most lodges and a respectful way to do it. So if you have had the first week in March booked with us for the last three years, I’m not going to slide somebody in in your spot in twenty twenty eight. I’m going to allow that week to be operated, and then I’ll open that spot up. I’ll talk to you towards the end of the week and say, hey, you’re looking to come back down next season. And they typically hopefully say yes. And and then we slide them right back in. Um, I do have some wiggle room. I do know our schedule and clientele well enough to where I can probably coerce course you into a week in twenty twenty eight twenty twenty eight. If you’re looking that far out and we are taking bookings that far out, but, uh, we have a long enough season to where there’s some, some flexibility. It’s not like an Alaska season where you have four months of the year. And that first week of August is when the eggs are dropping, and that’s when the silvers are starting to come in. And that’s like the most odd after week, you know, for us, I mean, you can throw a dart at a board from February to April. It’s pretty consistent. It’s just a matter of getting a good weather pattern, if that makes sense. 00:39:23 Dave: Yeah it does. No, I think that’s what’s cool about it is that it’s pretty no matter when you can go, you know, it’s going to work. And I get it. The winter time would be cool because you get away from some of the cold and get down there. But but it sounds like yeah, the summer down there, July, August, like right now, I mean, as we speak, there’s people right now it’s how’s the, how’s the weather been there? Like this time of year as we’re speaking right now? 00:39:44 Chris: It’s been great. You know, our winds held a little bit longer into June than they typically do. It was kind of an odd season for us. We had had some calmer winds through March and April. And and typically April’s wedding is one of our windier months into May, and the winds held almost all the way through April. Then the winds decided to pick up in May and June and and just killed us. You know, it was it killed us. But, you know, it limited it limited a lot of our Oceanside fishery, which we’re used to fishing in in June with calmer winds. Um, and then July kicked in and the winds flattened out and we saw some phenomenal fishing through July. I think July’s been one of the the sneakiest months, you know, I mean, you got still got lots of permit around the, you know, in the tarpon are starting to just really go bonkers because the winds really flatten out in July. And the hard part is everybody’s thinking, you know, Montana, Alaska, you know, trout fishing, mountain biking, golfing, you know, all that summertime stuff. They don’t think, oh, I’m gonna wait to go to Belize until it snows. But, you know, if you’re if you’re serious about it, I mean, I would not hesitate to book a trip in the summer months down here. It’s it’s great fishing. 00:40:42 Dave: Yeah. That’s it. And it’s going to be less maybe maybe easier to get a spot and not as much. Not, not as busy very much. 00:40:49 Chris: So yeah, just lighter fishing pressure. I mean the island itself is, is slow. I mean, it’s, uh, I know through the Belize International Airport in the month of July, there’s maybe ten to twelve thousand people coming through. If you come in March, there’s about seventy thousand people that come through that airport. Wow. So it just tells you the whole island’s dropping, you know, in tourism. 00:41:08 Dave: Yeah, exactly. Maybe just describe your, um, you know, your operation, the lodge, how it’s different than maybe some of the other places out there and maybe even compare that you’ve been, you’ve seen a lot, you’ve seen Florida and all that. How do you describe that? The differences there of what you know, what you guys have? 00:41:23 Chris: I think the unique things is that we we’re kind of unique little boutique lodge. We’re we’re very small ran operation. It’s it’s family owned. It’s, uh, my wife and I, um, we’re boots on the ground. We live there twelve months of the year. Um, you’re going to see me every day, every morning, every afternoon. My wife and I, you know, try to pride ourselves in being as present as possible with our clients when they’re back at the lodge and be there to answer questions and, you know, help them and be as intimate as we can. We don’t have a housekeeping manager. We don’t have a GM. We don’t have a fishing program manager. That’s basically what my wife and I do, which is different from some of your bigger lodges that are holding, you know, thirty, forty rods a week. We’re not corporate, you know, we’re we’re a small mom pop operation. And if you call it a book, a trip, you’re going to get me on the phone and you’re going to get myself answering the email. And prior to your trip coming down, I’m going to be the one reaching out and touching base, making sure you’re set and good to go. And, and the same thing with the scheduling while you’re at the lodge. It’s a, when you get done fishing in the afternoon, I’m going to catch up with you at five o’clock or an appetizer time and check in on what you want to do the next day and talk about, you know, what you want to experience. And then I’m going to go to my office and try to make the best schedule I can for our guests at the lodge for the next day and, um, circle back with you at dinner time, let you know who you’re fishing with when your departure time is, and then, you know, I’ll be there having breakfast, breakfast, and coffee with you the next morning and help load the rods, you know, so it’s, you know, aside from that, you know, we, we do have a really good family at the Lodge, and if you ever get bored and want to read some good reviews on the Lodge, but you’ll see the Mendez family listed all throughout the reviews. But it’s a great family of about seven. Um, husband and wife couple their kids, the chef Nubia, who works in our kitchen. She is phenomenal. Have a really local Belize cuisine. It’s not, uh, you know, coming down to Belize to eat steak and potatoes. You can’t please eat, uh, stewed chicken tamales. You know, you want to eat lobster, you want to eat fish. So we we do a really, you know, local cuisine. And it’s one of the highlights of staying at the lodge is getting to be able to eat. You know, what the locals are eating in a nice, you know, atmosphere and, and in a really good cuisine. I mean, she’s top notch, you know, as far as what she kicks out of our kitchen. So it’s, it’s fun to see, you know, and, and the staff is amazing. They’re super helpful. You know, you’ll end up meeting Steve and Uzi, who is, uh, kind of our guest services, I guess you could say around the lodge, but they’re serving the dinners and breakfasts, and Steve will be trying to shove rum punches down your throat and making sure you’re happy around the lodge. 00:43:53 Dave: Yeah. That’s right. That’s really cool. Yeah, I think that’s kind of the X factor, right? I think the food is a big part. And we were at a lodge, a fish for in Canada, fishing for Northern Pike. And I felt like it was the same thing. The family atmosphere you had every day. You were kind of you were greeted from the start to the end, but it was just it was this family atmosphere that kind of made you connected to it and wanted to come back. Right. I feel like that’s a big part of what you’re talking about here. 00:44:19 Chris: It is, you know, it’s it’s what we really try to focus on. And I hope we can keep that going for years and years to come. And it’s, uh, we never want to outgrow where we’re at right now. I mean, we get asked quite a bit, are you going to expand? Are you going to get bigger? Are you going to try to, you know, do something different here? And they’re like, nope, we are perfectly content with where we’re at. We’re comfortable, you know, we have ten guest rooms. We can accommodate twenty anglers. If we wanted to put twin beds in the rooms and pack people in. But we’ve decided to back up all those twins out, put single single beds in there, get our numbers down, provide a better, better product, you know, and try to really focus on our guests that are there. So most were fourteen to sixteen guests a week and it’s just been our sweet spot. I mean, that’s kind of been where we’ve been happy with. We feel like we’re not overloaded. We’re able to communicate, you know, get intimate with all of our guests. So we’re, we’re happy with, with the numbers we got. 00:45:11 Dave: Yeah. That’s awesome. That’s the experience. This is cool. Well, we’re going to take it out of here. And I want to get a couple of tips. Maybe on fishing. We’ll talk maybe fishing permit bonefish. We’ll get into this here in a second. But I want to do kind of our Conservation Corner segment. And we mentioned it before, but I think we’re going to do some more on this to hear what’s going on down there. But let’s give us a on that. Just your connection. It sounds like you probably through Florida started. What was your first connection with beat and talk about that, that group, what they’re doing out there. 00:45:39 Chris: Well, I remember moving to Florida and as everybody probably knows, trying to become a guide in the keys is not the easiest thing in the world to do without getting your cut off. 00:45:48 Dave: And I’ve heard this too. Chris on the guides I’ve heard Florida is like, and maybe people are joking about it, but those guides down there will yell at you and cuss at you and stuff like that. Is that a reality? What is that? Is that just kind of is there a difference between the Florida Guides and other places? 00:46:04 Chris: Yeah. Yes and no. I think those types of guides are everywhere, Dave. I mean. 00:46:08 Dave: Okay, yeah. 00:46:08 Chris: I think you got those same guides in Montana. I think you got guides like that in Alaska. I think you have guides like that in the keys, and I know some of them in Belize. Um, do those guides in Belize work for us that act that way? No. You know, would I hire a guide that acts that way in the keys? No. You know, are there guides that are patient and willing to work with you and teach you the ropes? Yes. You know, and that’s, that’s the hard part of, of booking fishing trips throughout the world is, you know, you need a referral or, or, you know, some reference in order to feel confident about booking a fishing tour. And, and that’s where we’re kind of getting at the lodge to where most of our guests are repeats or referrals. And I think that’s where our confidence is building it. We’ve been kind of in a business long enough now to our reputation starting to hopefully speak for itself, and that we do have a great staff working for us. But, you know, there’s, there’s guides like that all, all over the world. And it’s unfortunate that, you know, some are salty and burnt out. And at that point, it’s time to hang up the hat and say, hey, you know, I’ve been doing this long enough. I should probably quit, you know? 00:47:08 Dave: Yeah. That’s right. Yeah, definitely. Okay. So but that’s. Yeah. And on that track, so you, I mean, yeah, the beat is they’ve been going strong for a while. Right. Maybe describe that. Yeah. So what was your first connection with them. 00:47:22 Chris: Um first connection was in the Florida Keys. And we had met a gentleman by the name of Jacob Brownscombe. He was, uh, I’m trying to remember the university he was going to, but he was kind of the, the main guy that was doing the acoustic tagging project. And that was his, uh, final project for his, uh, for his college degree. And it was pretty unique. He was working with a handful of us and we would volunteer our time and he would he would call us and say, hey, we’re looking to get out and go tax and permit. Are you available? And, you know, we would pay for fuel and put drinks in the boat, and we’d go out and have fun fishing. And, you know, we were able to tag, you know, five or six permit, you know, in the course of a couple of months, you know, on my boat. And then, uh, we were able to do a couple TV shows with beat down there in Belize. And, um, I kind of saw that stem. And as we bought the lodge in Belize, I knew that we wanted to keep that connection going. And I knew they had scientists in Belize. So I was very fortunate enough to get, you know, networked with the deal. Perez, who’s the basically the Mexico or Mexico, Belize, um, you know, the scientist in our area. And we connected pretty early and we offered our services. I said, hey, if you need anything, if you need a room to stay in, you need a golf cart, you need a boat, you know, you need a guide to take you out, you know, holler at us, you know, and, um, it’s just kind of bloomed from there, which has been a lot of fun. You know, we’ve, uh, since then, I’ve been able to collaborate and put together a guide association that we have down in Belize. It’s called the Belize Flats Fishery Association, but it’s a guide association that, uh, very similar to Lower Keys Guide Association that I was a member of for years in the keys. And, um, it’s been kind of instrumental on, on allowing these guides to come together and have one voice in the country and fight up fight conservation issues and certain threats that are happening on the island. And, um, it’s kind of giving them a voice, which has been fun. So yeah, we’ve worked on the, the Bonefish tagging project. Uh, we did a lot of dart tags and permit, um, we’ve done some economic impact studies. You know, we’ve now we’re kind of working on the acoustic tagging project. Um, a lot of other small projects in the mix in between, but, uh, you know, the major one right now is our acoustic tagging for permit. 00:49:25 Dave: Yeah. Acoustic tagging. Great. Well, we’re going to, like we said, we’re going to talk more about that. I want to hear more on BTW, all the good stuff and programs they have going. So we’ll, we’ll hold that maybe for the next one, but let’s just jump out of here with a couple tips on, you know, and we’ve got all these species we could jump into. Let’s just say we’re looking at hitting permit down there and we’re on the boat. We’re getting ready. What’s the best advice you’re giving to one of us? We’re listening now before the trip to kind of be ready for that moment. 00:49:51 Chris: Well, I think the number one thing I see our anglers struggle with, and this everybody probably knows exactly what I’m going to say here is their lack of ability to carry and control and have distance in their fly casting. And it’s not something you’re going to learn on the bow of the boat. I mean, our guides will do their best to teach you and help you out throughout the course of the week, but you could instrumentally jump start your week by taking a local lesson, doing your YouTube research, watching double haul videos, you know, going out to the yard and practicing a couple days a week. You know, it will just benefit you. You know, I always joke around, I mean, you’re not going to go play Augusta National or play Pebble Beach and not go play a practice round somewhere. You know, it’s kind of the same thing. I mean, we’re you know, it’s a beautiful fishery. We’re we’re blessed to have the amount of fish we have, but it’s not a it is a beginner game to some sense. I mean, you’re going to learn you got to do your first trip somewhere. But, you know, if you can jump start it by getting out there and working on, I always say comfortably fifty feet. You know, if you can handle fifty feet of fly line, a little bit of wind, you’re going to be that much more consistent and put that many more fish on the boat. And you’ll always joked around he’s, you know, he can travel, pay all this money to go take a fishing trip. Guides going to put you show you the fish there they are at ten o’clock, but the last fifty feet is up to you to catch a fish, you know. And that’s, that’s the hard thing that a lot of anglers realize. And, and after the first trip, if you’re a beginner at it, you’re nine times out of ten, you’re going to go back and go, okay, I understand now what everybody said about having to practice, you know, and it very rare that somebody goes home with their tail between your legs. I mean, our beginners come down, they catch fish. A lot of them catch their first permit on their first trip. You know, they catch bonefish tarpon. But if as you progress and get better, you know, and you do three or four or five of these saltwater trips, you start clicking and going, hey, you know, if I can hit seventy feet, it’s seventy five feet, eighty feet. You know, you’re just going to touch that many more fish or that many more fish, more flies. And in turn, you’re going to get more bites. 00:51:50 Dave: Yep. Yeah. Those are awesome tips. Yeah. And I think the fifty feet thinking about that, and I’ve been doing a little bit of that with the casting instructor, which is new to me. And, you know, just measuring it out, like putting fifty feet out on a tape measure to see what it looks like and get, you know, and build up to it. And I think those are some of the tips that, you know, as I’ve been doing some of these exercises, you know, you start small and work your way up and you’re really working on that, that form. And then the, the double haul, right? There’s this little tiny timing things in the double haul that I struggled, I struggled for many years, but just recently, I’ve kind of learned a couple of things that have helped big time. And, you know, so I feel like that’s those are huge. I think anybody, if you’re going to go up and put all the time and effort in to do this, you know, you should do a little bit of practicing before. So good. 00:52:30 Chris: Yeah, you should, you should. It’s a, you know, and work on your back cast Not enough anglers, you know, can make a shot. Oh, right. One o’clock or two o’clock it is fifty feet throwing it off your right shoulder. If a right handed angler and being able to put it where it needs to be, a lot of times the wind’s blowing and the guys, you know, struggling, keeping the boat in place, he’s not going to have time to turn you, you know, by the time he turns you and gets you a better shot. Or if you could just release it off your right side, you know, you’re going to get that shot in there six to 10s quicker than you would if you’re going to wait for the guy to spin the boat all the way to get you the shot, and that those fish are going to creep in on you from seventy feet to fifty feet to forty feet. And all of a sudden they’re at the bow of the boat by the time you spawn it. So, you know, working on your back cast is super, super important to. 00:53:14 Dave: It is perfect. Well, let’s get a couple of random ones, Chris, then we’ll get out of here today. Where did you, uh, first before you hit Alaska? I know you got a little bit of experience on the West Coast, right? Where were you? What was your do you still have a river out there that you kind of think of as home on the on the West coast? 00:53:29 Chris: Yeah. So I, I grew. 00:53:31 Chris: Up in bend, Oregon, and Before a fishing guide. I was actually a golf professional and oh wow. Um, out of high school, turned pro at about nineteen. And, and, uh, was a teaching pro in central Oregon for quite a few years. And I found myself leaving the golf course to go chase steelhead. And, um, that was kind of my passion at that time, you know, from sixteen, seventeen, eighteen years old till I really started guiding Alaska about twenty one, twenty two. I mean, I would leave the golf course instead of playing golf. I’d be like, man, I’d get out of here and he’d go, go to the river, you know? And I think that’s where it really sparked. But the lower Deschutes, you know, when it had fish back then was phenomenal fishery. Um, but, uh, you know, lower Deschutes, North Umpqua were my stomping grounds. I mean, we, I’d spend forty five, sixty days a year on the Deschutes and probably another thirty forty on the winter side during the January, February, March, you know, chasing steelhead. So but luckily, I’ve been blessed to be able to fish about every steelhead river from northern California almost up to BC, you know, but, uh, definitely through Washington and steelhead in Alaska. And that was really where my passion was for a lot of years, until I got stuck in Boca Grande on a family reunion. I landed one hundred pound tarpon on my first day and I said, well, there goes my Spey rods. And oh man, I packed up a U-Haul and sold my drift boat and raft and bought a skiff in Florida. 00:54:47 Dave: That’s so great. That’s so great. Yeah. I feel like after talking to a lot of people on, you know, the top species, I feel like, you know, steelhead has got this really passionate following, but tarpon seems to be the one it seems to be when you ask people like, what’s the one species? I think people, if they could only have one, it feels like tarpon. Do you do you see that is tarpon between tarpon and everything else? Is it just kind of that I don’t know what you call it, how you describe it. 00:55:11 Chris: It is. I mean, they they’re the most user friendly and they do everything you want a fly rod fish to do. You know, if that makes sense. They’re they’re visual leaders. You get to see them come down the line, put a good shot on them. They react to the fly. You get to see him open his mouth. You get to see him eat it. And then they turn and jump and all hell breaks loose. I mean, it is the quintessential fly rod fish. And you know, I’m not the first one to ever say that. I mean, you look at guys like Lefty Cray and Flip Palette and Fordyce. I mean, that’s what they built their careers around. Were chasing Tarp and Andy Mill, those guys, you know, for me, is it still my favorite? You know, my my fishing career is changing paths a little bit now. But, uh, you know, that’s what brought me to Florida and that’s what sparked my bug. I mean, I, that first hundred pound fish I ever put in the air and got boats out, I was like, man, this is the coolest thing you could ever do with a fly rod. And it was. And that’s what made me drive from bend, Oregon, to Big Pine Key, Florida, and five days of drive with a U-Haul and try to figure out how to start a guide service down there. And, and it’s, uh, it’s a unique, unique fish. I mean, it is, it is quintessentially the, the prime, you know, fly rod, target species, fish. It’s they’re incredible fish. 00:56:23 Dave: Yeah, they are good. Well, you mentioned golf. I think that’s something maybe we’ll we’ll talk more about on another one too, because I think that’s really interesting. I feel like there’s something about and it sounds like you turn pro, which is the whole next level, but there’s something about professional athletes or at that higher level that it moves over to fly fishing really well. There’s something I’m not sure what it is. Maybe it’s the hand-eye coordination, but I’ve heard that a lot, right? Where these people that were close to pro or pros were really great fly anglers. And, and so it sounds like you were in that in that ballpark. But leave us with, I want to hear your meals. You mentioned some food. What’s your. If we’re talking one meal this week that you have a favorite. Do you have something out there on the on the menu that you really enjoy? 00:57:01 Chris: Well, if you ask our guests, it’s going to be nubia’s, stewed chicken, rice, beans, pineapple, coleslaw, and, uh, it is the quintessential, you know, Belize meal. I mean, if you go to grandma’s house for somebody’s birthday or it’s a holiday, that’s what they’re cooking, you know, that’s their Thanksgiving meal, which is we serve every week. And, and my wife and I joke around, I mean, we eat, you know, kind of the same meals week in and week out. And we always joke around like, man, it’s you and I. We’re excited. Like it’s chicken night again, you know? So outside of that, you know, we’re very blessed. Um, my wife and I do a lot of offshore fishing in, in Belize as well. And we do a lot of Wahoo fishing. Wahoo is probably my next, uh, species of fish that I’ve went down a rabbit hole trying to figure out how to catch. But, uh, you know, we’ve been lucky enough to, to get pretty good at catching them. And we’ve been able to serve Wahoo every week at the, at the lodge when they’re in season. And, uh, Chef Nubia makes this Wahoo coconut curry that will blow your mind. And, uh, it’s one of the, one of the best dishes we serve too, as well. So those are probably my two favorites coming out of Belize. 00:58:09 Dave: There we go. All right. Well, we’ll have to look forward to that one in the future. And, uh, yeah. Well, until we meet on the next one, Chris has been great today. Really appreciate all the insight and get us fired up. I’m just looking at photos right now at your lodge on there with all your all your five star reviews. So obviously people are excited about this. We can send everybody over to blue bonefish dot com today. People can check that out and we’re gonna be in touch. We’ll hear more about conservation, more about species as we go. But again, thanks for all your time today. 00:58:35 Chris: Thanks, Dave. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me on. 00:58:39 Dave: If Belize has been on your list, this is your time to act. We got into all the good stuff today. If you’re interested in digging in more, check in with Chris at Blue Bonefish, Belize dot com. You can also check in with me, Dave at dot com if you want to hear more trips that we have going. We’re going to be putting this together. So if you’re interested, I would love to hear the best chance to do this as a group. If you check in with me, wet Fly Swing Pro is the community where we’re building things all year long here too. We got our boot camp coming up. If you haven’t been to a boot camp yet, this is going to be awesome. This is where we bring on some of the best instructors around the country, around the world to present for you live to answer your questions. So check out our boot camp this year. And we’re also going to be doing some more talk around trips coming up. We’ve got lots of good stuff coming up here, including our Greatest Hits series, which we’ve just been kicking out this summer during our summer break. We’ve been popping out some of the greatest podcast episodes of all time on this show. Twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen, twenty twenty. So stay tuned for that. I think we had Ed Engel on last week. Um, Ed has been for years doing great stuff out here. We rereleased that on Tiny Flies. So if you get a chance, check in with that episode, our greatest hits series, we got some good stuff coming there and, uh, and I’m going to leave it there for today. Hope you’re enjoying your summer, uh, or whatever time of the year you’re listening to this on the replay. So hope you can check in with us as we go. And I want you to have a good morning, afternoon or evening catch up with you on that next episode. See you then. 01:00:06 Speaker 6: Thanks for listening to the Wet Fly Swing Fly Fishing show. For notes and links from this episode, visit Wet Fly swing dot com.