I cant hardly Belize it!

Its been a month since my last post and there has been plenty of change a brewin'. I graduated from UNR Magna cum laude with a Bachelors of Science with dual major in Biochemistry & molecular biology and Biology. I am very proud to have finished my undergraduate career and I cant wait to see where I end up in years to come. Not that anyone reading this blog cares too much about that, I will get back to the meat and potatoes of fishing. I just got back from an awesome trip to Belize with my family and girlfriend; we saw some amazing stuff and I got to fish for bones, permit, and tarpon. I gotta say that salt fish are AMAZING, a small bonefish feels like a 5 # trout running downriver. The fish are so aggressive and dont tire easily, the fights are stellar. Bonefish have different structured mouthes than trout, so once you hook one its more difficult to lose it if the line goes slack, this was a life saver for me because I could never keep my line up with the fish when they decided to run towards me. I had one fish where my line was slack for 5 seconds before it ripped off the water and got tight again. I had another bone that I hooked out of a school of fish just off shore, when I set the hook it turned and ran sideways parallel to the beach, ripping the extra slack out of my hands so fast it hurt my fingers. Once it was on the reel it had that thing screaming like a banshee, seriously fast. The fish ran towards a dock and despite my best efforts to keep him away from that, my measly 6wt and I could not overpower the fish. It looped me around two different pillars in the water before taking off again in the other direction. I was worried about my line shredding on the coral, but fortunately it was wrapped on wood. I ran across the beach and under the dock, following my line as if I was a dog being dragged on a leash to try and free free the line from its entanglement. When I finally completed the maze of freeing my line, the fish was still there! and still pulling line. I fought the fish more in the open then landed it on the shore, it was an awesome fight. I also got to cast to some tarpon, my god... those fish are a lot bigger than I was expecting. We were casting to juvenile tarpon in the 50-70 # class range, which is massive in case you were wondering. The lagoon where the tarpon were was so filled with bait fish that the crystal clear water looked brackish, the only way you could tell how clear the water was happened when a poon would come tearing through a bait school and the fish would flee for their lives, leaving a temporary clearing in the water. Watching massive slabs of silver rip through schools of fish and roll on the surface over and over again was one of the coolest fishing sights I have ever seen. We saw so many tarpon, but despite putting the fly in their noses, I could not get one to take. It was probably a good thing that I never hooked up because there was another guide boat out on the water where the guy had fished all day, hooked one on a 12 wt, got dragged in a 30 ft boat all around the lagoon, and lost it after about 20 minutes. Needless to say, I would have been in over my head. Anyway, thanks to my guide Ian Cuevas for showing me the fish.