Missed Summer Slams: Permit aren’t the hard part.

Don’t tell that to Dave and Jeff!  Poor guys have been trying to catch a permit for 13 days now and haven’t quite got there.  Everything that can happen has happened to these two guys.  Out for the first time trying to find fish and trying to get all the angles right is hard work.  Dave and Jeff have 2 more days until their summer vacation is over and I’m hoping they make good on their promise to bring one home and nail it to my front door!  Maybe they’re pissing off the gods with their insincere rhetoric. I don’t know but they need to follow the Bear around and watch while he slays perms.  The brothers Holeman have posted an astonishing 8 for 10 in the last 2 days.  I hope Bear’s luck stays with him through the 2008 Del Brown Permit Tournament, which happens next week.  Looks like the weather is going to hold out for the show.  It’s all up to the fish now to show up and put their tails in the air.  I wanted to share a report that my client Dan Hall recently submitted about our recent fishing trip together.  
June 30 Key West Report.  I just spent 4 days fishing off Key West with Capt. Will Benson , my second trip with him.  My first day with him last year yielded 3 permit on the fly, after which Willy told me I ought to quit right there because it would never get any better.  I was dying to get back and see if he was right…  I have now officially caught the permit bug!
Day one sucked… a big storm system to the west kept us off the water the first half of the day, and when we finally got out, the permit were very shy about tailing.  Their tails would pop up once or twice and then vanish.  We got on a few fish, but never really got the feeling they were eager to eat anything.  Also, since I moved away from Hawaii, my saltwater fly fishing has dropped from 100 days a year to about 5.   Talk about being a bit rusty!
Day two was a bit better from a weather standpoint but the fish didn’t quite seem to be “on” yet.  We had some rolling tarpon and some tailing permit, as well as “laid up” permit, but I pretty much couldn’t put things together and the few times I was close, the fish weren’t interested.   Needless to say, casting to Key West permit and tarpon is a bit different than casting to Hawaii bonefish.  Not necessarily harder or easier, just different.
Day three we found a few nice schools of tarpon in 10-15 feet of water with 2 foot seas and lots of wind.  Will got a nice workout there.  The first fish to eat unfortunately ate the fly in plain sight, and of course I set the hook so fast I pulled it out of his mouth even before his lips were closed.  Number two fish yanked on the fly line and came undone before I had a chance to set the hook.  Permit were around in nice numbers… but still too much rust.  Note to self…  listen to what Capt. Willy says.  Note number 2 to self…  you can’t be shy when casting to permit!!!  OK, so finally we get to day number 4!  Once again, pretty rough water at the deeper tarpon spot from the day before, so we tried inside for one quick drift, no fish around.  Will limbers up his sore muscles and sends the boat back into the deep water and waves, and with my lucky Key West permit hat on for the first time this trip, I promise to catch a fish out of the first school so we can get back in the calm water.  And that is exactly what happened!  Right off the bat we see a nice school of fish and I manage to hook and land about a 45 pound fish.  What a rush!  This guy jumped and jumped until we finally set him free.  Knowing that we had been seeing lots of permit, we decided to hit one bonefish spot really quit just in case we wanted to complete a slam.  We did see two bones there, but no luck as I tried my “permit cast” on them.  A little too aggressive!  We quickly crossed a channel and here comes a school of permit.  OK, time to use the permit cast.  Drop the freakin fly on his head…strip twice and connect.  Sure enough, it works! 1 permit in the boat.  It is amazing how good Capt. Will is at this, and it is amazing how good the whole thing works when you listen to what he says!  So, now we have a permit and a tarpon landed, and the day has barely started.  Do we go looking for bones, or do we keep on the permit, knowing full well we have seen lots of permit here in the last few days.  Easy decision actually, we had a great feeling about the permit and decided to stick with them.  Good thing too, because I managed to land two more permit and one more tarpon in the next few hours. When the tide ran out, we made a final 20 plus mile run at top speed to take on last look for bones, but didn’t see any.  What a great day.  I am now a hooked permit angler.  The best thing about permit fishing is this- when you and the guide do EVERYTHING right in casting to active fish, the fish will eat the fly without hesitation.  If you do anything wrong, it won’t.  Pretty simple.  In Hawaii I have had plenty of bonefish just flat out refuse perfectly presented flies, and have caught quite a few with just stupid luck.  Permit aren’t that way.  Whether you catch a fish or not seems to be almost entirely based on whether you can do everything right or not.  Obviously there are times when they won’t eat, but so far I can pretty much blame myself for the missed fish, and thank myself (and Capt. Will even more) for the caught ones.  What is really amazing is Capt. Will’s attention to every single detail in the game, from the way he holds his hand on the push pole, to the way you turn your wrist on the cast, to the exact color of the hackle on the fly, to the way in which you crouch on the boat deck… just amazing.  After every single blown shot, Will (politely) gave advice on the next minute detail I needed to work on to get to the top of my game.  And every now and then, when I really needed it, he told me in a not so polite way!  After a few days it paid off in a big way with a 3 permit, 2 tarpon day.  What a trip!

Marathon High School Fishing Club: World Angling goes back to school

On May 15th Dave, Brian, Mitchell and I packed up every fly rod we owned and headed north back to school. An old buddy of mine from when I played pony-league baseball in Key West, Luis Leal, is a teacher at Marathon High and a cofounder of the Marathon High School Fishing Club. He and another teacher Ben Craig decided to organize an after school club to get youngsters excited about fishing. Most of the time they talk about their latest fishing trip or knots and leaders. Sometimes, they get to take a school sponsored trip and go fishing instead of going to class. That’s always a popular affair. Attendance is usually at an all time high on those days. The problem is, you have to be a member of the fishing club beforehand in order to skip class to go fishing. And being a member includes having to sit through the occasional boring lecture about our great pastime. This day the boring lecture was my responsibility. I tried to keep it short and sweet. I spoke about how I got into fly fishing by cleaning boats at Sugarloaf Marina, how my parents always encouraged me to do what I loved, and how all that turned into a passion for film making. As Dave gave me the international symbol for “cut it off,” I knew that was enough and that really the kids just wanted to see the movie. So we rolled with it. For 45 minutes the kids watched intensely as our film passed from jumping tarpon to giant redfish to tailing permit. Needless to say, they enjoyed the show. We then packed up our fly rods and headed out to the baseball field for some casting lessons. I was amazed by how quickly the kids picked it up; especially the girls. With just a little instruction on how the process of casting works, the kids were soon double hauling and laying out 60′ of fly line with no problem. Then, with a little encouragement from Mitchell and I, the boys were playing mexican standoff and shooting fly lines at each other. The girls shook their heads and dismissed the boys antics as immature attempts to show off. They were probably right. But… boys will be boys, and a bit of male rivalry is common in this neck of the fly fishing world. ?It was great to see kids getting excited about fishing and interested to hear about what we do. I can’t say enough about what Luis and Ben are doing for the sport. It’s great! I think it’s a refreshing approach to reach out to kids and impart knowledge about the sport, conservation, and etiquette. It was great to see the future right in front of us. We hope to get a chance to take the kids out on the water next time. I’m sure they won’t mind missing a day of school to go chase tarpon. I know I wouldn’t. 

Here is a direct link to their side of the story.

Sugarloaf Key Flats Open: Tarpon, Bonefish, Permit, Beer…

UPDATE
Just as the 2008 guide season starts to slow down in South Florida the fishing starts to get good. So good in fact that we thought we should have a tournament. Not the kind of Keys tournament most people are used to, but a fun summer event where the anglers are guides and the guides are anglers. The first annual Sugarloaf Key Flats Open is set to take place at MM17 on August 22-23, 2008. All team members (up to 3 per boat) are encouraged to catch tarpon, bonefish, and permit on fly with prizes being awarded for highest point totals each day as well as an overall points winner. For more information click here.

Catching Up On Catching Poon: Tarpon Season In A Nutshell

Wow!  Where has all the time gone?  Consumed by 12-16 hour days, 4:00 AM wake up calls and a hazy recollection of giant schools of tarpon, aggressive permit and the always elusive bonefish to complete the grand slam…I seemed to have forgotten to post a fishing report.  Darn!  The fishing this season would be best described as intense.  It never seemed to want to settle into its’ normal rhythm.  We worked hard for the fish we caught…and oh yes, we did catch!
Late April brought some terrific tarpon action and we fished a mix of backcountry fish and ocean side swimmers.  Dale Dashiel finally landed his beast after hooking many with me over the last couple of years.  Then, he did it again the next day! Watching his buddy Jim Schneider land so many monsters year after year finally pissed him off enough to get one.  Congrats Dale!  Now you have to catch a permit.  Speaking of which, Cliff Snydor landed his first ever on fly with me in early May.  We had just released a tarpon moments before hooking the permit so a slam was certainly on the table.  About an hour later cliff and I were celebrating the first slam of the year! Then the fishing got tough…My longest clients and best buds George Haley and John Davis had true technical fishing.  The waters out west shut down and we were confined to Confrontation Basin off Sugarloaf and my home waters out back.  Although we did manage to hook and land fish the difficulty and patience level was much increased from  early Mays of past.  The whole week culminated on the last day when J.D. finally managed to wiggle a fly seductively enough to feed a fish that clearly didn’t really want to eat.  We all screamed very loudly and thanked the Gods for blessing us.  Mike Allen and I had some good fishing wading for tarpon and permit.  We almost had a slam but couldn’t stay glued to the tarpon.
For 2 weeks every year I live and work aboard the mothership Outpost.  Fred and Penny Wheeler own and run this terrific operation here in the keys as well as in the Bahamas.  If you’re really serious about your fishing this is the way to do it.  Contact the Outpost at www.outpostexpeditions.com for more details.  On week 1 I fished with Woody Woods and his buddy Bobby Strawbridge who was guided by the talented Capt. Scott Irvine.  The week was terrific.  Woody set yet another high for most fish jumped in a single week.  Last year during this time we experienced some of the worst weather I’ve ever seen during the month of May.  Thankfully the gods took piety and the seas smoothed to bring some really impressive schools of fish.  On week 2 I fished with the fly guru Peter Smith and his cousin Frank.  Although the weather wasn’t quite as good as the previous week there were still plenty of fish to be caught.  Peter and I had our annual sit down on the skiff where we looked over flies and talked about what the next generation tarpon flies are going to look like.  We’re hoping to have some to try out by the fall but, as Peter tells me, it’s quite a bit more complicated than just putting the materials on a hook and trying it out. I hope all the great ideas we have come together because the next generation flies are going to take the whole game to another level.  You can check out the best flies in the world at www.ssflies.com .  The 2 weeks ended for me with another near miss on a grand slam as Frank Smith broke off a permit and missed another eat to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.  I fished with Jim Nichols during the first 2 days of June and again we nearly missed a slam as the permit mysteriously got off while Jim was clearing the line.  All that came to a screeching halt on Thursday June 5th as Mike Allen and I proceed to set another personal best for permit on fly.  Mike hooked 6 and landed 5 and yours truly stepped up to the plate and hooked one while Mike was fighting his fish off the front.  The incredible part is we could have hooked more fish!  It was one of those magical days when all the conditions come together and the permit decide to inhale anything that crosses their path…so long as it’s the secret pattern!  No pressure for Cort Dehart the next day as we set out to post as many points as possible in the annual Broken Oar fishing tourney. We had a great day hooking and landing 3 tarpon, loosing a couple of bones and barely missing several permit.  The guide competition was fierce with Capt. Jeffery Cardenas and I neck and neck on day three.  Then, from out  of nowhere, my buddy Capt. Aaron Snell posts a monster score to eclipse every record for the tourney and take home the prize.  Congrats Aaron!  Remind me to kick your ass next time I see you at the Parrot.  The good Dr. Gannon Dudlar and Dr Bill McCoy rounded out the month of June so far.  As always Gannon and I managed to hook a few fish to keep things interesting; including a very big permit in skinny water and some other cookie cutter sized fish that were schooled up.   Dr Bill and I closed out our season with some great eats from singles off David’s Island and a fine tequila with salt and lime; the traditional reposado of “El Pescador.”   I’m looking forward to some time off and a chance to try out my new underwater housing for the HD camcorder.  We are taking a trip to Fort Jefferson on Friday aboard the Yankee Freedom II with some friends of ours from Indy and their 2 boys Ron and Reese, who have just finished watching Tarpon Season and now want to see one close up. Lets hope I can make it happen.

“Permit” Movie: Fly Fishing Film Tour Trailer

See It Here

A lot of people have been asking for a copy of our movie, but we are currently working out some music copyright issues, as well as polishing up a few edits.  DVD release is set for late 2008 or early 2009, and we promise that it will be worth the wait.  In the meantime, enjoy the trailer that we had on the Fly Fishing Film Tour this year.