Of Snapper and Permit with Captain Jon Cooper

Late last summer, I enlisted Captain Jon Cooper, to get me hooked up with two species in South Biscayne Bay I had to do stories on: the wily grey snapper-the brick-colored temptor of Florida docks- and the wilier permit, the silver and gold true ghost of the flats.

I was in great hands choosing Captain Jon www.captaincooper.com/ . Not only was he totally skilled both inshore and offshore, he had the vessels to go with it: a gleaming Maverick for the flats and a brand new Triton Bay Boat for deeper fishing. Since it was a calm sunny day, we chose his smaller vessel.

In only fifiteen minutes from leaving the dock at Crandon, Jon had me hooked up with a mangrove snapper along some rocky rip-rap. The challenge here was to get a really large snapper, a hard task at best. The outgoing spring tide had them really striking and we probably caught thirty before landing a fat two pounder under a dock in Stiltsville. We took about an hour for a photo shoot, and by the time we were done, the tide was flying in.

Jon looked at me, and we both thought, "permit." He fired up his Maverick, and we headed South to fish the cuts ans rockpiles of Islandia. As we ran from place to place, we were amazed, yet saddened that there were flats boats everywhere, even on this weekday. A sad irony of the flats boat explosion in Florida is pressure and decline of the habitat on which it depends. We fished a few spots, and saw a few permit in deeper water just off the flats. Two hours later, Jon said "let's run North."

We stopped just a few flats south of Stiltsville. As he poled westward, we saw a pop on the surface a hundred yards away. Jon poled towards it, and halfway in told me it was a huge permit slowly finning near some seaweed in three feet of water. When we got within fifty feet, I clearly saw the fish, and cast my crab about ten feet in front of it. The fish saw the crab instantly, and swam foward. I'm sure my crab dove for the bottom, as the fish's massive tail went into the air: we both gasped at the size of the black sickle. The fish swept back and forth in a tight arc in pursuit of the terrified crab. Jon held the skiff absolutely still. I tried to slowly pull the crab off the bottom for about one or two inches, but the pressure on my rod tip made in clear the crab was successfully "grassed up." Moments later, the permit dropped its tail and and cruised off to the North. We both saw a fish between 40 or 50 pounds. As I got my bait in for another cast, the permit must have sensed us as it went into warp speed to the protection of a nearby greenish channel.

Jon and I both were experiencing the bemused though frustrated reverence anglers get when they encounter a trophy permit. We ended the day with a permit thirst that could only be quenched with hookups and releases on future adventures in Biscayne Bay.


Jan
www.flatsfishingonline.com