November 26, 2012
I opened our room door at
5:30 expecting a whim of cold air like the last few days, but there wasn’t. A t-shirt would suffice for my first cup of
coffee. More delighting, there were few
clouds overhead. Today we were going
permit fishing with Pedro.
For starters we motored right
over the rolling tarpon at the mouth of the Belize River. Then we zoomed by the channel markers where I
landed the tripletail. We skipped the
snook holes and skirted south past Belize City and made a 45 minute run to Pedro’s favorite
permit grounds.
Once there I handed Granny my
10-weight RX with a brown crab pattern securely loop knotted to a 16lb leader then
I scanned ahead for tails. “I’m fishing?”
she pointed to herself with a look of surprise.
Granny was fishing and she knows how hard permit are on the fly. She didn’t have the confidence in her cast. But I convinced her that after yesterday, you
never know.
A wake of small permit came
into casting range almost immediately. Mentally
Granny wasn’t ready and she hastily made two short casts. Then ripped her heaped leader and crab out so
fast to cast a third time that she spooked the permit badly and they ran for Honduras. I laughed and reminded her she’s the
millionth person to do that on the first try.
Two minutes later we found
three more permit and these were tailing.
These were nice permit, easily 15lbs judging from the width of their
flopping black trimmed tails. They were
a good 80ft out and due to calm conditions we couldn’t go any closer for fear
of spooking them. Even with
encouragement, Granny wouldn’t attempt the long toss. Any other fish species in the world and I’d
of insisted. But I go crazy for
permit.
I grabbed the rod and ripped
off another 20ft of fly line and quietly perched myself on the bow of our
panga. Then I side armed the crab right
in front of the lead fish (A heavy crab lands much softer with a side arm cast. Then there’s less chance of spooking the fish). His tail rose and flapped as I pulled ever so
slowly. There’s no doubt he saw my fake
but rather than eat the fly he did a quick circle around it. I bumped it again with several short strips
but he refused it again and moved away.
I stripped in like a mad man
and launched another cast right in front of them again. Now they were near 90ft away. My crab sank inches in front of all
three. I pulled slowly then added
several short strips. The finicky fish
twirled around with interest but moved away again. I ended up with five good casts to these
permit before they finally got suspicious and slipped to deeper water out of
sight. Damn!
That was our best chance at
permit all day. In fact we hardly saw
another after that. That’s permit
fishing. Our biggest enemy today was
once again, the weather. It was so calm
that all fish, not just permit, picked up on us as we snuck down every
flat. It’s rare that its calm all day in
Belize
but it certainly was.
When fishing the flats you
almost always encounter something else cool other than the fishing. Today we came across a herd of manatees
feeding in a bay. I see a lot of them
every time I come to Belize
but today was unique in that we got to essentially hang out with them for as
long as we wanted. They are so strange!
Tomorrow is the last day and
the forecast is for rain – not good for the flats.
WOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!! Look at that new MFC Jeff Currier sun mask! Comes in 6 different patterns :)
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