Back To Civilization!

So I'm now back from six weeks spent in the little town of Punta Allen, located at the opening of Ascension Bay, Mexico. I had the opportunity to help/assist/freeload with the Palometa Club's fall season, running from November 1 until December 6.

I headed down on October 27, arriving in Punta Allen on the 28th. Most who I have talked to don't believe me but I hadn't planned on, nor did I, do a whole bunch of fishing. I did get a few days fishing in and it cemented my opinion of fall Permit fishing, the fish are as user friendly as you will ever find.

The day after I arrived, two of the PC guides and I headed out for some fun fishing. In about two hours we had landed four nice Permit with a couple other eats that got "pilot errored".

After that it was getting ready for first clients, a group from Patagonia River Guides from Northern Argentina. The owners are both Montana guys who now live a large portion of the year in Argentina. They spent a bunch of time showing me stuff about their operation and it looks pretty amazing.

Indicative of the entire fall, September through November, unstable weather was our cross to bear. Ascension Bay has seen rain amounts that most residents have never seen before. Bad weather days still offered some pretty amazing Baby Tarpon and Snook fishing. And when the weather settled down, clients caught a pretty amazing number of Permit.

I didn't get out fishing again until later in November (other than a couple of days going out with single clients and doing some watching). One of the guides and I went and fished some stuff that hadn't been fishe dfor a bit prior to picking up incoming clients with the Panga. I turned out to be a pretty epic day, with six Permit landed. This kicked off a three day period where a group of clients from North and South Carolina (some of the nicest people I've ever met, by the way) landed sixteen Permit.

The tail end of their week saw the first cold front this fall. Three days of cooler weather and north wind kicked the focus over from Permit to Snook and Tarpon.

Our final week of the fall season slowly started to get better in the weather department. Piotr, from Poland, caught his first and second ever Permit, with others caught as well. Got a chance to fish with Maureen for the last four days of my stay as she had come down for the last week. The first couple of days we messed around with Snook and tarpon, there is Snook everywhere right now. the last couple of days we started to see more Permit up on the flats again with some shots here and there. Got to watch Maureen throw at a "massive" fish that went absolutely goofy on the fly, doing circles around it, and then actually hitting the leader with it's tail. Turns out they don't like that.

As usual, the weather was getting perfect just as we left.

A super big thanks to Dick and Kaye Cameron, Fina, Rosie, Maribel, Gloria, Carlos, Charlie, Nino, Korreano, Toni, Aaron, Toluco, Gerardo, Jonathan, Jorge, David, Fabian, Alonso, and Julio!