Surveying the Mayan jungle between fishing days.

For those who have never faced the proverbial 40 miles of bad road, rest assured it still exists in the Yucatan. We found it, all right; the headlights on our tiny rental car barely lit up white sand, watery potholes and black jungle, as we bumped our way south toward Belize. A Caribbean beach was on our left, mangrove thickets of Ascension Bay beyond the jungle on our right. We started out in sunny Cancun, eager to meet the folks who run Sian Ka’an Biosphere, a huge nature preserve of 1.3 million acres. It’s a land of hidden pyramids, thick jungle where jaguars roam, with bonefish and permit cruising the mangrove-lined flats.

It was a good thing Manuel, our Sian Ka’an representative, was driving us all the way to Punta Allen. After a fine meal back in Playa Del Carmen, my head was lolling, even when small animals ran across the road. They had gotten their last klick (kilometer) out of Junior, so to speak. Amy was wedged in the backseat with a pile of shifting luggage. In the darkness she dug at the cork in a bottle of Chilean wine we’d bought at the marketplace in Tulum, but without a corkscrew, made little progress...Would we never get there? Sweaty and half asleep, we were finally dropped at a cabana two miles from Punta Allen, where the town’s generator was cranking out electricity until midnight. We walked a deserted beach in the moonlight, too wired to sleep, but each with a full glass. It had been a long day.

Sunrise and rooster’s crow. The locals are a little laid-back for the dawn patrol, which was a good thing in our case. Our panga sailed at 8 a.m. with Armando and Augustin, two local Mayan brothers who not only guide, but patiently teach anglers how to fly fish. That’s something many South Florida guides would be reluctant to do, starting out the day with a complete novice. Can you imagine the hair-pulling after blowing a chance at passing fish? Fish here are certainly more forgiving of errors, anyway. Armando had guided permit charters in Belize for a number of years, before returning to his home town of Punta Allen, no doubt to help train his brother Augustin. And these guys were patient, low-key, quiet, and knew the local fish. Their panga carried tubes armed with half a dozen fly rods, their tackleboxes brimmed with an assortment of flies. This is fly-fishing-only for visiting anglers, a conservation method adopted by all the co-op guides fishing in the Biosphere.

The sun rose higher and hotter, and we sailed across miles of light-speckled shallows. Then the quiet approach, poling in from upwind, and we began to see bonefish—groups mudding, single fish pushing slight wakes, even a small pack of 5- to 7-pounders over clean bottom, very decent fish for these waters. (Yucatan bonefish average smaller than some areas.)

We bailed out of the panga, Amy uncertain with the fly rod, as she waded off with Augustin. As she later explained, he was wonderfully polite and patient, teaching her the basic skills and pointing out fish. Working 80 yards apart, I heard her whoop from afar; she was hooked up already, amazed at her first runaway fish on a fly rod. Hooked up myself, I was powerless to take pictures of her first bonefish; at that distance, nothing could be done. I had to settle for shots of Armando with several fish, all released. It was obvious the guides here prize their bonefish and take care of them. In fact, they release everything during a trip, unless someone saves a different fish for dinner. (We baked a nice snapper that very night.)

We continued to explore a series of islands, flats and creeks, only spotting one skiff on the horizon, based out of a fishing camp much farther south. Later in the day we prowled a deeper creek, where cubera snapper up to 50 pounds lurk in the tree roots, though they’re mostly caught at night. One can only imagine what goes on around there after dark: The fish must feed with complete abandon when the tide runs. But one would have to be hardcore to stay out there past happy hour, good company and a fine supper.

More than a million acres, much of it unchanged since the Mayan Empire of 1200 A.D.

Back at the dock, rather worn after nine hours on the flats, the only boat heading out was a Marine Patrol vessel on a night mission. As one of the locals on the dock explained, they patrol the coast looking for pirates or Columbians. “Who knows, even Arabs,” he said with a wink.