Catch of the Week - June 13, 2014

The week's prize catch consisted of two beautiful permit fish, each weighing about 30 to 40 pounds. The size of these coastal fish was not bad at all – considering that the Florida Fish and Wildlife conservation Commission reports that so far, the state’s biggest catch weighed in at 56 pounds and 2 ounces.

On this fishing trip, Shawn and Rick of Jacksonville, Florida, the two anglers responsible for bringing in the May 31 catch, pretty much collected the maximum permit harvest which places a per vessel limit of two permits measuring 22” or more.

Like all fish for sport, permit must be brought to shore with heads, tails, and fins intact. In the waters of Florida, putting this prize catch in your basket can be quite a challenge because permit can only be caught using hook and line. If you plan to have permit worthy of being called the catch of the week, put away your artificial lures because they won’t do any good. This Florida pompano look-alike prefers shrimp, clams, and small fish for its regular diet, but anglers get the best results when they cast live crabs as bait. Although fishers can get permits throughout the year, the best time for permit fishing is from April to October, the months when the species spawns.

Permits enjoy relatively long lives; experts estimate that they survive beyond 23 years, the age of a 3-foot specimen caught from the Florida fishing area. More than half of permits landed are caught not by commercial fishers but by anglers out for the sport. The annual catch of permit will be somewhere in the vicinity of 135,000 pounds, less than a third of the 2008 pompano catch, which came up to 932,797 pounds.

Little is known about the actual size of the permit population, and research is being done about the species. This lack of information, however, has not deterred seasoned fishermen from knowing exactly where to patiently catch their live baits. The best time to try for a good-sized permit in Key West, Florida is from April to October, but anglers have been known to catch them year-round.

If you want a shot at reeling in permit as the featured catch of the week, the best place to cast your hook and line is Key West. Most permits hauled in weigh about 25 pounds; this means that with their 40 and 50 pound catch, Shawn and Rick really had a moment extremely worthy of sharing on Key West Top Guides.