Published in the February 2001 edition of "The Complete Fly
Fisherman" Africa's fresh and salt water fly fishing magazine.
Steve
Starling
Editors
note: With the spotlight on sight-fishing for pompano (Trachinotus
blochii) along our shores and especially in the Seychelles, we are
pleased to report that our Australian and Pacific Field Editor,
Steve Starling, finally managed to land a sizeable specimen on fly.
In this article be attempts to answer a few of the many questions
still surrounding this unfathomable and highly prized species. The
pompano is fondly referred to as the Indo-Pacific "permit",
both here in South Africa and in Australia.
There
are moments in our fly fishing lives when it is reasonable to question
the notion that this is a relaxing, contemplative pursuit. The trigger
for these doubts can come in many forms, such as the explosive detonation
of a big kingfish inhaling a popping fly, the wild slashing of a
marlin bill behind a skipping teaser, or that frozen instant when
a trophy trout inspects our finest offering, before turning away
in disdain. Such moments are guaranteed to increase the pulse rate,
moisten the palms and weaken the knees of even a hardened angler.
Truth be told, they are anything but relaxing!
For
me, the ultimate in self-induced piscatorial stress is the pressure
I inevitably put on myself while sight-casting a fly to a big and
highly desirable target. The first time I prepared to throw a flashy
profile at a lit-up billfish in the teaser spread, I could barely
keep my breakfast down. I can't imagine that the next time will
be any different. Why do we do it? Why do we set ourselves difficult
goals, and run such obviously high risks of failure in the pursuit
of our sport? I suspect that the motives are not that different
from those that drives a mountaineer to tackle an impossible rock
face. In their purest form, these urges to really push the barriers,
may well be the very differentiator that separates man from beast
and the reason that man has been able to stand upon the cratered
surface of the moon and gaze back at our blue home across the silent
void of space.
OF
TACKLE AND TACTICS
In
the overall scheme of things, catching a pompano or Indo-Pacific
permit on fly might not rate up there alongside the efforts of Neil
Armstrong, but for a while, in the mid and late 1990s, I'd started
to think that I had more chance of completing a successful moon
walk than landing one of these exasperating fish on fur and feathers!
When
it finally happened, the result was something of an anti-climax.
At about one pound, the fish in question would have been right at
home in a modest aquarium. But at least it was a start.
My
mini-pompano came from Eco Beach, south of Broome, in Western Australia.
While I was there, the resident fly fishing guide, Dan O'Sullivan,
showed me scores more of these fish - including a few that were
clearly in the 12 to 15lb range. As usual, however, seeing permit
or pompano in the shallows and catching them with a fly rod proved
to be two very different matters. My hair is falling out fast enough,
without such help!
I had
a hunch that if I was going to crack the pompano/permit challenge
in a more impressive manner, it would be in my favourite tropical
stomping grounds on the western side of Cape York Peninsula, in
the Australian state of Queensland. My annual visits to this tropical
region on the live aboard charter vessel Capricorn Mist had already
given me dozens of fly rod shots at Indo-Pacific permit, and I'd
even hooked a reasonable specimen, only to watch in stunned amazement
as it rubbed its jaw on the sand and rid itself of my fly just 30
seconds after eating it!
Permit
caught on Carpentaria Seafaris
WORDS
OF WISDOM
Each
season for the past five years, the Capricorn Mist skipper, Greg
Bethune, has been able to fit a few more pieces into the slowly
growing pompano puzzle. Since landing a beautiful 17lb specimen
on a Clouser Minnow fished "blind" in a Cape river mouth
in the mid-1990s, Greg has gone on to sight-fish another nine or
ten of these wonderful fish, all of them in the 12 to 16lb range.
Along
the way, Greg has also guided another dozen or more lucky anglers
to their first fly rod pompano. The total tally on this difficult
target by Greg's Carpentaria Seafaris' operation (www.seafaris.com)
is therefore in excess of 20 fish landed (and mostly released),
with about the same number again hooked and lost in various ways.
While 40 fish may not sound like a lot, the tally undeniably qualifies
Greg Bethune as the closest thing we have to an Australian "expert"
on this species, much as he would dislike that description himself.
I therefore
listened carefully to Greg's advice. Foremost was his suggestion
that I visit the Cape during late August, September or October and
choose a set of tides with fairly significant lows occurring mid-morning,
with a run-in through the middle of the day and early afternoon.
Most of Greg's productive contacts had taken place on dead low water
and during the first hour or two of the making tide. He was definitely
seeing more and more of these fish as September rolled on, despite
having caught them as early as April and as late as November. I
optimised my chances and picked the second week in September, with
exactly the tides he'd nominated during the early part of my visit.
PUTTING
IT TOGETHER
I love
it when a plan comes together, and this one certainly did - on just
the second morning of my trip! Our first cruise past the sand bank
on the northern side of the river mouth an hour before low water,
revealed a scattering of hefty golden trevally (Gnathanodon speciosus)
already feeding hard. I resisted the urge to make a cast and we
kept looking. Eventually, we were rewarded with the tell-tale silver
flash of a broad, flat flank turning in the sun. Permit! Soon there
were other flashes, then a dark smudge in the water - a whole school
of permit working upstream along the sand bank edge against the
last of the dying run-out tide. This looked good!
Beaching
the skiff, we climbed out onto the sand and positioned ourselves
for an ambush. As the school approached, it appeared to grow larger
and larger. At a conservative estimate, there were well over 100
fish in that rippling shoal, and I could barely stop my hands shaking
long enough to unhook the crab fly from my rod and begin pulling
line off for a cast. Of course, it was never going to be that easy,
and my first dozen casts - including a few that seemed right on
the money - were totally ignored. It was hair pulling time again!
Over the next 25 minutes, the large school broke into at least three
or four separate pods, several of them working circuits or "beats"
that brought them back within casting range from time to time. Greg
and I continued to achieve the odd good cast, and we were now joined
by our fellow Capricorn Mist crew members, who spread out along
the extended sand bar as the tide finally began to push in.
Suddenly
I was faced with one of those golden opportunities that come along
all too infrequently in fishing. A loose V-formation of 15 or 20
fish were working their way through a newly formed bay in the sand
bar, on a curving track that led them in my direction. They were
in water so shallow that their yellowish sickle fins and tail tips
were occasionally scything the surface and the frequent flashes
of turning fish seemed like bright signal mirrors in the late morning
sun.
Taking
a deep breath, I made a measuring cast of perhaps 60 feet, stripped
in the line and waited. Within 30 seconds, the fish closed on my
measured mark. I swallowed, false cast twice, hauled and shot the
weighted Del's Merkin crab fly at them. It plinked into the water
maybe six to nine feet ahead of the lead fish, which continued at
walking pace right over the fly. I stripped once to move the fly
and paused. Nothing. At least three of the lead fish had now passed
the artificial crab without so much as a sideways glance. I pulled
again - a measured, steady strip of perhaps 18 inches. I'm convinced
that I was holding my breath. Certainly, I could hear my pulse pounding
in my ears.
I paused
at the end of that critical strip and an amazing thing happened.
A fish, about four back in the ranks, suddenly changed its swimming
pattern completely. In fact, its whole body language transformed
in an instant. Its fins bristled; it swerved, pumped forward with
much stronger kicks and stood on its nose, breaking the surface
with its upper tail lobe. At the same moment there was a strong
tug on the line in my hand and I instinctively pulled back, then
lifted the rod. Everything came up tight!
"Got
him!" I cried. "Got him on! Got a permit! Yee-haa!"
Greg
let out an even louder yahoo and began cranking in his loose line,
passing up an easy shot at the same pod, which still hadn't spooked.
I could see my fish in the middle of them, flashing, twisting and
shaking its head. Gradually, they all began to swim faster and headed
out of the bay into the open, slightly deeper water of the channel
edge. I still had colour on jiny fish and could see the dark smudge
of the others around it. I was back on the reel and losing line
slowly against the drag, still with a few yards of fly line wrapped
over the backing load on my Predator reel.
"I
thought you said these things could fight?" I jokingly
called to Greg as he waded over to join me. At that point the fly-line-to-backing
connection rattled through the snake guides and I lost sight of
the fish, but a minute or so later I pumped the tail of the line
onto the spool again and was rewarded with a dull blink of mustard
and silver from the slugging fish, which still seemed to be swimming
with at least three or four of its school mates.
"How
long have I had it on?" I nervously asked Greg, pumping
smoothly on the deeply plugging fish. "Um, just on eight
minutes," he replied, consulting his watch. "Hope
you haven't got anything planned for the next half-an-hour or so?"
"C'mon," I laughed, "I reckon I'll have
it on the beach inside 12 minutes. Fourteen at most."
At
the 10-minute mark in the fight, the fly line clicked up through
the guides again and disappeared smoothly into the water. Then the
fish bucked once, twice, three times... and lit the afterburner.
I've certainly experienced faster runs, but few from a fish that
size with so much power and determination. At the end of it, I estimated
that I had at least 150 yards of fluorescent pink backing outside
the rod tip, plus the full 35 yards of fly line, three feet or so
of leader butt and that one other little bit I was so concerned
about - the six feet of 101b fluorocarbon tippet! We considered
going after the fish in the dinghy, but in the end I opted to stay
on the slowly flooding sand bar and work it back with the making
tide. It was a long, slow job.
TOUGH
OPPONENT
Getting
it into the net
At
the 42-minute mark in the encounter, with a sense of relief bordering
on euphoria, I finally swum the tiring fish up onto the edge of
the flat and tailed it. I was so emotionally drained, I could barely
raise a "whoopee" for Greg' s video camera, and as I lifted
the fish it twisted and slipped from my grip back into the river.
Exhausted as it was, it took me another six agonising minutes to
get that permit back and tail it again. Those were not enjoyable
minutes! We shot a full roll of slide film, and despite frequent
dips back into the flooding tide, it was obvious that the fish was
unlikely to survive release. Reluctantly, I opted to keep it and
have a fibre glass mount made. Weighed an hour or two later, my
first decent permit topped 141/41bs - I was ecstatic!
Over
the next two days, our group went on to hook another eight permit
at that same spot, landing three more between 12 and 161, including
an exciting double header that saw the two anglers hook up within
a short cast of each other. Several other fish broke off after long
runs. I pulled the hook on another one myself and had several more
good shots and one nudge, but failed to add to my tally. All the
same, it was some of the most exciting fly fishing I've been involved
in.
A week
or two later, on less ideal tides and under overcast skies that
made sight-fishing difficult, we returned to the same region and
plucked another pair of 12lb fly rod pompano or permit from a different
river mouth, both of them falling to experienced South African fly
rodder, Mark Yelland. We were finally starting to get some sort
of a feel for these difficult fish, and adding pieces to the puzzle.
MORE
QUESTIONS THAN ANSWERS
In
the end, however, far more questions remain than have been answered.
For example, what were the fish doing as they milled, circled and
daisy-chained in groups, pods and sometimes large schools? Were
they feeding? Or were they waiting to gain access to feeding grounds
with the rising tide? Could they perhaps have been spawning?
We
did a thorough autopsy on one of the few specimens we killed and
its stomach contents revealed a double handful of well-crushed bi-valve
shellfish. Some of these had shells I/8th inch thick which would
have required a solid blow from a hammer to be broken up as thoroughly
as they were. Not that the pompano or permit (fittingly known as
an "oyster cracker" in some parts of Australia) needs
a hammer. In the back, of its long, soft throat is a set of bone-hard
crushers that would make short work of a finger!
Greg
Bethune has now examined half a dozen permit stomachs, and shellfish
have always dominated their contents, although occasionally there
will be a tiny crab or pieces of a slightly larger one. Clearly,
all of this food is obtained on the seabed or even by rooting under
it and sucking up tit-bits with that strange, down-turned mouth.
But how are buried food items detected? What sensory organs are
contained in the bulbous head of the Indo-Pacific permit? Super
smell receptors? Echo-location gear? Organs for detecting tiny electrical
discharges? And is their eyesight brilliantly sharp or myopically
inadequate? Are they ignoring and rejecting our, flies on so many
occasions because they don't pass the sight/smell/taste/sonar/electricaI
test, or simply because they can't see them? If only we knew.
WHAT
WE DO KNOW
What
we do know is that there are just a handful of places along the
Australian coastline where these amazing fish occur regularly in
significant numbers over shallow flats, and where they can therefore
be sight-fished with fly gear. The best of these locations is Cape
York. Another good venue for sight-fishing to them is the Seychelles,
where anglers are now actively targeting this species.
We
also know that, so far, the majority of these fish landed have succumbed
to crab flies, imitation shrimp and prawn patterns and, less frequently,
plain old Clouser Minnows. It also seems that placement and retrieve
are critical, with the fly needing to be presented at or below the
level of the fish's eyes, moved once, then paused and preferably
not moved again until it's eaten or ignored. Greg Bethune is a great
believer in getting the fly straight out of there if it's passed
up and quickly re-presenting it - sometimes up to a dozen times
on an individual fish or pod.
OF
TACKLE AND TACTICS
American
fly rodder Del Brown is the acknowledged world leader in catching
the "original" Atlantic permit (Trachinotus faicatus)
on fly, with over 400 of these fish to his credit, including several
world records (see the fact box concerning the relationship between
the Indo-Pacific and Atlantic permit species.) Del Brown is also
the originator of the Merkin crab fly (although he reputedly hates
that name) a pattern that is proving at least occasionally effective
on our local version of the permit.
It
would certainly be wonderful to bring someone like Del Brown to
Australia or the Seychelles, and to pass on his knowledge and reveal
any major differences in the behaviour patterns and responses of
the Atlantic and Indo-Pacific to be a challenging, frustrating and
occasionally very rewarding species. American anglers to whom I
have spoken who have now caught both types, say that they are very
similar, but that our local version is, if anything, tougher to
fool and a more dogged opponent on the line once hooked. Clearly,
that is saying something.
We
have a long way to go before truly coming to grips with the Indo-Pacific
permit as a regular fly rod target. Some exciting pioneering work
remains to be done to follow up on the wonderful early advances
already made by Greg Bethune and others, who have added important
pieces to the jigsaw. I confidently predict that in five years'
time, we'll at least know what the finished puzzle is supposed to
look like, even if there remains a number of unanswered questions.
Personally, I'm looking forward to the ride.
A
PERMIT BY ANY OTHER NAME
Snub-nosed
or long fin pompano, snub-nosed dart, oyster cracker, pumpkinhead,
permit... the marine species known scientifically as Trachinotus
blochii is definitely on its way to becoming the fish of a thousand
names. There's even conjecture concerning possible confusion between
two closely related "permit" species in Indo-Pacific waters,
T blochii, and a larger, more robust fish with shorter second dorsal
and anal fins called T afficanus, commonly known as the African
or southern pompano. Nonetheless, most respected Australian authorities
accept the presence of just four "dart" species (genus
Trachinotus) in Australian waters. Those four are the swallowtail
dart (T coppingert), the common dart (T botla) which
also occurs in Africa, the black spotted dart (T bailloni)
and the largest local member of the clan, the snub-nosed dart (T
blocbii). In fact, I can find no record or references to T afiicanus
outside of African literature such as Rudy van der Elst's excellent
book, A Guide to the Common Sea Fisbes of Soutbern Africa.
The
only scientifically recorded Australian dart without distinct spots
or regular blotches on its flanks is T blocbii, the snub-nosed dart,
oyster cracker or pumpkinhead (in African literature the same fish
is referred to as a longfin pompano). T blochii is known to reach
weights of at least 22lbs in Australian waters, and probably more,
although van der Fist gives a maximum size of just 25 inches and
6lbs for the species. In Australia, this fish occurs right around
the northern half of the country. It also occurs in Pacific island
groups such as Fiji, and Indian Ocean archipelagos including the
Seychelles, as well as parts of Asia and East Africa, ranging south
at least as far as Durban.
Where
does the "permit" bit come in, and how can I justify referring
to T blochii by that hallowed name? The fish accepted by the International
Game Fish Association (IGEA) for record-keeping purposes as a permit
is yet another Trachinotus family member, T falcatus. This "true"
permit is confined to Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico waters,
from about Massachusetts on the US cast coast, south to Brazil and
eastward through Cuba and the West Indies. It's unclear from my
research whether it also occurs on the Atlantic coast of West Africa
or around any mid-Atlantic islands beyond the Lesser Antilles (such
as Cape Verde, the Canary Islands or Madeira). The all-tackle world
record for this Atlantic species stands in excess of 55lbs, and
they are reasonably common in some areas at weights of 17 to 33lbs.
Physically,
the Atlantic permit (T falcatus) is almost identical in appearance
to its Indo-Pacific cousin (T blochii). The only major discernible
external differences I can find are the marginally, narrower (more
sickle-shaped) second dorsal and anal fin of the Atlantic fish and
the slightly more bulbous head of the Indo-Pacific fish. There may
be minor colour differences too, but these vary almost as much between
individuals of the same species as they do between the two different
types. As a rule of thumb, however, the Indo-Pacific permit has
more yellow and less black in its fins and is less likely to exhibit
the large, dark, irregular blotch on each flank that is often (but
not always) seen in the Atlantic fish.
The
crux of my argument for adopting the title of Indo-Pacific permit
for our local fish is simply this: the taxonomic and genetic relationships
between T blochii and T falcatus are almost certainly similar to
the relationships that exist between geographically separated members
of the world-wide bonefish (Albula) clan. Therefore, if it's
fair and reasonable to call the "bonefish" found in Australian
and West African waters (probably A. neoguinaica) by the
same name as the Atlantic and Caribbean bonefish (A. vulpes),
then surely it is also fair to call our local permit by that internationally
recognisable name? In the end, so-called common names are incredibly
elastic anyway. If people wish to call T blochii a longfin
pompano, snub-nosed dart, oyster cracker or even a pumpkinhead,
they are well within their rights to do so. For me, however, this
magnificent fish will always be the Indo-Pacific permit... at least
until the next one cats my crab fly. Then I'll simply call it "you
bloody beauty"!
