Ascension Bay - a saltwater fly fishing paradise!

The beautiful azure flats of Ascension Bay - fly fishing paradise

3 hours south of Cancun - Mexico (which is rapidly becoming the Ibiza of Mexico) you leave the cherry-red tourists and to a large extent civilisation behind. What you find instead is an anglers dream......

When The Hollies famously sang "The road is long, with many a winding turn.." it makes you wonder if they may have experienced travelling down the Yucatan Peninsula to the little fishing town of Punta Allen as the words seem to come to life.

The stretch of unpaved highway south of the entrance to the Sian Ka'an biosphere reserve in reality is little more then a string of potholes joined together haphazardly courtesy of hurricane damage over the last decade. I like it that way - it keeps the crowds away as it's a good hours bounce south by car from that point so only those that really want to get there do so. Most try it for a while before getting to the little bridge over the inlet from the Caribbean to the inner lagoon where the locals like to go and drop handlines which is where they stop and spend a while before returning north. Progress though is slowly paving the road south and there was already a stretch of improved road that had appeared since I last visited the popular fishing lodge of Pesca Maya about 4 years ago.

And so to the fishing however which was of course the reason for myself, my father and a small group from the Crawley Fly Fishers making the long journey to Mexico. Leaving the freezing UK behind was not a problem and emerging into warm 20 degree sunshine in Cancun was particularly nice. There was a mix of experience in the group from seasoned veterans to those with a couple of saltwater trips under their belts and also several first timers. All of us were excited at the prospect of chasing some bonefish, permit, tarpon and whatever else we came across in the warm tropical waters of Ascension Bay after a particularly dreary and hard UK winter.