The ABC’s of Fly Fishing for Permit in Belize Part 3 Diet and Feeding Habits of Permit
The majority of the crabs found on the flats in Belize will be olive green or some variation of olive. Small brown and beige crabs can also be found in Southern Belize and anglers should have a selection of flies in colors that cover this spectrum.
Many first timers to these flats are surprised by how small these crabs are. If you hold up a nickel between your forefinger and thumb, and then imagine small legs sticking out of the coin, that’s about the size of the average flats crab in Southern Belize. I’ve had many anglers come down with nothing but crab flies tied on 1’s and 2’s in their fly boxes, which may be fine for the Bahamas or the Florida Keys. In Belize, however, these flies are too big and will not produce. At least not on the flats! These larger flies can be effective when targeting permit in deeper water (over 6 feet) but that’s about the only time they should be coming out of your fly box when fishing Belize. If you want to catch permit on the flats in Belize, you’ve got to “match the hatch” so to speak by presenting flies that are roughly the same size and color as the crabs that the permit are eating. The olive and brown Bauer Crab as well as the Merkin are probably the two best flies for this environment.
How Permit Feed
Permit have a unique set of powerful crusher plates located several inches down their throat, that are capable of crunching the hard shells of crabs, lobsters, and even small conch. When a permit encounters something it wants to eat on the bottom of a flat, such as a crab, it will charge the crab, tip up with its head and mouth pointed in the direction of its prey, and then quickly inhale the crab with a deep sucking motion. A big permit can slurp a crab into its mouth from close to a foot away, with the residual water that comes in with the crab being flushed out through the permits’ gills, leaving the crab in the fishes’ mouth. The permits’ crusher plates in its throat then make quick work of the crab. This feeding action happens in the blink of an eye and even if you’re watching it happen, there’s a very good chance that you might just miss it.
If the permit does not like the taste of what it’s just sucked in, it will spit the object out immediately. For fly rodders, this means that your hands have to be free of sun-block and insect repellent when you’re tying a new fly on. Permit have such an acute sense of smell that they won’t go near a fly that has traces of either of these substances on it.
When permit come up onto the flats to feed, they will do so in singles, small groups and big schools. I’ve seen upwards of 70 permit in one school meticulously working a flat, their dorsal fins slashing from side to side in the sunlight. Permit will use their lips and mouth the same way a bonefish will to dislodge a crab or shrimp from its hiding place. But, unlike bonefish, permit do not create the big muds which are so common when a large school of bones are feeding. Small sand puffs and the odd sediment slick are tell-tale signs that it was a permit that’s passed through feeding and not bones. And make sure to never try to remove a fly with your fingers if the hook is down the fish’s throat. If its crushers can smash a conch shell into pieces, just imagine what they can do to the bones in your fingers! Pliers will easily get the fly out.
