Theo's Permit, August 2006

Here’s a great fish story, and a true one, too. Five years ago I was fishing off Key West with a 12 year old angler named Theo Chupein, and his father Ted. Theo is a great kid and this was their third trip to the Keys to fish with me. Three years earlier, he and his dad landed a 20 pound permit on a spinning rod less than half an hour after first stepping foot on my boat. These were my kind of anglers, lucky and skilled at the same time. On this particular trip, Theo wanted to try it using a fly rod.

We were in the Marquesas, a group of islands almost 25 miles west of Key West, a remote area known for its abundance of tarpon, permit, and big sharks. Early in the day, a large stingray came cruising down our flat with a darker fish trailing close behind. It was a nice permit hoping for an easy meal scared out of the grass by the ray. We call this behavior “hitch-hiking,” and it usually signals a very hungry fish. Theo was on the bow with my 9-weight Sage and a bonefish fly tied on the tippet. When the ray was less than 40 feet away he made a nice cast across its back and the fly was instantly grabbed by the permit. For those who know the sport, a permit on fly is like shooting a hole-in-one in golf, as good as it gets in shallow water fishing. At that moment I’m sure the other guides heard me hollering all the way back to Mallory Square.

While Theo was doing his best fighting the 15 pound fish, I had one thought in mind: IGFA World Record. The International Game Fish Association, the organization that sets the rules as to how a fish is properly submitted for record consideration, has several divisions, including one for Juniors under 16 years of age. I knew that the Junior world record for permit was wide open and Theo now had that fish on his line, and on a fly rod at that. We were going to be famous in fly fishing circles and especially in Key West.

After about 15 minutes, the permit was starting to wear down and getting closer to the boat. I was jumping down into the cockpit to get ready to land the fish, thinking about the upcoming moment back at the dock, with Theo perched on my shoulders, marching our new World Record permit over to the scales, and shoving all the lesser mortals out of our way. “Move it, Chumps! IGFA Junior World Record holder coming through!” Of course, dreams die hard, as they say, and it wasn’t meant to be.

As I was digging the net from the mess in my storage compartment, I said the fatal words to Theo and Ted. “Keep your eyes open, guys. There are a lot of sharks around here.” The exhausted permit’s struggle was a clanging dinner bell in the Marquesas and I saw the disaster coming even before I found the net.

It wasn’t even a huge fish that charged us, a 5 foot lemon shark, maybe an 80 pounder. But it was big enough. I barely spat out the “Oh, Sh-,” and it was done. The permit was gone in one bite and just 20 feet away from the boat, not even a mangled head to hold up as proof of what we almost had that day. I really felt like crying. My glory of guiding someone to a world record permit with a fly rod was gone. Theo and Ted, of course, took it all in stride. Theo’d get another one someday, they were sure of it, and he was just starting to fly fish at 12 years old. Maybe that second permit would be the record. Hell, the guide’s name doesn’t even go into the IGFA book, so only a handful of people would even know that I had anything to do with it. I still felt lousy, and I cursed that shark, a species I love and have never once killed, all the way home. Oh well, everybody needs a good One-That-Got-Away story, and that day we really had ours.

Fast forward to last week. The Chupein’s came down to Vieques for their first time to check out the island and fish with me for a few days. Theo , now 17, is too old to qualify for the Junior world records and the permit were not going to show for us this time around. They live on the Caribbean side of Vieques and with the wind gusting out of the southeast for the last month, I can’t even get close to those flats these days. We did manage to hook a few tarpon on the north side of the island, a first for Theo on a fly rod and something we never managed to do in the Keys. The world records on these fish are so huge that it’s silly to think about breaking one here in Vieques, where our average tarpon is a 20 pounder. The largest one he hooked last week might have weighed 10 pounds, and even that fish managed to snap the line right away.

Theo’s world record permit, however, might just be close by, swimming around in Ensenada Honda right now. When the Chupein’s come back next year, maybe the planets will line up just right for Theo. It will have to be a much bigger permit this time, but Vieques is a unique place and my brief moment of guiding glory might finally happen. But I won’t be carrying Theo down the dock on my shoulders that day. He’s about 6 foot tall right now and I’m pushing 40. He can walk that fish to the scale himself.

Capt. Gregg McKee, WildFly Charters