Bonefish, spoonbills and tuna-on-wheat in Mexico

The first time Angel told me to cast it was off to my left, into a patch of bright blue water. It was the second day of 2025, and we were standing on the front of a panga in Ascension Bay, a pocket of the Caribbean on the southeastern side of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula.

He saw bonefish there. I did not, but when a fishing guide tells you to cast, you cast. The fish apparently didn’t chase the fly as I stripped it back, so I picked the fly up and waited.

A few minutes later he pointed to my right. This time, I saw them. Their backs glowed some sort of turquoise above a gray body that faded into the sandy bottom. There were four or five of them in water no more than a foot deep, within easy casting range.

As soon as the fly hit the water, the fish spooked, speeding away in search of deeper water.

My first true blown shot of the day. Failure never felt so good.

Bonefish are the stuff of fishing films and glossy magazines, a species that’s right at home in a sentence that includes the term “bucket list.” Slender, gray, speedy and strong, the fork-tailed fish draw anglers to places like the Florida Keys, the Bahamas and Mexico.

They love clear, shallow water, which makes them a fun sight fishing target. The game is simple: Spot fish, cast, strip the fly back and hope the fish follows. When one eats, keep the rod pointed at the fish and pull hard on the line to drive the hook into its mouth. Don’t lift the rod until the fish pulls back, and then let it run.

If you screw it all up, there’s little reason to fret. Bonefish are relatively easy to find. There will probably be more.

What more could you want in a gamefish? Challenging, but attainable — at least once you’ve solved the problem of getting from wherever you are to where the fish live.

My solution for that was hijacking part of a long-awaited Mexico trip with my wife. We were staying in Cancun, and through an angling-focused travel agency I learned about Pesca Maya Lodge, a lovely four-room outpost on a thin strip of land between Tulum and Punta Allen. It’s on the edge of Ascension Bay, which is known as one of the best places to look for bonefish, permit, tarpon and a few other salty fish species.

The lodge offered guided day trips, complete with lunch, and they had rods and flies for us to use. A shuttle could even pick us up in Cancun, although it was going to be an early morning.

We were in the van headed south by 4 a.m. There was a brief stop to pick up another pair of anglers, and then we kept on rolling. We passed through Tulum in the dark and then traded pavement for a pothole-ridden dirt road. We bounced along until we reached a nondescript put-in, where we boarded a boat for the 40-minute ride to the lodge.

The sun was just starting to rise as we motored through the vast tropical forest of the Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve, a protected area spanning more than 2,000 square miles.

At one point, two marvelous roseate spoonbills spooked and circled the boat, putting on on a show that made all of us forget about the bumpy ride in.

At the lodge, we had scrambled eggs with peppers and cheese, black beans, toast and a few crucial cups of coffee. Then we boarded a fiberglass panga with our guides Ivan and Angel.

I took the first shift on the front of the panga. Angel stood next to me while Ivan stood on the raised poling platform in the back and eased us through the first flat of the day, all of us looking for fish. Cloud cover made it tough for the first half-hour or so, but soon enough, the sun popped out and the guides started seeing fish.

The school I’d spooked showed me what the fish looked like. My next problem was hooking them.

It’s easy to tell yourself not to lift the rod when setting the hook — what guides call “trout setting.” Undoing two decades of muscle memory is tougher. As a result, the first few eats I got were all for nothing. I felt the fish take the fly, but the hook wouldn’t stick.

Rachel took a turn up front and, as often happens, she proved to be a natural. On her second cast, she hooked into a nice bonefish. It ran big but tired quickly, and soon we had photographic evidence that at least one of us was capable of catching fish.

“OK, you’re up,” she said.

Fishing is meaningless, of course. But the pressure you feel taking the front of a boat immediately after your wife catches a fish is real. There were fish all over the place now, and Ivan and Angel were barking casting directions at me. Several bonefish chased and ate the fly but it just wouldn’t stick.

Finally, sometime after my blown shot count reached double digits, I managed a solid hook set. The bonefish took off, pulling out all the slack in my line.

It made a few strong, fast runs that scared me, but we got it into the boat.

There were plenty more bonefish that morning, most of them smaller. I also hooked a white perch – another first. We saw needlefish and barracudas and mullet. Ivan told us about seeing jaguars walk through the mangroves.

Around 1, Angel reached into the cooler and pulled out the lunches the lodge had made for us, which turned out to be another novel experience.

I don’t know what this says about my childhood, but inside the box, I found my first tuna sandwich.

It was wonderful. Then again, I can’t imagine anything tasting bad on a panga.