The House Of Permit

In all my trips saltwater fishing I’ve never landed a permit. I’ve cast to them in the Florida keys, in Los Roques Venezuela, and a few other places. But I’ve never been on a trip where that would be the primary target. 

About two months ago I got emails from two separate people, on the same day telling me we should check out this new lodge opening up in Mexico. Immediately I knew that was a sign, I hadn’t booked a spring trip and now I knew why. I did some investigating, and fired off an email and locked in a week. 

The lodge is called Beh Kay, located in the Sian Ka’an Biosphere, in the Yucatán peninsula. The lodge fished a remote bay south of Ascencion bay, called Espiritu Santo Bay. This bay is a major permit fishery with very few lodges. 

I made some calls and rounded up a group of 8 anglers. Mostly guys that I knew and had travelled with before. Three of the anglers I had been fishing with for over 20 years. 

I started preparations for the trip.  The first thing I needed to do was find out what flies the guides would want us to fish, so I could get to work tying.  I knew in that part of the world that there were three flies I was going to need. Rag head crabs, with yellow eyes, squimps, and hopefully floating crabs. Upon further investigation I included Strong Arm Rag Heads to the lineup. I’m glad I added the Stron Arm Rag Heads to the list because that’s exactly what the guides wanted. While and Tan ones with medium Yellow or Red lead eyes. 

We spent the first night in Cancun. The next morning we were met early with a shuttle to the private airport where we boarded two small planes and flew into a small airstrip in the jungle. We were picked up by two of the guides and made our way to the lodge. Our excitement level was high, and the guides were hit with a million questions on the hour long drive through the jungle. 

We arrived at the lodge and met our host Lucas, who gave us the tour and we settled into our rooms. The guides helped us to rig rods and choose flies. Beh Kay is a Sage Experience lodge, so they had Sage R8 Salts for guests to use. The rod selection for each day would basically be an 8, 9, and 10wt, for bonefish, permit, and tarpon.

The next morning everyone was up early, ready for our first day of fishing. We left the lodge around 7:15 and made our way up to the small fishing village of Punta Herrero where the boats were docked. We all loaded up into the new flats skiffs, which were clones of Hells Bay Professionals. We motored out into the bay and went straight to an island in the mouth of the bay. There were three of our boats fishing the northern point of the island, and almost immediately one of the guys was into a permit. We ended up hooking 6 permit that day and landing 4. This place did not disappoint.

As the week progressed the winds kicked up, but we still found fish. Everyday we saw and had shots at permit, bonefish, and tarpon. Permit was our main focus, and we found them. We had schools, singles, pairs, and everything else you could imagine, whether from the boat or wading.

By the end of the week we had landed 12 permit with 16 hooked. 5 of the anglers had landed their first permit, with many bonefish and tarpon landed as well. On the last night everyone was ready to rebook for next year. It looks like we will need two weeks next time.