Southern Belize is the Permit Capital
of the Caribbean.

This is the perfect place to have lots of opportunities to cast to your first permit or to go for the big ones. On a good day you could see hundreds of fish and cast to dozens. These are Permit, though. You have to do everything right to have success. But you get lots of chances.

There are hundreds of mangrove cayes near the Monkey River Lodge in Port Honduras Bay. Most of them have marl flats on one or more sides. Your will find the Permit feeding in the sand, grass and sparse coral. Schools of 3 to 20 fish graze in shifting patterns. Some smaller groups of 2-6 fish tend to be real bruisers. They might be over over 30 pounds. A few bigger than that.

Occasionally you may find groups of permit feeding in the Punta Ycacos Lagoon. Imagine thousands of acres of 18-inch deep water surrounded by miles of savanna, mangroves and jungle. It‘s a maze, but the Permit and our guides know how to find their way around. If you go deep enough into the Lagoon, you will come to the Ranger Station, the only sign of man in the entire protected estuary. You have to go slowly through some of the channels at the mouth of the Lagoon to protect the Manatees.

You will also find Permit on the flats on the reef at our Seal Cay lodge, sometimes in shallow water, sometimes in slightly deeper white sand flats. You will have lots of opportunities to hunt them around the bonefish flats and the permit waters on the flats near the reef.

All the normal permit patterns will work. Crabs in size 6-2 in cream, tan, green are the right idea. Crab or shrimp jigs for people spinning, or a live crab. The Permit fishing is Good or Excellent for most of the year. A lot depends on the weather day-to-day. At the sister lodges, Monkey River Retreat and Seal Caye Retreat, you have close access to Permit fishing in the lagoon, on the mangrove caye flats, on the white reef flats, and around the reef cayes.