MIAMI -- There once was a villain in a 1960s cartoon who, when his plans for evil-doings were thwarted, repeatedly intoned: "Curses. Foiled again."
That pretty much sums up the latest chapter in my multiyear campaign to catch and release a permit using a fly rod on the flats. Going in, I knew this would be difficult, but had no idea it would turn into the marine equivalent of the Hundred Years War.
For those who don't fish for permit, it really is a "rock star" among game fish, as Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission chairman Rodney Barreto recently said. This silvery yellow, oval-shaped fish with a scythe-like black tail can be found on reefs, wrecks and flats throughout South Florida and the Caribbean. Reaching weights in excess of 50 pounds, it is fairly easy to hook using live crabs, jigs or flies in deep water but can be difficult to land.
That's because it is not afraid of a strong current and uses its garbage-can-lid-like body as a kind of sea anchor when you are trying to reel it in. When that tactic doesn't work, the permit often dives into whatever underwater structure is nearby to break your line. So, managing to boat one of these bulldogs is an accomplishment -- even in deep water. I once caught a 29-pounder on 20-pound-tippet fly rod on an 80-foot-deep wreck north of Key West that took me nearly an hour to land.
It was exhausting.
But trying to fool a permit in two feet of clear water into eating what looks like Salvador Dali's 3-D rendition of a crustacean is beyond difficult. As numerous flats guides have told me -- most recently captain John O'Hearn of Big Pine Key -- you can do everything right, but they still won't eat it.
However, there are legions of anecdotes of anglers who did everything wrong -- and still caught the permit. I could cheerfully throttle the guy who let his crab fly dangle overboard while he was eating lunch -- only to have the permit make his limp fly its lunch. Another angler on my hit list was chasing tarpon on the flats with an obscenely large and garish red-and-white streamer when he happened upon a permit instead. He cast his fly to the permit, which gobbled it enthusiastically.
I should be so lucky.
The closest I have come to besting a shallow-water permit was a very large and stupid fish that ate a crab fly that I dropped into a sandy hole in the Marquesas, then broke off when the fly line wrapped around a bow ring eye for the boat's trailer hook. On another trip to Biscayne Bay, a permit seemed to gulp my fly -- then regurgitate it before I could set the hook. And that's it.
I have fished for permit on the flats of South Florida, Belize, Mexico and Honduras and nearly all of them behave the same way -- they either totally ignore the fly (no matter what it looks like) or sidle over to look at it, occasionally track it, then refuse to eat it.
My most recent three-day campaign on the flats near Key West and the Middle Keys a couple of weeks ago ended the same way as all the others: crummy weather, some bad casts, repeated refusals and no permit. I did, however, manage one small bonefish on fly rod -- not much consolation.
After complaining about my failure on Facebook, I received a novel suggestion from accomplished hunter/angler Jorge Gutierrez: consult a Santeria priest to eliminate the permit curse.
Not a bad idea -- and the resulting chicken feathers could be used to tie some more permit flies.
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