Belize’s blue water, barrier reef, beaches and hospitality attract many tourists, but Boise angler Michael (Mickey) Myhre went there for other reasons.
Belize offers a chance to catch the big four of saltwater flats fly fishing: bonefish, tarpon, snook and permit.
Each fish poses a slightly different challenge.
Bonefish are tough to spot and skittish when they come into the shallow flats to feed, but they tend to aggressively strike a well-placed fly.
Tarpon are bruisers with an intimidating look, like someone strapped a bulldog’s head to a greyhound. Think of a fish the size of a sturgeon that leaps and fights like a rainbow trout.
Snook are like an oversized, streamlined largemouth bass that lurks in the tangled mangrove roots and pounces on prey or a well-placed fly.
PERMIT: GHOST OF THE FLATS
And then there are permit, an oddly named fish that are the pinnacle of flats fishing. Permit are spooky and finicky, which makes them nearly irresistible to saltwater fly anglers.
“Permit are the rarest game fish in the world purely in terms of how few are caught, as opposed to how many anglers cast to them,” wrote A.J. McClane in his book “McClane’s Game Fish of North America.”
“Far from being scarce ... sighting 100 fish in a day is not unusual, yet the capture of even one is a notable achievement,” McClane wrote.
Fly anglers by nature are problem solvers who love to figure out what a fish eats and how to present an imitation to fool them.
The more difficult a fish is to fool, the more likely a simple challenge will morph into a fly fishing obsession.
THE GODFATHER OF PERMIT
Myhre heard about the elusive fish from the godfather of permit anglers, fellow Boisean Winston Moore.
Moore, 86, was among the pioneers of saltwater flats fishing and widely considered one of the best in the world at catching permit.
Moore spent decades fly fishing the flats and landed thousands bonefish and tarpon. His lifetime total of 112 permit is still respected and revered by saltwater fly anglers, and few have matched it.
“You have to be a little looney to go after them,” Moore said.
A TRYING TRY
Despite having no fly fishing experience, Myhre decided to give permit fishing a try, and he made his first trip to Belize in 2008.
It didn’t go well. For up to 12 hours a day, he stood in the tropical sun staring into the glimmering water for a glimpse of a permit.
“It was maddeningly tough,” he said.
Myhre said each rare permit encounter ended in similar fashion, with him lassoing himself with the fly line when he tried to cast, or otherwise failing to land the fly near the fish.
Even the typically diplomatic guide described his casting style as “like beating the water with a mop.”
“Permit are realistically for someone who’s already an accomplished fly caster,” Myhre said.
He returned to Belize twice more, but the end result was the same — some permit spotted, a couple strikes, one briefly hooked, but none landed.
“I guess I am a little stubborn by nature and a little curious,” Myhre said.
Moore had fished the flats for years before catching his first permit. Myhre wasn’t ready to give up on permit, or himself.
And if you’re going to get skunked, Belize isn’t a bad place to do it. It kept luring him back.
“It was the beauty of the flats, the people, the simple charm, and the good food,” Myhre said. “But at some level, it was Winston and my love for him that kept me going back to see what it was that so captivated him that he forsook all other forms of fishing to pursue this one fish.”
BACK TO BELIZE
Myhre made his fourth trip to Belize earlier this month and spent a week aboard Meca, a 45-foot boat that serves as a floating base camp for anglers plying the flats around the Belize’s numerous clusters of islands.
Myhre had learned more about permit on his previous trips and honed his fishing skills on several trout and steelhead fishing trips in Idaho, Oregon and Montana.
Earlier this year, he also took a trip to South Padre Island in Texas to fish for redfish, which is done by spotting and casting similar to permit fishing, but to a fish that’s more aggressive.
“They’re more eager to take a fly than permit,” Myhre said. “But what isn’t?”
Myhre found little had changed on Meca. The guides were still knowledgeable, accommodating and entertaining.
Myhre’s guide, 41-year-old Noel Westby of Belize, had trained under Moore as a teenager and is now a veteran angler who successfully guided Myhre to bonefish, snook and tarpon.
But Westby would rather chase permit than any other fish on the flats.
“I just love those permit,” Westby said.
He knows the flats of Belize like his own backyard, which they basically are, and Westby spots permit like a German shorthair points pheasants.
But seeing a permit is the first hurdle in a sprint. There’s often only seconds to deliver a fly before the fish spooks or disappears into the dappled water.
“The excitement and pressure will make a dancing fool out of anyone,” Myhre said.
THE FICKLE FINGER OF FATE
To frustrate matters, you can perfectly cast a fly to a permit, and it may still ignore it. The fish simply won’t abide by an angler’s expectations.
Fortunately, that can also be advantageous.
Myhre spotted a school of permit and cast into it. According to the playbook, the fly has to sink to their level, and you watch and wait for a fish to react.
But an instant after Myhre’s fly hit the water, a permit grabbed it.
“Suddenly, I’ve got line screaming out of my hand, and a fish flying off the flats,” he said.
No longer was his fate controlled by a finicky fish. After two years and four trips, he was fighting a permit instead of pining for one.
PERMIT’S FINAL TRICK
Myhre landed the fish, and he and Westby celebrated the long days of waiting for that moment.
Myhre said the overwhelming feeling was simple relief and that he was “not the only guy in the world who couldn’t land a permit.”
Myhre handed his camera to Westby, who couldn’t figure out how to operate it.
Fearing the fish was out of water too long, Myhre dipped its head beneath the surface.
Sensing freedom, the permit thrashed out of Myhre’s hand and disappeared without a photo to document his prize.
It was a slight disappointment to an otherwise happy ending of finally landing a permit.
“It felt pretty damn good,” Myhre said “It was a long time coming. I thought it would never happen.”
Roger Phillips: 373-6615
I was introduced to Mickey Myhre through Winston Moore, and was flattered when Myhre invited me to join him on his recent trip to Belize.
It was my second saltwater fishing trip to Belize, but my first attempt at permit.
Years of fly fishing for steelhead mentally prepared me for the long hours and endurance needed to hook a difficult fish on a fly. But I had no illusions about being a “natural” permit angler, if such a person exists.
I braced for the real possibility of fishing an entire week and coming home skunked.
I hoped to shorten my permit learning curve by gleaning information from Myhre, Winston Moore and others who had fished for them, as well as learning from my guide, Belizean Eddie Bang.
As expected, permit fishing was an ego-bruising experience.
There are few things more frustrating than waiting hours for a permit, hearing my guide, Eddie Bang, call out the direction and distance to a fish and still not being able to spot it.
When I saw the fish, my casts repeatedly came up short, off target, or both. Other times, permit spooked or ignored my flies — not just single fish, but entire schools would blast away or disinterestedly swim by without a courtesy glance.
Sometimes it veered from frustrating to comical.
Once I didn’t notice my fly leader had slipped under my flip flop when we spotted a permit. I tried to cast and sunk the point of the fly into my index finger.
I quickly extracted the hook point and tried to salvage a cast at the fish, but still forgot to clear the line and again sunk the hook into the same finger. The twin blood trickles running down my finger looked like a snake bite.
After days of fishing and too many failures to count, permit still baffled me. Each showed a new and creative way to avoid me and ignore my fly.
After about 30 hours of permit fishing, the closest I came to success was getting two fish to follow my fly for a few feet, then turn away without touching it.
On my fourth day, water conditions were excellent. A mild, steady breeze blew and the sun was at the perfect angle to spot fish.
The flats seemed to come alive with permit. I cast to more fish that day than I had the entire trip, and a permit finally took my fly.
Line peeled off my reel at an alarming rate as the drag squealed disapproval. The fish ran like a fast halfback down an open field. It stripped my entire fly line and half my backing before it finally turned.
At that point, I figured the permit was well hooked, but we played an intense game of tug o’ war, and I silently pleaded for the hook to hold.
About 45 minutes after spotting the school, I guided my first permit into Bang’s net.
We brought it aboard and the made it the unwitting supermodel for our tropical photo shoot.
Bang returned the fish to the water and held it by the tail. I’d devoted a lot of thought about the possibility of not catching one, but I hadn’t anticipated the moment of actually landing one.
Its silvery scales glittered like a mirror ball in the turquoise-blue water, and its over-sized, dark eyes hinted at intelligence you don’t typically see in fish.
Permit are perfectly adapted to one of the most beautiful places on earth, and they live up to their hype as challenging quarry.
I understood their hypnotic draw after feeling the sensory-sparking shot of adrenaline that comes when you hook a permit.
I was filled with gratitude after landing one and flushed with pride when it gracefully swam away.
Roger Phillips: 373-6615
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8First reported at IdahoStatesman.com
