Land on a Saturday. Seven days later, it feels like you've come home.

Seven days at Mangrove Bight

Ten students, two trip leaders, seven days. Mornings on the flats with the Powery, Medina, and Jackson families. Afternoons that alternate between conservation work and being let loose in town. Evenings in a circle, then on the dock. Guanaja is where Fish for Change started, and the town treats each week like family coming home.

Every day runs the same way: up at 6:30, breakfast together, six hours of fishing, an afternoon project or cultural exchange, a gratitude circle, a free write, night fishing off the dock.

Plus a career night on the jobs that exist around fishing, Bring Your Kid to Work Day with the guides' children, and a cleanup with the local elementary school.

Trip leaders collect phones at their discretion, and they're only for music and photos. Parents get a message when everyone has arrived safely, and photos go up on Instagram every day.

"Guanaja is home away from home. Everyone in Mangrove Bight is a family to me, and I look forward to coming back year after year."

The lodge

Fly Fish Guanaja sits next to the marina in the middle of Mangrove Bight. Two or three students to a cabina, a protected reef off the beach for snorkeling, hiking trails to waterfalls, flats you can walk to, and the whole town within a five-minute stroll. The lodge moms cook every meal and handle the laundry, and by mid-week they know every student by name. It has everything a week needs, and it doubles as the campus.

"Less than 24 hours in, we were all fast friends laughing and joking with each other in the kitchen over cheerios."

The island

Guanaja is one of the Bay Islands off the Caribbean coast of Honduras, about eleven miles by three, with around ten thousand people living on and around it. English is the first language, humor is the second. There is very little tourism, so the students are guests of a town, not customers of a resort.

Getting there: fly into Roatán, then a two-hour ferry across open water to the neighboring island.

"Mangrove Bight is the nicest community I've ever been in and I will be coming back as soon as possible."

The fishery

A diverse Caribbean flats fishery: hard sand, turtle grass and coral. The permit and bonefish population has multiplied since anglers started coming in 2008. Catch and release took hold because visiting anglers support local jobs, so the more people fish it well, the better it gets.

• 4 to 10 lb

  Bonefish

  Big schools around the small islands to the south, big singles feeding around the whole coast. Plentiful, and not easy.

• 5 to 40 lb

  Tarpon

  Big, small, we love them all. Big resident fish cruising across the flats and juvenile tarpon living in the nursery grounds around the corner from the lodge.

• 10 to 50

  Permit

  Visible in a day with multiple shots. Permit are put on a pedestal for a reason. It doesn't always come together, but when it does, it is most likely the best fish of your life.

Also on the flats: snook, barracuda, yellowjack, triggerfish and boxfish.

After dinner: flats species come into the dock lights. We fish for them on fly and on hand lines.

One offshore day: out with the local fishermen, trolling and deep-dropping hand lines for snapper, grouper, barracuda and tuna, then a feast that the students learn to clean and cook themselves.

The boats are custom pangas built on Guanaja by the island's own boat maker and built for these exact flats.

"Whether that be spotting a single bonefish, or getting an exhilarating follow from a permit, even without success we could still be stoked about what just happened."

Off the water

Afternoons alternate between an environmental project and a cultural exchange. Ten service hours over the week, signed off for school.

• Mangrove project

  With the Bay Islands Conservation Association, learning the island's mangrove initiative and rebuilding the forest by hand.

• Diving for lionfish

  On the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef, the second largest in the world, spearing invasive lionfish with homemade pole spears.

• Local students

  Two students from Guanaja who want to become fly fishing guides join the week on the Pollito scholarship.

• Fish data

  Taking fish data with Bonefish & Tarpon Trust, so every fish they land helps scientists understand the species.

• Dinner in town

  The guides welcome small groups into their homes for dinner with their families.

• Bring Your Kid to Work Day

  Hand-lining and trolling with the guides' children, then a feast from whatever comes over the side.

• Scavenger hunt

  Small groups sent through town with questions to answer and activities to engage in, building understanding and buy-in to this place and the beautiful people who make up its community.

• Waterfall hike

  Into the hills behind the lodge.

• Soccer

  At the canchita with the kids of Mangrove Bight until we've run out of energy for the day.

• Testimony night

  An evening with the local church community, sharing stories.

• Closing celebration

  The last night of the week, students, guides and the community celebrate together.

• Group circle

  Next to the sunset or under the shooting stars, we dive into conversations led with vulnerability about our experience and personal growth.

"Jumping off the docks with fishing guides, cutting sugar cane with Killaway, and crab hunting with all the local kids."

Getting there and home

Students fly into Coxen Hole, Roatán (RTB). Trip leaders meet them the moment they walk out of customs. If flying alone is a worry, we can arrange a trip leader or another student to fly with yours from the States.

"Eddie returned to us positively glowing and the glow still hasn't worn off."

Packing list

Tick things off as you go. The list saves on this device, so you can come back to it. It's buggy on the island: being fully covered is the single most useful thing you can do. Fly rods can be carried on to Honduras but must be checked on the way home, so pack them in a suitcase that fits rods.

Scholarships

We never want these programs to be cost-prohibitive. Aid runs from $500 to a full ride and is decided on need and drive.

1. Sep
   Financial aid applications open each September.A cover letter (500 words minimum), a one-minute video, a letter of recommendation, the questions on the application, and your family's financial information. Allow about two hours. Nothing is shared outside the team.
2. Feb
   Deadline is the last day of February.Shortlisted candidates do a video interview with Fish for Change.
3. Mar
   Decisions by early March.Book flights, check your passport, practice your cast.

A day in Guanaja

Most days run like this. Scroll through one.

6:30am

Up at 6:30. Music, then the megaphone.

Breakfast together, every day. We discuss our game plan for the day over pancakes and bacon. Then off to go have the best day ever, yet again!

Six hours on the water.

A different boat, guide and partner every morning. That is how you learn to read a flat, and how a kid from Ireland ends up with a best friend in Idaho.

Mangroves one day. Town the next.

Planting with the Bay Islands Conservation Association. You don't care about protecting a place you haven't experienced, so they experience it with their hands in the mud. Or a scavenger hunt: a hundred questions about the island, answered by asking the people who live on it.

Dinner at a guide's table.

Three or four students at a time, in the guide's home, with his family. There are a lot of ways to do life. The fastest way to learn that is to be handed a plate by someone who does it differently, and to help them clean up after.

Musical chairs with the local kids.

First night. The island kids come over, every camper sits across from one, two minutes on the timer, then everyone switches chairs. Where do you go to school, what does your dad do, what do you do when it rains. By bedtime the campers know whose dad drives the ferry.

Circle, free write, dock.

One thing you're grateful for, out loud, to people you met on Saturday. Five minutes of writing that runs to fifteen. Kids who won't speak on Monday are leading the circle by Friday. Then night fishing under the dock lights.