Your Fishing Day

After dinner on the first night of your arrival, you will be given a chance to familiarize yourself with the schedule for your stay and what to expect in the way of fishing.

The staff and guides will do everything in their power to provide you with a fishing/lodge experience of a lifetime. Every night of your stay, you will discuss the following day’s fishing along with the options available to you. The lodge capacity is very small (6 anglers) so it can deliver individual attention and provide you with the best time ever. Maybe you would like to try for permit tomorrow. You’ve never caught one and want to see what it is all about. Be sure to discuss this with the lodge manager and if it is at all possible, you and your fishing partner will find yourselves hunting this elusive fish the next day.

The day usually begins between 6:00 and 6:30 AM with coffee and breakfast. You’ll enjoy fruit, cereal, and/or a hot breakfast cooked to order. On some mornings when a long drive (almost 2 hours to Espiritu Santo) is anticipated, you may wish to get coffee and breakfast sandwiches and get an early start on the road.

Each fishing day will include 7 – 8 hours on the water conditions permitting. Road time to get to the different fishing waters varies from 20 minutes to almost 2 hours. Lunch each day is packed for you and iced down on the boat along with your favorite drinks and plenty of water. It is taken out on the boat to maximize fishing time. You’ll fish the afternoon, getting back to the truck around 4:00 PM.

The fishing will vary according to where you will be fishing.

Espiritu Santo Bay – This is the farthest away from the lodge and probably the most remote fishery in the Yucatan. There are only two lodges with legal permits (from the Sian Kaan preserve) to sportfish with guests and paradise is one of them (Playa Blanca is the other). Considering the number of anglers visiting the Mexican Yucatan each season, Espiritu Santo sees only a handful of them. Snook, tarpon, bonefish and permit all call this bay their dining room. Although it is a drive to get there, the fishing can be outstanding.

Chetumal Bay – It shares its shoreline with Belize on the south and Mexico on the west and north. It is about a 1 1⁄2 hour drive south and west from the lodge to the wind-protected boat launch. Both Espiritu Santo and Chetumal are a little bit of a drive, but you are traveling the miles in a comfortable, air-conditioned vehicle instead of pounding waves in a boat. If these places and the lodge were easy to get to, they would not be the secluded, wilderness experience they are today. Chetumal Bay is famous for it large schools of bonefish and relatively few anglers. It is mostly boat fishing, but there are plenty of hard bottom flats to wade if you want to get out of the boat and fish. Chetumal Bay is huge with most of the fishing on the east side of the bay. During the spring, permit schools are seen roaming the flats.

After returning each day from fishing, you’ll have time to clean up and make it to the main lodge great room for a hor d’oeuvres (a lodge specialty) and cocktails.

At meal time, the chef will prepare a delicious dinner of local, Mexican or international cuisine. The meals are always well prepared, varied, and served with pride. If you have special dietary concerns, you need only to let us know before your arrival so they can be prepared accordingly.

If you wish to visit Paradise Lodge as a non-angler, there is plenty for you to do if you like beach hikes, snorkeling, kayaking, birding, hanging out on the beach with a book and cool drink, or arranging for a mayan ruin tour or shopping excursion to the small tourist town of Majahual about a 20 minute drive from the lodge. If a non-angler is staying with an angler in the couple’s package, he or she can even go out in the boat with the angler a time or two to experience some of the Mayan wilderness first hand.