Do it yourself vs Guided
Let us preface the following by saying nothing is going to allow you to glean more useful info and help polish your fly fishing skills than a day or two (or ten or twenty) on the water with a knowledgeable local guide. This bears repeating… NOTHING is going to help you better your saltwater angling skills than time spent out on the water with a great guide. That said, there is something intrinsically rewarding about figuring out this whole fly fishing thing on your own… and something supremely wonderful about wading or paddling a flat in solitude.
In our opinion, comparing guided days of fishing to DIY days is apples to oranges. Each offers different challenges, each different rewards. We love them both. So we’ve set up a lodge that caters to both.
A couple scenarios where we highly suggest adding some guided days to your visit:
You are newer to tropical flats fly fishing: Maybe you know every rock and riffle of your homewaters, you can identify by sight all of the 14,500 subspecies of caddisflies, and you can gracefully land a dry fly with a 5 weight into a teacup 40 feet away. Know that approximately zero of this will help you here out on the flats. Comparing trout fishing to flats fishing is analogous to comparing baseball with the sport of cricket. Both have a bat and ball, therein the similarities end. Certainly the first challenge encountered in salt water sight fishing is… well, sighting the fish. Not every bonefish or permit will be happily tailing 40 feet away at ten o’clock with the wind and sun at your back. Not every tarpon will be lazily rolling. A lot of the time what you’re looking for is shockingly subtle. Trust that having someone standing up on a platform 4 feet higher in elevation than you, someone who has stood up there 300 days a year for the last 25 years, affords you a measurable leg up when it comes to spotting fish.
You are here for an extended stay: Even the most enthusiastic DIY angler can get weary after 4 or 5 days of paddling and poling against the wind, wading and slogging through silt, etc. Breaking up your week with a guided day or two, where someone else gets to do some of the heavy lifting for you, is a very smart way to plan your week. Sit back and relax, enjoy a cold drink and heckle your buddy who just trout set to a 20 lb permit. Relax. You’re on vacation after all.
A couple scenarios where days of DIY fishing is just the ticket:
For you it’s not a numbers game: Thirty fish days trout fishing is not your thing back at home so maybe, in coming down to Belize, landing 15-20 mudding bonefish in a day is not what you’re after? Perhaps you don’t mind stumbling and flailing a bit, messing up shots and missing fish, because when that ONE fish does come to hand, it’ll be all the more special.
You enjoy the adventure and physical aspect of it: Don’t mind bushwhacking through the woods for 5 kilometers to slide down the bank of a river to access your favorite steelhead run? Then battling the wind and current to access water that skiffs perhaps NEVER fish, might be exactly what you’re searching for!
You’re on a budget: Trust we realize that a week of fully guided fishing is expensive. And simply put, not a financial reality for many. This point was hammered home years ago with our very first guests. They stayed with us for a week, and though they booked a few guided days, they did not have the means to book a fully guided week. The irony being because they WERE guides. Fresh off their steelhead season up in BC, $$$ in pocket had to last until spring (they had a blast, had some gorgeous fish come to hand and became some of our closest friends.)