When practicing the impossible sales pitch of convincing a fish in the permanent orbit of neurosis to eat your fly, don’t get discouraged. Wide eyed and sickle tailed, the permit is an evening around a black jack table in a dark casino. You, new to this game, are unfamiliar with the rules and the usual suspects around that very table. Permit will catch you slipping at every opportunity. Brimming with polarizing surprises, a permit is the final boss in flats fishing critique - when you’re ready to feel true pain, you start permit fishing. The knees get weak, the mouth becomes dry, the rod and fly become heavier than expected, and the cast gets sloppier than you thought was possible. There is often one opportunity, if you’re lucky, and taking it means running in from the bullpen in the ninth inning, game on the line. If everything in permit fishing is left to chance, then today, you’d like to consider yourself lucky. As the song goes, you have to know when to hold ‘em, when to fold ‘em. You have to know that there is always a chance, especially when that twenty pounder is rooting around in the clay, unbothered, and the only move left in your deck is a look to the dealer and a tap on the table, muttering confidently - hit me.

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