Mexico Travel Advice

Mexico still has excellent saltwater fly fishing, especially around Punta Allen permit and select baby tarpon programs.

Mexico is an incredible country, though less so with each Walmart and Hilton put in. Gone are the days of hand-rolled tortillas and old southern Yucatan culture. One thing is for sure: wherever you go, half your food may have been purchased at a Costco. That is not all bad. You are less likely to get a terrible stomach bug. From a fishing perspective, Mexico is still pretty amazing.

Punta Allen

Outside of the Florida Keys and Belize, this is your number three destination for permit. Every morning the boats pile out of the lodges at Punta Allen, and on a big day up to 75 of them are all headed for permit. This is permit central. Not tailing paradise like Belize, but think huge schools and two guides per boat who are as fine as guides come.

They work in tandem on the forked devils and have developed approaches to the fishing program that still impress us. A guide may call out a school of permit at ten o'clock while the second guide jumps out of the boat with your rod and starts getting line ready. The pangas are loud and permit are smart, so for deep wading shots you may push forward until you regret being a lazy office-bound pork chop and wonder how a much shorter guide is somehow outrunning you through chest-deep water.

Your guide in the boat is shouting to the guide pulling you by your fly line fifty yards to the right. It is a full chase to get on the fish, but when you do, these permit eat. Chances are if you head to Punta Allen, you will come home with an aquatic rash from wet wading and at least a permit to your name.

Do we recommend it? Absolutely. But we are not going to sell you a bill of goods that you will be nice and dry on the front of a skiff throwing to tailing fish. The lodges are exceptional from a service and cuisine perspective, and it is a fun place to be.

Tarpon Town

If you are after baby tarpon, and the big ones that will not eat drive you mad, this is your place. It is not a place we have been, but we have heard great things on the fishing front. We will update this once we have seen it with our own eyes.