Since I took up fly fishing four years ago, I have caught 42 species of fish on fly. Conspicuously missing from this assortment is the humble redfish, aka Red Drum, even though redfish frequent the flats and lagoons I fish in Everglades National Park.
It’s not like I can’t catch redfish at all. I have caught dozens of redfish using spinning gear and soft plastic lures, and several more on natural bait.
Most times, redfish are easily sight-fished by offering them an imitation baitfish or shrimp. If you make the lure appear from elsewhere, then make it try to hide like a scared shrimp or escape like a panicked or injured baitfish, a redfish can’t resist pouncing on it. Sometimes, when sharks are feeding nearby, I’ve tempted redfish with a lure that has no hook, just for the fun of watching them dive on it like a beagle on a slice of pepperoni.
If the light is bad for spotting redfish beneath the water’s surface, one can cast a lure towards “nervous water”, whereupon the redfish roiling the water’s surface from below is likely to grab it. Throw a lure up a dark, mangrove-lined creek and the unseen redfish hunting crabs in that creek will probably chase it down. Pitch a lure under the mangrove trees where a redfish is hiding in the cool shade, and the redfish will snatch that lure before it touches the bottom. Once a redfish has hold of your lure, it will tug like a bulldog. I have mistaken a big redfish for a small shark.
My total failure to catch redfish on a fly is not for lack of trying. I’ve worked at it with obsessive dedication. Day after day I venture forth on the flats before dawn, saying “This will be the day I catch a redfish on fly.” The sun rises, redfish reveal themselves on the flat, but for one odd reason or another, it just doesn’t happen. Here’s a sampling of the redfish I have NOT caught on fly:
I was surrounded by 50 redfish, noses in the mud and tails in the air. They completely ignored every single fly I dropped next to them or pulled past their noses in the muddy water. I guess stirred up mud makes it hard to see.
Again I was surrounded by redfish feeding on all sides, but each one stayed just out of fly casting range. Was it a redfish conspiracy or do I need to change my deodorant?
I arrived early, waited patiently by a particular oyster bar until the moment in the incoming tide when redfish came to feed on the bar. I placed my fly directly in front of that feeding redfish only to have a puffer swim in, grab the fly, chew off the fur, get hooked, and then flap about, scaring off the redfish. The redfish was not seen again at that bar. Ever.
I have stalked schools of redfish feeding in the shallows near a bank in a saltwater lagoon, approaching ever so slowly for 20 minutes, then watched them zoom away, spooked by a Little Blue Heron or a tern passing overhead. Redfish can’t be too careful.
A redfish swam right past my stationary fly. Didn’t see it. I recast the same fly in front of the same redfish, moved it a tiny bit to get the redfish’s attention, and the redfish spooked like it had seen a ghost. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
I designed and tied a special sparkly redfish attractor fly, cast it into high-tide redfish haunts under mangrove branches, and caught some nice snook instead. I’d hate to complain about catching snook.
I watched a redfish follow my fly for 10 feet then turn away. I think it liked the fly, but then remembered it wasn’t hungry.
A redfish bit my fly but did not get hooked. Am I getting warmer?
I drove 3 hours each way and stayed overnight with my friend Herman, who took me fishing at all his secret redfish spots around Pine Island. I just saw one redfish, a baby “rat red”, and Herman saw none. We blamed the almost-full moon and the slow daytime tides, but we both knew in our hearts it was the Curse of the Redfish.
I’m sure that as soon as I catch one redfish on fly, the next one will come quickly, and then they’ll become easy enough that I’ll wonder why they eluded me for so long. When I was a teenager, that’s how it was with birds. I’d knock myself out to spot a new species in the wild, then, after I’d found my first one, they’d pop up like mushrooms everywhere I went.
Gray and I will spend most of September in France, where red wine will make up for lack of redfish. I will resume my quest upon our return to Florida. I have tied a new crab fly that catches every redfish I see in my dreams.
Fly fishing for Permit on the flats of Espiritu Santo Bay in the Sian Ka’an Biosphere Preserve
Day 2.
Today I am sharing a boat with another fisherman. Our morning is spent deep in a network of steamy mangrove creeks and coves where we see lots of juvenile tarpon and six hefty snook. The tarpon do not want to eat flies and the snook stay out of our way in the tight mangrove creeks. I catch one small tarpon and my partner refuses my offer to loan him a fly in the successful pattern. To his immense chagrin, he catches nothing but mangrove branches, usually on his backcast, each snag followed by a barrage of Spanish curses. Just outside the mangroves my partner hooks a hefty barracuda on one of the many tarpon flies that the tarpon had refused. Remarkably, the cuda does not sever the tarpon bite-tippet.
Guide Chepo with the barracuda.
Back on the flats again after lunch, it’s my turn to be up front casting. Our guide Chepo takes us to a shallow stretch of green water edged by a beach. Just as we arrive, a school of ~20 Permit rips past us going the other direction. Chepo stows his push pole and fires up the outboard. We roar out a quarter mile from the shore then head back up the beach to get around the Permit school and wait for their approach.
Poling slowly off the beach we come upon the Permit school tailing in shallow water over a patch reef. Their black tails and dorsal fins extend from the water, swishing back and forth like so many knife blades.
Chepo suggests that rather than cast from the boat, I should hop out and wade to fish for them. I love wade fishing, but more importantly, a slow-wading human pushes less of a bow wave than a boat. Chepo and I work our way carefully forward and I began casting to the closest Permit. It follows the fly briefly two times but turns back each time.
As I prepare to cast again, the other fisherman, who will not be named, has worked his way up the beach. I assume he wants to watch, or maybe wait his turn to cast after I hook up. Instead he flanks me and starts casting into the middle of the Permit school. He lines a Permit (i.e., throws his fly line over a fish). That Permit spooks, and the whole school takes off for the middle of the bay. He does not apologize. Even though it was my turn to be on the bow and I was working the school first, he insists he’s allowed to wade fish the same school at the same time. A small black cloud settles in over my head.
While my boat partner is on the bow, I become aware of the inevitable, creeping dehydration and reach for my water bottle, which has rolled deep behind the seats. While retrieving the bottle, I accidentally scrape it lightly on the hull. Unbeknownst to me, my boat partner is working a group of permit and they turn away from his fly following the audible scrape. I apologize profusely. Despite my annoyance, I did not consciously scrape the hull with the bottle. After chewing me out, my boat partner says, “Well, I guess we’re even.”
* * *
DAY 3
Before getting back on the water here in the Yucatan, I’ll back up a month. Gearing up to fly fish for Permit, I went out every day to an open lake or salt flat near my home to practice casting heavy crab flies in the wind using my moderately fast Sage 9wt fly rod.
People usually fly fish for permit using a beefier 10wt fly rod because the heavier line penetrates the wind better. In fact, my friend Juan offered to loan me his ultra-fast 10wt rod for the trip.
Experience has taught me that my two enemies in a fly rod setup are fast and heavy. Even my moderately fast 9wt setup tends to overload my light bone structure and aggravate old injuries. That’s why I’d built a 8/9wt fly rod around a softer rod blank. My hand, wrist, and elbow get progressively grumpier with every step up in weight. My preferred flats rod is a 7wt – anything heavier is asking for trouble.
And trouble I got. Two weeks before the trip, I sprained my casting hand through the repetitive motion of a home carpentry project and daily casting practice with the 9wt. Ice reduced the pain, but healing was slow and I had to lay off casting practice to aid the recovery. The day I left for the Yucatan, my hand felt 95% better.
My wise spouse, who does not fish, nonetheless integrates information well and has a history of dispensing good fly fishing advice. She suggested I bring, as a backup, my two-handed “Spey” rod. Because it doesn’t load the same joints as a one-handed fly rod, if or when my right hand gives out again, I could continue to fish.
I’d never heard of anyone fishing for Permit with a two-handed rod, so I sought a second opinion from Anthropic’s “Claude” AI chatbot (Sonnet 5 medium LLM):
“Does anyone fly fish for Permit with a two-handed fly rod (Spey rod)?”
Claude returned a five paragraph treatise, the gist of which was that Spey rods are designed for distance, not accuracy, and that I’m a sacrilegious twit for considering such a crude instrument in the noble pursuit of Permit. Claude did throw me a small bone in the last paragraph:
That said, “almost never” isn’t “never” — some experimental or novelty anglers have tried switch rods or short two-handers for permit, mostly out of curiosity rather than because it offers any real advantage. It’s not a recognized or recommended technique in the permit-fishing community.
Being a scientist, I necessarily qualify as an experimental angler. My two-handed fly rod is 13 feet long, though, not a short two-hander or a switch rod. But what the heck, maybe I’ll be the first person to catch a Permit on a proper Spey rod.
OK, fat chance. Still, an extra checked item in my baggage would only cost $60 each way – not a bad price for trip insurance given the recent injury to my right hand.
Sure enough, after my first two days of fishing for fussy Permit with one-handed 9wt rods (“Cast again, same place!”), my right hand is trashed. I have four more days of fishing ahead of me here in the Yucatan. Casting left-handed, I’m quite accurate at close range but I can’t reach the full distance needed to hit every Permit shot the guide calls. So, on DAY 3, out comes the two-hander.
* * *
Yesterday’s boat partner has hired a guided boat all to himself for the rest of the week. Good idea. This day I share guide Chepo’s boat with Tim.
As Claude had explained, the two-handed fly rod won’t let me place a fly as precisely as I can with a single-handed rod, but contrary to Claude’s pronouncements, it excels at every other demand. Without hurting my hand, the two-hander tosses heavy permit flies 60 feet in a wind. Plenty of times a permit ignores a fly, so repeated casts are needed, even with a one-handed rod. When the guide calls out “Cast again, same distance, more left!” the two-handed rod can pick up 40-50 feet of fly line and recast it “more left” 60 or 70 feet with no time-wasting false casts.
From my collection of Permit flies, Chepo selects a white tie of Dave Skok’s Strong Arm Merkin. I always fish with the tip of the hook barb depressed. Saltwater fly fishing pioneer, Chico Fernandez, insists that by pressing just the tip of the barb down to make a hump out of the barb, you get the best of both worlds: the hook penetrates better but also comes out when you want it to. That’s helpful when you hook your clothes, or worse, your cheek. If a precious fish breaks off with my fly in its mouth, I want it to shed the hook easily.
Back at the same spot mid-afternoon, a Permit follows my fly twenty feet before pouncing on it. I set the hook and the Permit takes off. That 20 foot follow has left me with a bit over twenty feet of loose fly line, piled in random curls on the deck behind me. As the fish starts its run, a strong gust blows a loop of that loose line up over my head and around my neck. Gripping the rod in one hand, I flail frantically with the other to get the line off my neck but in an instant it comes tight around the back of my head and the 16 pound tippet snaps. Rats!
Lesson learned: no matter the excitement of a permit chasing the fly, I must do what it takes to throw the retrieved line back and DOWN so the extra loops land inside the cockpit and not on the deck.
The break-off aside (beginner’s mistake), the two-handed rod had proven it could hook a permit. Even better, I have not been strangled nor my carotid artery severed by a fly line attached to a powerful fish.
But I have not spooked the school, so it’s Tim’s turn to try. He and Chepo hop out of the boat to wade, while I stay behind and make a point of not spooking his fish.
Tim lands a nice one.
A boy and his fish. I’m in the back, trying again. Photo by Chepo..
The Permit school is still there, so I climb out and try again. During my first retrieve, a big barracuda slashes through the school, probably in pursuit of Bonefish. The water explodes in a sparkle of silver flashes, Permit and Bonefish bound for deep water. The fishing day is over.
DAY 4
My partner today is Chris. I am heeding the lesson of yesterday’s error. After casting from the foredeck in the stiff wind, I bend down or kneel for the retrieve so I can carefully pitch each curl of loose fly line back and down into the cockpit behind me where the wind can’t make mischief of it. I am using a new fly of the same pattern as yesterday, but in cream instead of white.
Strong Arm Merkin, missing part of a leg, nipped off by a baby Blue Runner.
Chris gets out to wade fish our magic afternoon spot and casts repeatedly to a Permit, but each time a succession of small Bonefish zoom in to snatch away his fly. After a catching and releasing a bunch of little squirts, he hooks into a decent Bonefish.
Here Chris wrangles a pesky 4 lb Bonefish that snatched his fly from in front of the Permit.
It does not please him. Only a missed Permit could turn a nice Bonefish into a disappointment.
Using the two-hander, I hook up on another Permit and get it “on the reel”, meaning the line slack safely is taken up and the reel’s drag is engaged.
The fish runs down the beach, so I hop from the boat and wade after it to recover some line and make the fish quicker to land when it tires. Chepo wades in behind me while Chris stays with the boat and takes video.
Permit on the two-hander. Notice how little the two-hander bends compared to a single-handed rod. Photo by Chris Webb.
I mostly keep my eye on the fish but glance down to avoid stepping on a sting rays in the shallows. Shuffling one’s feet is a safe practice but it stirs up the sediments.
I try not to step on one of these dudes, which are common in the shallows.
Though I landed my first Permit myself, Chepo wants to land this one, and I let him – he likely knows something I don’t. Holding his cellphone-camera aloft in one hand, Chepo tries twice to grab the permit by its tail with his other hand, but each time the fish bolts back to deep water, forcing Chepo to duck the whizzing fly line.
Chepo has good reflexes. A guide doesn’t want to break off his client’s Permit.
Third time’s a charm and we have the fish to hand.
That’s a proper Permit, not a monster, but solid. When I remove the fly from its mouth, the tippet breaks in my hand.
This Permit has not only chewed my fly to a pulp, it has shredded the tippet most of the way through, probably by rubbing it against corals. I really don’t know how this fish didn’t break off before we landed it. That risk is probably why Chepo was so eager to grab the Permit as soon as possible.
After quick photos, I release this Permit, perhaps the first caught on a Spey rod. It hurries off to rejoin its school in the green waters of Bahia del Espiritu Santo.
Breakfast at Playa Blanca Lodge is whatever you want. I had coffee, OJ, fresh tropical fruits, an omelette, and two strips of bacon. We packed our lunches from an equally splendid spread of ceviche, fried fish, leftover roast beef or BBQ ribs, fruits, sandwich fixings, French cheeses, you name it. You want bottles of water, limeade, beer? How many?
At 07:10, fly fishing guests assembled at the truck for the 20 minute ride south to the dock. Skiffs departed the dock each day at 07:30 and returned by 16:00.
The flats of Espiritu Santo Bay (Bahia del Espiritu Santo) are accessed by a fleet of small Dolphin skiffs. The ride south is bouncy in the waves driven by the prevailing SE trade winds, but the small craft are dry and easy for guides to pole. The guides are all local fellows from the Yucatan. My guide the first four days was a short, stocky fellow named Chepo, pronounced “Chay-Poe”. The first day on the water, I had Chepo and his boat to myself.
Chepo looked in my box of permit flies and picked out a crab fly, my favorite by chance, that I’d crafted from a coconut fibre scrubbing pad and some “ultra chenille”.
Up on the poling platform, Chepo deployed his magic flats vision, spotting fish invisible to me under the shimmering waves.
In addition to Spanish, Chepo speaks a dialect of fly fishing English, enhanced with his own units of measure:
“Eleven o’clock, forty feet” means “Cast 45° left of center, sixty feet”.
“White, white…” means “Wait, wait…”
“Cast again! More longer!” means “Throw the fly in the same direction, but seventy feet.”
Once I learned to follow Chepo’s directions (“white” took the longest), I began to catch fish.
A baby Bonefish, my smallest ever on fly, somehow managed to stuff most of that crab fly in its mouth.
Some juvenile Mutton Snappers likewise gulped down the crab fly, my first ones on a fly rod.
An uncounted mess of small Blue Runners and Mangrove Snappers did their best to rip the fly to pieces, yanking loose bits of coconut fiber, and chewing the fuzz off the leading claw so it flopped pitifully.
Finally a permit appeared, using my new rod, I cast what little remained of the fly: a small disk of coconut fiber, two eyes, and a trailing claw.
The Permit connected with my bedraggled fly. I cleared the line and the reel drag sang the happy buzzing song that flats fishers so love to hear as the fly line sliced water in two.
My first Permit on fly, not huge, but just dandy, on my first day fishing the flats of Bahia del Espiritu Santo, on the tattered remnants of a file that I tied, cast with a rod that I built. What’s better than that?
Thank you Andy, Juan, and Chepo.
Two ways to eat a scorpion
Playa Blanca Lodge has one sacred tradition: when an angler catches his or her first Permit, he or she must eat a scorpion.
Accordingly, after dinner that night, young Calvin and I were each served a scorpion, pickled in mescal.
Florida Bark Scorpion, Centruroides gracilis
I recognized my dessert topping as a Florida Bark Scorpion, common in the Florida Keys. For years I kept one in a jar of alcohol on my desk at work. They’re big and scary when they skitter across the floor, and their sting hurts like a wasp if you are unfortunate enough to contact one, but their venom is not lethal. The terminal segment of the tail that holds the venom had already been removed.
I took my scorpion apart leg-by-leg, squeezing the meat out of each segment with my teeth like one does with the legs of a fried tarantula, a tasty Cambodian delicacy.
Glancing back and forth between his own intact scorpion and me, actively nibbling my prize, Calvin looked worried. Finally, he picked up the 8-legged horror and tossed it down the hatch in one gulp, aided by the double shot of tequila.
The chitin exoskeleton of arthropods is indigestible, so you can guess what happens, or rather, what doesn’t happen, if one swallows said arthropod without chewing. Not wanting my scorpion to reappear as a scorpion, ever, I channeled my inner squirrel monkey and thoughtfully munched it down.
After its soak in mescal, the scorpion tasted more like mescal than the assorted terrestrial arthropods I’ve eaten on prior tropical adventures. I gave it a rating of meh-minus, but the fruit was good. I’ll happily take a deep-fried tarantula over a mescal-soaked scorpion any day.
Flying over the sea from Miami to Cancún, I looked down on blobs and bands of sargassum “seaweed” floating towards the shore.
This massive sargassum outbreak is a new phenomenon, postulated to result from fertilizer run-off in the Amazon areas that have been converted to agriculture.
The resort cities across the Caribbean, including Miami, Cancún, and Tulum have been hit hard by sargassum washing up on the beaches, rotting and stinking. In Mexico, resorts are being protected by floating barriers designed to keep sargassum away. They do their best to intercept it at sea and haul it away before it can wash ashore. In the US sargassum has rights.
I had one night in Cancún before taking a puddle-jumper south to Punta Pajaros in the Sian Ka’an Biosphere. The outfitter that organized the trip, Yellow Dog Fly Fishing, recommended the Marriott Courtyard Hotel as clean, inexpensive, and close to the airport. What the outfitter didn’t mention is that the coconut-ginger ice cream served in the hotel restaurant is over-the-moon good, the garden is full of birds, and a resident coatimundi snuffles around the garden by the pool. It’s a truly dandy place to stay overnight.
From Cancún, we took a chartered single engine plane southward 45 minutes to an airstrip at Punta Pajaros.
From the airstrip, we were ferried across a lagoon in a panga, like an oversized dorry, and rode in the back of a truck 40 minutes down a dirt track to Playa Blanca Lodge. That’s four means of transport to get to the lodge.
The instant we arrived at the lodge, a margarita appeared in my hand.
The lodge recently upgraded to solar+battery power so the mini-split AC units kept humidity low in our cottages around the clock.
More than nice enough for me. Comfortable beds too.
Water from the well is noticeably salty, but we had fresh drinking water available in our rooms, and hot, brackish water for showering.
You put your rods in the rack and they get spirited to the boats before you get there, and washed down with brackish water when you return to the lodge. I removed my reels at night and cleaned the lines and reels with a cup of fresh water.
The normally white sand beach sported a thick band of sargassum, with more rolling in from the surf. The water remained clear along most shorelines, but on the shallower sections, sargassum rotted in the water, consuming dissolved oxygen, and tainting the water with stinky and toxic sulfur dioxide.
Tarpon can breath air and so hunted baitfish disabled by the anoxic water. Frigatebirds did likewise.
Gray Foxes are common on the grounds and surrounding woodland. In addition to the usual foxy fare of lizards, bugs, and baby birds, they munch on the assorted terrestrial crabs that wander the sandy grounds.
Our first night at the lodge, a fox stole one of two flip-flops off a cottage porch. The flip-flops belonged to Nate, a small animal vet from Idaho, who, in addition to flip-flops, had brought along his 20 year old son Calvin.
The next six days, quite a lot of fishing happened, some of which I’ll describe in subsequent posts. But for now, we’ll stick to the Lodge and its surrounds.
This hermit crab is so well armored no fox is going to make a dent, and might get his nose pinched if it tried. The ubiquitous Great-tailed Grackle marches across the upper left corner of the photo.
Ruins of a Mayan temple are a short walk down a mosquitoey trail through the woods.
A fox trotted down the trail ahead of me before darting into the thick woods to check on his collection of kiped footwear. A member of the staff was lucky enough to spot a jaguar on the road one night. Seeing a jaguar would have upstaged catching a Permit.
Our final evening we had a hermit crab race. The guests bet $20 each on which numbered crab of 30 would make it out of the sand ring first. My crab, #20, lost in the first elimination round. The ultimate winnings were contributed to the deserving staff who took such good care of us.
On the morning of 3 October 2025, I spotted a woman alone in the park across the street from our house. A pair of binoculars hung from her neck and she cradled a camera with a long lens. I always say ‘hi’ to birders in the park. Andrea Diamond, bubbling with excitement, told me she’d just spotted a Golden-winged Warbler, the first rare bird she had discovered on her own.
I came to know this elegant songbird during my childhood summers at a wildlife camp in West Virginia, but I had never seen one in Florida. Andrea relocated it quickly and I renewed my acquaintance with an old friend.
Golden-winged Warbler in All American Park, South Miami. Photo by local birder Himanshu Gupta.
For the next three days, South Florida’s birders flocked to the park and I became the Golden-winged Warbler Ambassador. Juan Valdez, one of the many birders who came to look for the warbler, also turned out to know the native plants. I learned that he works as an art museum curator and…wait… he fly fishes Biscayne Bay. Clearly my kind of guy.
Since then I have entertained Juan through The Eye of the Cormorant and he has delighted me with photos and texts when his fly fishing skills produce a particularly splendid result.
Juan with a bonefish caught on fly in Biscayne Bay.
Fast forward to late June of this year. Juan phones me one evening to say that his friend Andy had booked a week at a fancy fly fishing lodge in the Yucatan, but cannot go. Andy offered the trip to Juan, but Juan can’t go either. In the unlikely event that I am free the second week of August the trip is mine.
Playa Blanca Lodge is the sort of place I read about online in the outfitter catalogs. I drool longingly over the descriptions, check the cost, then exhale and close the webpage. With this gifted package I just had to get myself from Miami to Cancún, cover one night in a hotel, and tip the lodge staff and fishing guides.
I am definitely free the second week in August.
Wow.
Thanks Andy! Thanks Juan!
Playa Blanca Lodge is situated in the Sian Ka’an Biosphere Preserve on the Atlantic coast of the Yucatan Peninsula, located here on Google Maps.
My family visited Sian Ka’an twelve years ago while on vacation in Tulum. The Biosphere Preserve is a cross between the Everglades and the Lower Florida Keys before people made such a mess of things here in Florida. The Mayans, likewise, tried their best to screw up the hydrology of Sian Ka’an, but equipped only with stone tools and manual labor for chipping canals out of the limestone bedrock, and no artificial fertilizer to aid their agriculture, the harms they wrought were far less extensive than here in Florida.
The lower reaches of Sian Ka’an Biosphere include Espiritu Santo Bay, home to a healthy population of Permit(Trachinotus falcatus), a game fish in the jack family. Permit are wary, strong, and fast. The Permit is infamous among fly fishers for its capricious behavior, often rejecting a perfectly delivered fly and, on rare occasion, grabbing a fly from a botched cast. Permit fight hard, and have a large repertoire of escape tactics: scraping off a fly on a coral, crushing or straightening a fly’s hook, or grinding through the nylon leader on the floor of the bay.
A local attorney friend has been trying to catch a Permit for years with no success.
The most accomplished fisherman in my local fishing club writes: “I have presented over 1000 flies to Permit… caught one (winning a tournament in 1988) and been skunked ever since!!! There is no way I haven’t found to lose a hooked Permit!”
Juan recently caught a nice Permit in Biscayne Bay. He is amazing.
With only four years of fly fishing under my belt, I consider Permit to be out of my league. I’ve seen Permit in Biscayne Bay and the Keys, but I’ve never caught one on fly or even set my mind to trying. Last spring I followed a massive Permit in my kayak for half an hour, but despite my advancing as slowly as possible, the Permit would never let me approach closer than 125 feet.
My benefactor, Andy, who gave me his trip reservation, sent me a brief note:
“Catch a permit for me.”
Uh oh.
I ordered materials to tie Permit flies, producing an assortment of weighted crabby and shrimpy things in proven patterns recommended by the trip outfitter.
My ties of the Raghead Crab fly.
The weighted crab flies that Permit favor are hard to cast, so I would need serious practice.
In the vain hope of not trashing my right hand by excessively casting my fast-action 9wt fly rod, I sought a rod of similar weight but with a softer action. The company I picked had 8/9wt rod blanks available, but none assembled in the size I wanted. I had never built out a rod blank before, but I figured why would Al Gore invent the internet if not for instructing a novice such as myself?
Here’s the newly built rod, getting its epoxy coating on a rotating machine that prevents drips.
I left for the airport a few hours after the epoxy dried.
When the sun sets in Miami, our nocturnal biota makes its unseen entrance. The screaming parrots retire, replaced by soft-trilling screech owls. Limpkins stalk the canal banks, emitting eerie calls into the darkness. Night herons, pondering the nature of dark matter, exclaim “Quark!”.
Like the birds, Miami’s invertebrate community holds its own changing of the guard: day-hunting spiders take down their webs and nocturnal spiders weave theirs.
We have a grotto in the backyard where we can amble down steps cut into the limestone rock (duck the spider webs) and visit the surface of the Biscayne Aquifer sitting two meters below the level of the yard.
Starting from a grassy backyard, we cut the grotto with big yellow machines. I labored with a pickaxe to chop a stepped path into the rock wall. Having a safe way down, I planted Southern Maidenhair Ferns, pepperomia, and two tree seedlings: a cypress and a royal palm. With ready access to water, nature did the rest.
Sheltered by the geometry of its sheer walls, the grotto is a silent place. As night falls over the grotto, sometimes, just sometimes, a Miami Cave Crayfish wanders into the grotto from the top edge of the aquifer.
Miami Cave Crayfish (Procamberus milleri) in the grotto.
A few meters below the ground, the subterranean Miami Cave Crayfish (Procamberus milleri) resides in large pores within the oolitic limestone through which flows the Biscayne Aquifer. Biologists from US Fish and Wildlife Service only know this hard-to-find species from our backyard. It’s a genuine treat to see one.
The Miami Cave Crayfish was on schedule to be federally listed as “threatened”, but then, as part of Project 2025, the Trump Administration declared war on the Endangered Species Act and the process stopped. This story, in which I am deeply entangled, will be continued in a different post.
After dinner last night I was wading in the grotto in search of cave crayfish (no luck), when a movement on the rock wall caught my eye. Just above the water line, something gray, resembling a very large spider caught my eye. It had six legs, two spiked claws tucked in front, and long antennae that flicked about in all directions. It was 3” across, 7” including the antennae. Here’s the photo, taken in the light of my flashlight.
Recognize this thing? It’s a tailless whip-scorpion – my first one ever.
The Spotted Tailless Whip Scorpion (Phrynus marginemaculatus) is an arachnid in the order Amblypygi, native to South Florida, the Bahamas, Cuba, and Hispaniola. The antennae are actually modified legs and the claws are modified pedipalps. The spiked claws on this dude were sufficient inducement to keep my hands to myself.
My daughter, Vannak, received the photo by text and replied “nightmare fuel thank u”. Ever the thoughtful dad, I assured her that, although they’re large (“I was afraid of that”), they only come out at night.
I seem to have sprained my hand, so no fishing report this week. I am taking this setback as a chance to see more of summer’s offerings in our wooded yard in South Miami.
In between icing my hand and tying flies for an impending fly fishing trip to the Sian Ka’an Biosphere in the Yucatan, I have snapped opportune pics of some critters in the yard. An iPhone in the pocket favors providence.
Louisiana Waterthrush (Parkesia moticilla)
The first fall migrant warbler in our yard is always a Louisiana Waterthrush, on their way south from breeding grounds along the Appalachians’ streams. The first waterthrush of this fall’s migration appeared during breakfast today, 30 July, alerting me with its characteristically loud and bright “chip” call. It landed on a small table by the grill, then flitted down to the water’s edge to hunt for bugs, too distant for a photo. I got this grainy shot (shade + high digital magnification) later in the morning through the glass door next to my desk. Waterthrushes constantly bob their back-ends up and down, which appears here as blur.
Cuban Tree Frog (Osteopilus septentrionalis).
A Cuban Tree Frog was spoinking around on the glass in our front door one evening, allowing this photo, taken from inside the house. These big tree frogs ate all the native tree frogs in the suburbs, so they’re all we’ve got.
A baby Florida Racer aka Southern Black Racer (Coluber constrictor priapus).
I found this sweetie on the front porch hunting bugs and baby lizards. Wikipedia accurately describes its behavior: “Members of this species generally do not tolerate handling – even after months in captivity – and typically strike and flail wildly every time they are handled, often defecating a foul-smelling musk, a common defense against predators in snakes.” She chewed on my finger and made a stink, but since neither defense had any deterrent effect, she settled down enough to let me snap a photo, left-handed.
Green Anole (Anolis carolinensis x porcatus)
Green Anoles change color between green and brown. The Green Anoles in Miami are all hybrids between the Carolina Anole and its ancestor, the Cuban Green Anole. It coexists with the other invasive exotic anoles by holding a unique niche in the trees, often high up.
Atala Butterfly (Eumaeus atala).
Thought to be extinct, Atalas were saved by local naturalist Roger Hammer, who stumbled onto an unexpected pocket of survivors. Roger surreptitiously introduced their larvae into the cycad collection at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, to the consternation of Fairchild’s Curator of Cycads. Atalas recovered and now lay eggs on the native cycad species, the Coontie, growing in our front yard. The larvae chew our lush Coonties to a tangle of brown stems while producing a cloud of small, colorful butterflies. The Coontie stores reserves in a big, starchy root and grows back.
Eastern Screech Owl (Megascops asio).
Mr. Screech Owl revealed his location by singing in the late afternoon when I ventured behind a tree to, um, water the plants. The lighting was all wrong, but it kind of worked anyway – such is the chance encounter.
Crab Fly
I’ve been tying a variety of crabby-looking flies in the hopes of fooling a Permit, a big tropical fish that eats crabs but which is notoriously wary, persnickety, and difficult to catch on fly. This fly is a mix of patterns that I adapted from various tyers. The body is cut from a coconut fiber kitchen scrub pad, the legs & claws I made from a fuzzy cord called “ultra chenille”, and the eyes I made from nylon monofilament and sparkly nail polish.
Four days of icing and rest have rejuvenated my sore forearm, so it’s time to write up the fishing trip responsible for its unhappy condition.
In short, I wore out my arm fighting a mess of high energy fish on a fly rod. If you don’t want to read about fly fishing, you can enjoy the pretty photos and get back to swatting mosquitoes.
* * *
Last year I learned that a former FIU student of mine from 1994 had become a fishing charter captain. I looked him up and gave him a call. Capt. Mike Haines had relocated his business from Flamingo, where I fish regularly, to Jupiter Florida, two hours north of me, where I never fish. Mike mentioned that he sometimes takes fly fishers out for albies in the summer.
A small member of the tuna tribe, Euthynnus alletteratus resides in the Atlantic and Mediterranean. In New England their common name is the undignified Little Tunny. Down here in South Florida, these fish are larger, stronger, and are called False Albacore, or “albies” for short (fortunately the name “falsies” was already taken). Some fishers call them “bonito”, which they are not. Whatever you call them, albies are spectacular fish, silver with black and blue vermiculated striping on the back.
Albies swim 40 mph in pursuit of their sardine prey or when escaping fast predators such as marlin or mako sharks. They’re famous for wearing out fishermen with their long, powerful runs and their extraordinary stamina.
Summer mosquitoes have arrived in force in South Everglades, so I welcomed the news when Mike let me know the albies were on the ocean off Jupiter. We settled on a charter for July 1st and I invited my neighbor Rex to join us.
In the meantime, I read up on albies and consulted knowledgeable friends. In New England, albies feed on tiny baitfish, so small fishy flies are the ticket. Down here in Florida, albies feed on larger prey, Spanish Sardines 3-5” long.
Spanish Sardine (from the web)
I tied up some mimics: 3-5” versions of Lefty’s Deceiver in colors that match the Spanish Sardine.
Sometimes, albies feed on the surface, so I made some sparkly poppers as well.
Local fly fishing friends mentioned getting albies on Clouser Deep Minnows, which I had already tied in gray over white.
For rods, I packed a conventional 9wt rigged with a floating line as well as my 7wt two-hander (13’ Spey rod) rigged with an intermediate line that sinks slowly. All my advisors recommended a sinking line when fish are feeding below the surface or when floating sargassum seaweed is present. My grumpy right elbow prefers casting the two-handed rod.
Neighbor Rex knows better than to mess with fly gear – he brought a substantial spinning rod.
We caught up with Mike at the dock where he had some small baitfish, pilchards, in the live well of his boat. A Little Blue Heron showed up, hoping Mike had neglected to close the lid.
Mike cruised us out the inlet to the ocean and selected his spot about half a mile off the shore and spot-locked us in place with the trolling motor. Big fish broke the surface. Maybe albies are everywhere, or perhaps one Captain Mike Haines knows exactly where to look for them.
Mike suggested I use a smallish white fly that that would match the baitfish in his livewell. Best listen to the pro. I selected the Clouser to fish sub-surface on the two-handed setup.
While I was doodling with flies and leaders Mike tossed out half a dozen little pilchards and the water exploded. Rex cast his spinning lure over the fray and hooked up on his first albie of the day. Despite his beefy spinning rod, Rex was outgunned as that albie ran him ragged. Mike loaned him an even bigger rod for the next one.
My fly was ready, and Mike said to go ahead and cast, despite another albie on Rex’s line still racing around in the ocean. I cast my fly a short distance, let it sink five seconds, and started the retrieve. WHAM! An albie grabbed the fly and roared off, snapping the 16lb tippet. I was not even using the lightest tippet recommended. Mike informed me that, contrary to online tutorials from the New England albie fishers, the big albies in South Florida are not leader-shy, Rather than lightening the drag and risking being spooled, he suggested I scale up to 25 or 30 pound tippet instead. I went to 25 pound and sure enough, another albie roared off with the fly, pulling the remaining fly line off the reel plus a hundred yards of backing with the drag set high.
Rex and I were “doubled up”, in the lingo of boat-fishing. The two albies wove back and forth helter-skelter while Mike danced about the boat, threading Rex’s spinning rod over or under my 13’ two-handed fly rod as the fish weaves warranted. Rex has a bad knee and sensibly did not engage me in the two albie tango on a small boat.
Like some sharks, albies can’t flap their operculi to pump water over their gills, so they respire by opening their mouths as they swim, a process known as ram ventilation. Accordingly, when you release an albie, you hold it by the tail (caudal peduncle) and thrust it head first into the water to give it some speed and push water through the gills.
Albie caught on gray/white #2 Clouser & 9wt full intermediate line using the 7wt Spey rod.
After catching and releasing couple of albies on the subsurface setup, I switched to the surface popper on the floating line for the fun of watching fish blow up a fly in plain sight.
A couple of albies and dozens of blue runners exploded on the popper in rapid succession. We watched them streak through the water and hit the fly in a blast of spray. I could shake most of the blue runners free of the popper, but the albies stuck and roared off.
After one popper eat by an albie, the fly line looped around my left hand and jammed as the fish made its run and before the loose line had fully cleared the rod guides. Fortunately the tippet broke. Without a breakable tippet in that situation, a fly fisher can lose a finger. Some people fish a straight 60 pound fluorocarbon leader for tarpon and other strong fish, but I have considered it too dangerous. This experience only solidified my decision to stick with breakable tippets. I press the barbs down on my flies so a fish can more easily rid itself of the fly after a break-off.
I tried one of my beautiful sardine flies, but the fish had no interest in it. Too big for today, I guess. I tied on a heavily chewed Clouser and the fish were back on it in an instant. Oh well, they know what they want to eat… some big fish somewhere will want those sardine flies.
I’d caught five albies and couldn’t resist tossing the fly another time. A chunky blue runner grabbed it, pulled line off the real, and shot straight down 40 feet. I bent the rod double but it refused to budge.
The absurdly strong Blue Runner that parked under the boat. Notice how rounded and chunky this little jack species is.
Getting that runner up to the boat to release it overworked my already tired right forearm. I wound up my line, reluctantly – sigh. It’s hard to leave when great fish are still biting. Rex was smarter and quit after his 4th albie.
We came back to the inlet and fished a dock for snook while admiring the storm clouds building.
Rex caught one snook on a pilchard, but they wouldn’t take my fly. Instead, it caught a Jack Crevalle…
Jack Crevalle with the yellow fins and black spots.
… plus a small Ladyfish that squirted poop all over me before I could release it. I’ve learned to aim Ladyfish away from me and the boat before they let loose, but this one was too fast. Another reason I carry a change of clothes in the car.
* * *
In contrast to bonefish, our #1 piscine speed demon, taking albies on fly requires more brawn than brain. They are truly gorgeous fish though, and especially thrilling when they hit on the surface. Albies are better kept in the ocean than served at the table, but blue runners are superb eating. I kept a few medium-sized runners, Mike filleted them (thanks Mike!), and I prepared a little sashimi for a snack and a big bowl of ceviche that was our dinner for the next two nights.
Gray finds Blue Runner sashimi the perfect complement to late afternoon paperwork.
We’ve all had the odd day in which few things go right but it works out and still counts as a good day. Here’s mine.
I rise at 3:10 am to fish the Ten Thousand Islands, where Everglades National Park meets the Gulf of Mexico. The weather forecast includes low hourly odds of light rain throughout the day, with 45% cumulative odds overall.
Predawn boat check at the marina in Chokoloskee reveals the waterproof controller for the trolling motor isn’t working. I carry tools in the boat and the fix proves simple: disassemble, remove and reinsert batteries, reassemble.
My first destination is Pavilion Key, a 12-mile run to the south through the maze of islands. About halfway there the wind comes up, raising waves that break on the deck of my little skiff. I turn on the bilge pump and head for the closest of approximately 10,000 mangrove keys in the vicinity. Then the sky opens. The rain is warm but I throw on my rain suit so at least my underwear stays dry.
The mangrove key occupies less than an acre, so I entertain myself fishing back and forth along the lee mangrove edge while I wait out the squall. I know a rainbow is coming. In this wind the fly rod is outgunned, so I slum it and take out the spinning rod (oh, the shame). A small ladyfish pecks at my lure but I find no “serious” fish.
And so goes fishing throughout the morning, substituting small saltwater catfish on the open flats for the small ladyfish near the mangroves. Whenever I feel the catfish’s telltale quiver as it nibbles the lure’s tail, I yank the lure away. In all, I catch only two of these swimming mucus bombs. In time, the storm moves north, and my clothes dry out in the sun and wind. A faint rainbow appears. I have no complaints.
Fast forward through the morning to a nameless mangrove creek I’ve been wanting to explore, situated 15 miles south of the launch. Tight creeks like this one are buggy this time of year. Somehow the storm added a cup of saltwater to the ziplock bag holding my mosquito head net. It’s fine – wind is keeping the mosquitoes at bay, mostly.
I get out the push pole and head in at the start of the incoming tide, the wind at my back. I drift up the creek, pausing with the stick anchor to cast in front of the boat. A handsome 22 inch redfish (aka Red Drum) inhales the lure and roars down the creek for open water. A redfish counts as a “serious” fish.
Proof of concept. I stow the spinning rod and take out a fly rod. Fly casting in a mangrove creek is like doing cartwheels through a yarn store while wearing a Velcro suit. The wind adds a stochastic element to the fly’s trajectory that wipes from the game my last vestige of skill. I pole out against the wind and current and get a proper workout.
It’s sunny now but wind still riles the open water of the Gulf. I take the long way back, winding through the sheltered bays and rivers of the back country.
The day has been a tour of the places in Peter Matheissen’s books Killing Mr. Watson and Shadow Country.
At 3:30 pm, the Miccosukee Police stop all eastbound traffic on the Tamiami Trail. I am car #11 in a line that will, in time, extend back for miles as wildfires in the east Everglades force closure of road after road.
A storm forms to the north, but the wind is still pushing from the south and will not direct it over the fire.
We are parked near the Valuejet Memorial, about 40 minutes from home. I know this area – it’s a good spot for bass. I’m tempted to pull out the fly rod again, but two large alligators get the same idea, so maybe not.
We are told our wait will be at least six hours. I invite some friendly Everglades mosquitoes into the car to keep me company.
A mere four hours later the wind changes direction and the police let us through. The fire is impressive.
I roll in at 8 pm. Expecting a 6+ hour wait, I had consumed an emergency granola bar for dinner, but Gray has a better menu ready for my second dinner. Bless her.
The Blue Catfish (Ictalurus furcatus), is native to the Mississippi Valley, Gulf Coast, and east coast rivers of Central America:
In 1974, the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources introduced Blue Catfish to rivers on the western side of Chesapeake Bay. The DWR biologists assumed these catfish would remain confined to the freshwater systems. Their distribution along most of the Gulf coast should have been a hint that Blue Catfish tolerate salt water – duh.
Blue Catfish took no time moving into the saltwater and spreading throughout the Chesapeake. In the Bay they grow to over 50 pounds and devour every blue crab, clam, and menhaden in their path. The only good news is that Blue Catfish are delicious.
With fuel prices up, Gray and I took the EV north to visit family and friends, 4577 miles in all.
I squeezed in a bit of fishing, of course. Visiting Gray’s family on the Eastern Shore of Maryland gives me a chance to fish with Jon Shaw, the husband of Gray’s second cousin. We fished off the family farm dock that extends into the Chester River, a brackish tributary of the Chesapeake Bay.
Jon and I bait-fished for a family dinner, finding 6-12 pound catfish off the end of the dock. Our first afternoon together Jon caught four catfish and I caught zero. Hmm.
To catch catfish as well Jon, I realized I’d have to ignore what he says (tie on a heavy leader and a 7/0 or 9/0 circle hook), and do what he does (tie on a light leader and a 3/0 or 5/0 circle hook). The discrepancy between his instructions and his practice should have come as no surprise to me insofar as all fishermen are liars, myself excepted. The second day I rigged my rod like his and did a lot better.
Catfish overflowed Jon’s dinky cooler, so we filleted some on the spot to make them fit.
With enough catfish to feed Gray’ cousins and plenty to freeze, I switched to fly fishing. Sitting on the dock near shore, I tied on a favorite snook fly, the gray over white Clouser Deep Minnow. The water swirled under my feet, so I flipped the fly beyond the swirl- nothing – try again – boom. A perfect dinner-sized Striped Bass, known locally as rockfish.
The river was closed for rockfish for six more days of spawning season, so my catch went back in the river to make more of them.
I caught a few little White Perch on fly. They also went back in the river – too small.
Another fish took the fly and fought above its weight, attempting the old run-under-the-dock-and-break-your-fly-rod-or-cut-your-line maneuver. When it flashed bronze instead of silver, I realized it was not another rockfish, but rather a Channel Catfish (Ictalurus punctatus). I’d never taken one on fly. It’s a spirited gamefish.
Back at the barn, Jon and I filleted Blue Catfish. The females were full of eggs and the stomach of one spilled a load of Atlantic Ribbed Mussels (Geukensia demissa). The Blue Catfish is mostly head and stomach, yielding one pound of meat for each four pounds of catch. Jon put the ample carcasses out for his resident Bald Eagles and we all had a fine dinner.
Eye of the Cormorant 