I’m not yet forty years old and I have a lot of gray hair. I
blame this on fly fishing for permit. These fish are a mystery
for a lot of anglers who are new to this sport. When you say the
name permit a lot of people think you‘re talking about some kind
of license instead of an actual fish. They’re also a mystery for
a lot of fly fishing guides, and I’ll include myself in this
group on many occasions, especially this past week.
For those who’ve never heard of this species, the permit is a
large member of the family of fishes commonly known as jacks.
Jacks range in size from the bizarre species called lookdowns, a
palm sized oddity that rarely exceeds a few ounces, to the
brutal giant trevally, a tackle busting monstrosity that easily
hits 100 pounds. Jacks are found in all the world’s oceans. Some
are great to eat, like the pompano, a prized gamefish on tables
up and down the east coast. Others are useful as bait, like the
goggleye, only prized in live wells during the annual sailfish
tournaments of the same region. But no matter what their size,
all jacks have one thing in common. Pound for pound, they are
one of the hardest fighting fish that swims.
The permit, also known as palometa down here in Vieques, ranks
at the upper end of this pack in both size and strength. Most
permit average around fifteen to twenty pounds, and thirty to
forty pounders are not uncommon, especially in south Florida.
The current fly rod world record is fifty-one pounds and one day
off Key West I spotted a permit that I know was at least seventy
pounds. It looked like a satellite dish with fins and I didn’t
come close to getting a shot at it.
Landing one of these fish on a fly rod is a lifetime
achievement. When I lived in Key West, one of the best permit
spots on Earth, it took five years for me to catch my first one
on fly. So far, this is the only species that has eluded me in
my first two years on Vieques. Part of what makes them so
frustrating is that they’re not all that hard to catch if you’re
using a spinning rod and a live crab. Crabs make up perhaps 90%
of a permit’s diet and they’ll go out of their way to eat one,
even if it has a hook in it. Bonefish and tarpon are the same
way, but they’ll also jump all over an endless variety of flies
that can resemble nothing that swims in nature. Permit flies can
be tied to imitate crabs with such perfection that other crabs
will attempt to mate with them. Most permit will still ignore
these.
But permit will eat flies, it just takes persistence. Thousands
have been caught over the years, especially in the last two
decades, after the late angler Del Brown came up with a pattern
he hilariously called the Merkin (look it up in the dictionary.)
It sort of resembles its namesake and a crab combined, but the
way it behaves in the water really started fooling these fish.
Before he died in 2004, Del landed 512 permit, mostly on his
Merkin fly. That’s an amazing record that will stand for a long
time. Del was a wealthy man and fished over 100 days a year with
the best guides available, but he thoroughly understood this
fish and proved to everyone that permit can be caught with some
degree of regularity.
So why haven’t I had one on my boat yet here in Vieques? It’s
not for lack of fish. There are a couple flats on both sides of
the island that are full of them. And it’s not for lack of
trying either. Last week I had four days in a row where
experienced anglers made perfect casts to feeding permit. Some
of the fish actually chased the flies all the way to the boat
before turning away without eating. More gray hairs for me.
Right now it’s only a matter of time, and I’m sure that the next
few months will see the first Vieques permit on fly for my boat.
There are too many of them out there and I have a lot of great
anglers lined up to fish with me. For the record, and as far as
any of us know, only one permit has been caught on fly here in
Vieques. This happened just two years ago for angler John Dukes
from Charleston, South Carolina, while fishing with Capt. Franco
Gonzalez. What makes this catch even more notable that John and
Franco were on a flat on the north side of the island wading for
bonefish. Permit are difficult enough to cast to even when
standing on the elevated bow of a flats boat. Getting close
enough to one on foot and then making it eat a bonefish pattern
means a lot of things had to go right that day. I’m really
jealous of John and Franco for this catch. Even though it won’t
be noted in any official record books, the first permit on fly
in Vieques is a big deal. In this day and age, where fly
fishermen have penetrated almost every piece of water on the
globe, there aren’t many chances for someone to say, “Yeah, I
was the first guy to go there and do that.” I’m happy enough to
know that Vieques handed them that chance.
Capt. Gregg McKee,
WildFly Charters
