14!

Kind of an intersting fish story day. In the spring of 2013, Brent Piche accompanied us on one of our shop trips to Palometa Club, in Ascension Bay. This was Brent`s very first trip to the flats. After a week of testing everything out, Bonefish, Tarpon, breaking off Permit, he spent the second last day partnered up with yours truly.

After a completely eventful day filled with two hooked and lost Permit before noon, we found this fish around mid afternoon. All alone, on a flat filled with Rays, this Permit was floating around as pretty as can be. Enough can`t be said of Brent`s patience, he threw at this fish a whole bunch of times over the course of almost an hour. Multiple, rushed fly changes, annoying charges at flies with no grab, and mostly the gradually increasing pestering from two guides and myself didn`t deter him from finally sticking this fish.

Now a first Permit is kind of a big deal. But in this case we used a common measurement formula to determine weight and his first Permit came out to a respectable 14 pounds. In addition to all the other coolness, if you look at the dark markings on the side of the fish, they are the number 14. Cool!

These marks are very random, the best and most reasonable theory I have ever heard is from Dr. Aaron Adams, of Bonefish and Tarpon Trust. he indicates that these dark marks on the side of landed Permit are stress marks caused when a fish is hooked and played. A large percentage of Permit landed have some sort of variation of these marks, but in this case it was a very accurate representation of the fish`s weight.