The IGFA world record of 60 pounds was caught in Ilha do Mel, an island off the coast of Brazil. The area’s lack of pressure may have been a contributing factor. Ninety-five percent of the 100-square-mile island is a permanent environmental conservation area. It allows only 5,000 visitors per day.
Yes, you can keep a permit in Florida, but there are rules aplenty. For example, the Special Permit Zone, a swath of state and federal waters that covers South Florida and the Florida Keys. The area is closed April 1-July 31. The daily bag limit is one per angler. Use of multiple hooks in conjunction with live or dead bait is prohibited. The fillets have been described as meaty and chewy like steak.
To tell a small permit apart from its cousin, the pompano, check out the fish’s chin, belly and fins. Small permit have orange patches in those spots, while pompano have yellow coloring.
The permit’s large eyes are on the sides of its head and can rotate almost 360 degrees, giving the fish an exceptional field of vision.
Aside from depredation by sharks and barracuda, the leading cause of death for permit is parasites. They are prone to invaders that affect the gills and intestines, which often leads to death by toxins or respiratory failure.
Permit have been found in the western Atlantic as far north as Massachusetts, but there is no record of a permit being caught recreationally in the Bay State.
Belize has become one of the world’s hotspots for permit. The two main reasons for this are the mandatory catch-and-release regulations for permit, tarpon and bonefish implemented in 2008, and the nationwide gill-net ban that became law in 2019.
Read Next: The Best Permit Fishing in Belize
When hooked on the flats, the permit’s initial run will likely include rubbing or bumping its head on the bottom in an effort to disengage the hook or snag the line.
If you caught a permit in Australia, Japan or the Red Sea, that wasn’t a permit. That was a snubnose pompano, an Indo-Pacific species that mimics the permit in appearance and behavior.
