When the Rains Broke — May on Holbox

There's a moment in late May on Holbox when the rains haven't quite finished but the fish don't care anymore. The water is warm — stupid warm — and the tarpon have been here for weeks, rolling through the channels like they own the place. Because they do.

The season is happening right now, and it's chaos in the best way.

The End of the Rain

May is a transition month. The rainy season is gasping its last breaths, and some days it puts up a fight. We'd get these squalls in the afternoon — twenty minutes of mayhem, the sky dumping on us, everyone scrambling. Then it stops. The sun comes back. The steam rises off the water. And the tarpon start rolling like nothing happened.

The guides — Angel, Oscar, Dawito — they feel the weather in their bones. Angel will look at a cloud bank on the horizon and say "ten minutes" and he's right every time. We'd time our runs between the squalls, chasing windows of calm where the fish were surface-feeding. The fishing right after the rain, when everything cools down and the bait goes crazy — it's the best of the year. Nobody talks about it because nobody's out there.

Finding Permit with Oscar

Oscar took me out one morning to look for permit. Not with clients. Just us. He'd been watching a flat for weeks — a spot most people on the island don't even know exists. You cross a shallow bar that eats props if you're not careful, then weave through mangroves to reach a white-sand flat the size of a couple football fields. No boats. No people.

We poled in at dawn. The water was like glass. And there they were — a school of permit, maybe fifteen fish, their black sickle tails breaking the surface as they fed. Tails up. Happy. Undisturbed.

Oscar didn't say a word. He just pointed and handed me the rod. I made the cast — a crab pattern, light tippet, trying not to shake — and one of the fish peeled off and ate it. There's nothing in freshwater that moves like a permit. We released the fish, sat in the skiff, and watched the school keep feeding around us.

That's Oscar. He walks places nobody else walks and sees things nobody else sees. He doesn't talk about it. He just shows you.

Broken Rods

We had a stretch this month where we broke three rods in a week. Big tarpon, heavy fish, and the kind of aerial chaos that snaps a rod clean in two if you're not careful. One of our anglers — an Argentine who'd brought his own setup — hooked a tarpon that had to be 130 pounds. First jump, the rod just went. Two pieces. He stood there holding the cork grip, watching his line disappear, and then just started laughing. That's the energy the South Americans bring. They get that the rod breaking is part of the story, and the story is the whole point.

The Heat

I'll be honest about the heat. May on Holbox is hot. The kind of hot where your shirt is soaked before the first cast. The fish don't care. The anglers do. We drink water like it's our job, start early, break during the brutal middle hours, and get back out there when the sun drops and the fish wake back up. You earn every eat.

But those hot, uncomfortable days produce the best fishing of the year. The migratory fish are here in full force. We're seeing tarpon over 100 pounds almost every trip. And the warm water — the fish fight harder, jump higher, go crazier. They're fired up.

What May Really Is

May isn't perfect. It's hot. It's unpredictable. The rains haven't fully quit. You might get skunked on a bad weather day. You might break a rod. You might get poured on.

But if you want the real thing — hidden permit flats with Oscar, the biggest tarpon of the season, stories you'll tell for the rest of your life — then May is when Holbox shows you who she really is. Raw, wild, and unforgettable.

We have availability through the summer. The season runs through September. Bring sunscreen. Bring a backup rod. We'll take care of the rest.