By: Dr. Aaron Adams
It never ceases to amaze me how a fish so large can disappear in water so 
skinny. But that’s exactly what had just happened. The cast was in the air and both the guide and I lost sight of the permit just 50 feet away. I fished the fly as if the fish was still there, but it showed itself one more time, at 70 feet and moving away, before heading out of sight for good. That was the way the week went for me – the permit somehow knew where I was and where I was casting…and went the other way. But this was to be expected, I’ve been in a bit of a permit slump of late, and this was par for the course.
Still, the Palometa Club, in Ascension Bay, Mexico, is a good place to work out the kinks. If the permit are acting snotty, there are plenty of bonefish on the flats, and tarpon and snook in the backcountry. This is why we were hosting a Traveling Angler Trip at the Palometa Club for the second year in a row, the permit fishing is fantastic – just a week prior a guest landed the 1,000th permit landed at the Club – but there is a lot more to chase as well.
The permit fishery is primarily within Ascension Bay, though sometimes the guides will make the run to Espiritu Santo Bay. All of the fishing grounds are within the Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve, which has strict controls on everything from 
development (very little is allowed) to the number of tour guides (including fishing guides) that can be licensed. The combination of habitat protection and limits on effort are what have kept the fishery healthy. In fact, since nets were banned approximately 15 years ago, the number of size of bonefish has increased.
The goal of the anglers on this Traveling Angler trip was to tag permit with “spaghetti tags” external tags with identification numbers. By tracking where permit were tagged and then the locations of their recapture, we can get a better idea of their movements. The key question is – is the protected area large enough to protect the fishery, or are permit moving outside of the Reserve into unprotected areas?
Given my current slump with permit and the fact that I didn’t catch any during the trip, I’m a bit fuzzy on who caught what. But I have it on good authority that 7 permit were caught and tagged during the week, adding to the impressive total of permit caught (many of them tagged) at the Palometa Club.
Maybe next year I’ll tag one too.
