Permit Fly Presentation – Introduction

We’re starting a little series of posts today on presenting flies to permit!

Here’s the background.  Your fearless editor said to Bruce Chard, Permit Whisperer, the other day, “Hey Bruce, we should do a post on the difference between presenting flies to bonefish and presenting flies to permit.”  45 minutes later the graduate level lecture on permit fly presentation was over, and we had the outline not for one post, but for five.

Today is the quick introduction.  We’ll follow up with posts on presenting to feeding fish, presenting to cruising fish, setting the hook (how but mostly when) and putting it all together.

Thanks to Bruce for the lessons!

Permit Fly Presentation – Introduction

The difference between catching and not catching a permit lies in your ability to fish the fly according to how the fish is acting.  Permit are a lot more complicated than bonefish in this regard!

Most of the time with bonefish, if you get your fly in front of them and move it reasonably, they eat it.  Yeah, you might land it closer to a tailing fish, or farther away on a calm day, but you’re basically trying to get your fly in front of the fish and then move it like it’s food.

A permit takes a different approach.  With permit we have to first recognize whether he’s feeding or cruising, because we’re going to present our fly very differently in those two cases.

The angler’s vision is key here – you have to be able to not only see the fish, but see how he’s moving.  When a permit is feeding he looks totally different from when he’s cruising.  Feeding versus cruising fish are swimming at different speeds, often at different depths, and looking in different places.  They’re thinking about different things, so we’re going to show them different things.

Stay tuned – next week we’ll give the details on presenting to feeding permit.

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