Men's Journal

King of the Marquesas
The optimist's guide to fly-fishing for permit

Mike Wilbur - cigar nut, black belt, classical violinist – has the kind of muscles in his arms that you'd have too if you poled a flats boat more than 200 days a year. With the skiff running full out, slicing across the shimmering water off of Key West, I peered over at him, confident that any guy who looked like that must know how to catch fish. We were heading to a group of remote islands some 25 miles west called the Marquesas Keys to fly-fish for permit, one of the most mercurial fish in the world.

This was no buddies-and-beer trip. Part of the journey was over the open seas of the Boca Grande Channel, and many guides won't go if the weather looks iffy. And by the way, those dark shadows with hammerlike heads cruising under the boat are exactly what you think they are.

After an hour-long ride from Key West, we drifted into a massive lagoon. The Marquesas - roughly three miles long and three miles wide - look remarkably like a location out of the South Pacific. The only geological atoll in the Northern Hemisphere, it is composed of a distinctive ring of islands surrounding a shallow inner lagoon. Atolls are typically formed by volcanoes, but since there is no volcanic activity in the Marquesas Keys, its circular evolution is somewhat of a mystery.

Crab Fakes

In both the spring and late fall, the permit is king of the shallow waters around the atoll. Though there is good fishing at keys closer to land - permit territory includes the Caribbean and the Atlantic coast as far south as Brazil - Wilbur likes the Marquesas because the tidal flows of water that sweep back and forth between the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico offer a wide menu of sea life.

But like a spoiled debutante at a spring dance, the permit is fickle, and some frustrated fly-fishermen have spent their lives trying, and failing, to hook one. Landing a permit with live bait on a spinning rod isn't terribly difficult, but it's said that everyone who has caught one on a fly rod knows everyone else who has.

As the tides rise, permit emerge from the deep channels to the flats to feed, digging their snouts into the sand looking for crabs. The problem for the fly-fisherman is that while many permit flies look like crabs, they don't behave like crabs. A scared crab quickly dives toward the bottom, trying to bury itself in the sand, and that's something hard to duplicate, given a fly made of spun deer hair with epoxy-adorned rubber legs. The flies don't sink fast enough, and their weight makes them hard to cast. Dell Brown, who holds the world record for catching the heaviest permit on a fly rod (41 pounds, 8 ounces), invented what he calls the Merkin fly, a wiggy-Iooking thing with lead-weight eyes that seems to fool some of the permit some of the time, but not, apparently, on the day [ used it.

Fleeing permit were pretty much what I saw for most of the day while Wilbur looked on sympathetically. I can't even complain that conditions were poor; they were perfect. A 12 to 15 knot wind creates a surface chop that camouflages the fly-fisherman's easily seen line. My only defense is that I am accustomed to trout fishing and the heavier fly felt cumbersome and hard to cast far enough to make a respectable presentation. (If you spend most of your time trout fishing with a light rod, practice casting a 10-weight a few weeks before you hit the Florida Keys.)

Wilbur at last took pity and handed me a spinning rod with a live crab aboard, and I hooked up almost immediately. The permit is a close cousin of the. pompano's, strong as hell and a vicious fighter. Twenty minutes into the battle, I looked back at Wilbur, sweat rolling down my face.

"I’ll be just a few more minutes," I said.

He smiled, knowing better. "You're going to be a little while."

For more than a half-hour, the permit went berserk in a series of long runs and mad circles. Eventually we landed him, snapped photos and sent him packing.

So he's still out there if you'd like a crack at him. The best time for permit is when the water temperature is 70 to 80 degrees, March through early May, and again in September through November. When it comes to finding a guide, don't be fooled by fancy equipment. The longer he's been full-time guide in the Florida Keys, the better, so ask. As for other fish that frequent the Marquesas, the barracuda fishing is spectacular between Christmas and March. The height of tarpon season out here is May through July.

Evan McGlinn