Permit
If
you have never experienced the thrill of having a permit raise his tail out of
the water in front of you as if he was waving hello to you and teasing you to
cast a live crab, shrimp or fly to him, then you must give Captain Diego a call
today. He can take you to the beautiful shallow flats and channels where
these highly sought after 'kings of the flats' feed. Permit are a warm
water species that can be found in the sub-tropical warm waters of the Florida
Keys
and the Caribbean.
They can be found in large numbers around deep water wrecks as well as the clear
shallow waters of the back country and ocean side flats that
surround the islands of the Florida Keys. Captain Diego specializes in
finding these elusive travelers of the flats. They feed on shrimp, small
crabs, shellfish, urchins and many other forms of crustaceans and can be found
either by themselves or in large schools in very shallow water or just floating
near the surface in the surrounding deeper channels. If you desire to do
battle with a fish capable of spooling 200 yards of line off your reel to the
point where you have to chase them with your motor in order to prevent being
spooled by the awesome power of pure muscle, all you have to do is go in search
of the elusive permit and you will make a memory of a life time with one of the
greatest sport fish of the flats.
The permit is another prize flats fish, as with the bonefish the permit is also skittish and very wary. The permit tolerates warmer water than the bonefish, water in excess of 85 degrees, this opens up some of the warmer months of Summer for exciting fishing when the bonefish are in the deeper, cooler water.
The same tidal characteristics are seen with the permit except that
the permit are on the flats during the higher stages of the tide because
the permit is a larger fish than the bonefish. Permit range in size
from 10 to 40 pounds.
Permit just love live crabs, you cast a live crab into a school of permit and it doesn't take very long for the crab to get gobbled up, as said best by Lefty Kreh, "it's like rolling a wine bottle in a jail cell".
The peak seasons for permit are Spring and Fall, but I especially like the Spring, April and May and into the Summer, also September and October are good times of the year to fish for permit.
