Tampa Bay charter captain finds hot spot for popular sport fish usually found in Gulf
As a child, I remember dragging a seine net along the beaches of Anna Maria Island.
We’d catch all kinds of fish and critters. One of the more common fish was little permit, often associated with deeper waters of the Gulf or the pristine flats of south Florida and the Bahamas.
They’d be set free in hopes of growing bigger, as during my childhood they were a mystery I wanted to discover.
For Captain Jonathan Soultatos, permit was a fish he was able to target near his home waters. Growing up in Ft. Lauderdale, he fished for them in the Florida Keys and on wrecks off the southeast Florida.
“They were really big ones, some over 30 pounds,” Soultatos said. “We used to always use crabs for them. Since I moved here I’ve never really targeted them.”
Then an interesting situation happened, and the captain adapted. With cold water taking over much of the flats and nearshore fishing grounds, he started targeting different species to keep rods bent.
“I’ve been going for sheepshead and snapper on structure in the Gulf. I use a knocker rig or light 1/16-ounce jig head tipped with shrimp around the structure. Then one day we caught a permit, and I thought ‘Well that’s a cool bycatch.’ Then it happened again on the next bait fished right on the bottom in the sand, and I thought, ‘We might be onto something.’”
Soultatos took note in his head. The following day at the same spot it happened again.
“I went with another group and caught three or four using the same method, pieces of shrimp fished in the sand beside the structure. Over the past two weeks, I’ve had eight charters that we’ve caught permit on in that exact same spot,” Soultatos explained, catching more on Friday when the weather allowed him to venture back offshore.
“They’ve just been kind of hanging out off the structure, so I was glad I stumbled upon them. They aren’t huge, mostly in the 5 to 10 pound range, but awesome to get out here. It’s been all in state waters, and I’m not sure how many people know they can catch them that shallow around here.”
The discovery is one Soultatos is not keen on sharing. With the knowledge he’s acquired over the past two weeks, he knows too much pressure on a single spot wouldn’t be good.
“If they get targeted too heavy they’ll be gone. I’m actually surprised they’ve stayed around this long. I feel like they’re heading south with the colder temperatures.”
Until then, he’s been happy to have the renowned game fish to himself from something he was happy to stumble into.
Captain Jonathan Soultatos can be reached through his website at www.FishingWithSalty.com, or see the permit adventures first hand on his youtube.com/SaltySportsman channel.