The twenty foot boat came to a slow stop in 8-10 foot seas, and our guide/boat driver/dude with nothing better to do that day jumped up on the center console to scan the horizon. Egbert was tall and lean. He had the same cool, cocky disposition that many 20-something Belizean men have. Though, balancing on that console in rough waters, 20 miles out from the reef with no land in sight, when land should have been sighted miles ago, had quickly brought about a more humble side to our new friend. We had joked about our situation several hours earlier when Egbert asked one of the girls to hold the compass after it broke free from its casing on the console and flew into the back of the boat. But now we were starting to shoot each other those looks. The looks that say “I think we might be in a world of #@*&”.
Despite the bright sun and blue skies, a stiff north wind had the seas rolling like a pot of boiling Raman noodles. Egbert continued to motor into the open sea, pausing every so often to scan the horizon for some frame of reference. After two hours of motoring up and over one wall of water after another, Glover’s Atoll, cloaked in a bright haze of sea spray, finally came into sight.
Our island barely measured five acres and aside from the caretakers hut, a tree house-like “restaurant”, and several other thatch roofed cabanas, it was completely covered in palm trees. Our plans were to camp on the island for a few nights and explore the reef for bonefish.

Warren, the caretaker, led us across the island to the “campground”. The under story of the jungle had been cleared away on this side of the island providing a rustic area to set up tents.

Now, I try to spend as much time in the backcountry of Yellowstone as I can every summer. My little tent is like a second home to me. I’ve figured out all of the little quarks that make sleeping in a tent comfortable and give you piece of mind in the backcountry. However, it wasn’t more than ten minutes after setting up camp that I realized how different this would be from camping in Yellowstone.

We had all kicked back to enjoy some local rum and relax after the stressful trip. As I rocked back in a plastic lawn chair, that looked like it had washed up after the last hurricane, the situation became clear to me. Coconuts grow on palm trees, and we were camped on the windward side of an out island in 20 mph wind under some of the tallest palm trees I’d ever seen. No sooner had this epiphany crossed my mind than the first coco-bomb, as they quickly became known, plummeted from the sky landing less than an inch from the head end of our tent. Rum drinks were quickly abandoned as our focus immediately turned skyward. After some repositioning, both tents and rum drinking seats were moved out of the line of fire.

While it had only taken a day to travel some forty miles in a small boat from the coast of Placencia, it felt like we had been out for a week by the time we finally started fishing. We spent the first day exploring some flats to the south of our island. The flats were narrow and disjointed, expanding only 20 yards from the reef and broken up by deep cutts. Various reef fish like snapper and grouper chased flies in every deep hole, but we found no bonefish. Our fading spirits were dashed even further as we spent the better part of the afternoon huddled under the only cluster of palms in sight while one rain squall after another pounded the reef.

Evening brought clearing skies, and we headed back to camp for a fresh grouper dinner and a relaxing evening. One of the key elements in the relaxing evening was the rum. Tragically, though, we were forced to stock up on generic rum, as the two small markets in Placencia had run out of Belize’s famous “One Barrel” rum. We spent that night learning the hard way that all Caribbean rums are not equal while mixing our paint thinner rum with everything from fresh coco-bomb milk to pineapple juice.

The next morning was bright and warm. The stiff winds had yet to die down, but the threat of rain no longer seemed imminent. After breakfast, we gave the rest of our rum to Warren to burn in his generator and persuaded him to give us a ride down to the other end of the atoll. We had seen some good flats on the trip in, and wanted to spend the day working our way back along the reef.

We started on a large, beautiful, turtle grass flat expanding between two pieces of reef which met at almost a ninety degree angle. Within a few minutes, we found a school of about twenty tailing bonefish. The incoming tide created a strong current across the flat, and the bonefish faced into it like trout facing upstream in a river. I approached from down current and cast a bitters “upstream” above the fish. The fly tumbled with the current through no more than eight inches of water. The first bonefish to see it instantly slid over and sucked it down. When I set the hook, the school exploded. Racing across the flat, they spooked a second, smaller school that we had not seen. As my fish tried desperately to stay with the group, we watched the now larger single school move out across the flat and continue up the reef. I landed the fish, a nice, little, two pound, banana bone, and we started out towards the rest of the school.

As we followed the fish, the flat narrowed to a thin wisp of dead coral running right along the reef. Bonefish were holding in each piece of slightly deeper water. We spent the rest of the day working slowly up the reef catching good numbers of fish along the way. Early in the afternoon we reached a knee deep cut in the reef that was about twenty feet wide and stacked with bonefish. These fish also faced into the oncoming tide, and four of us spent the rest of the afternoon taking turns casting to, and catching nice bonefish.
Standing on that beautiful piece of reef with a pile of bonefish in front of us makes the death-defying boat ride, coco-bombs, and paint thinner rum all worthwhile. I just hope Warren remembers to come pick us up.