I'm getting closer to my home. -- Mark Farner, Grand Funk Railroad, 1970.

I'm getting closer to my permit. -- Me, October 2008.

One thing about quests is that if they're completed too quickly, they don't really seem like quests. Like locating the Holy Grail, finishing an Ironman triathlon, or writing, as one woman did, a book about doing the wild thing with your husband 365 days in a row, there has to be some suffering and some setbacks and a decent interval before reaching the finish line. All that time and energy spent somehow transforms an arcane goal into a hard-won accomplishment.

Such is my quest to catch a permit on the flats while sight-fishing with a fly rod.

I've been seriously engaged in this campaign for just over a year, and while I'm not there yet, I took a major step forward last Tuesday in Key West.

Fishing with veteran Key West flats guide Jeffrey Cardenas, I had a 45-second brush with glory on a visit to the Marquesas Keys, about 28 miles west of the island city.

Cardenas, having resumed guiding last week following knee surgery, gamely poled me around the flats in 15-knot northeast winds, looking for the famously quirky silver and yellow, oval-shaped devils that look like aluminum garbage can lids. It was actually Cardenas' idea.

''The wind is our friend,'' he had written in an e-mail several days previously.

ALL SYSTEMS GO

I knew what Cardenas meant: Permit -- ever finicky and alert for any signs of manmade intrusion on the shallows where they feed -- are harder to approach and to fool with an artificial crab imitation when waters are calm than when the surface is disturbed by ripples. Casting into the wind can be difficult, but the trade-off is that you can move closer to the fish to make your cast.

Cardenas let me use the Lexus of rigs: a one-piece 9-weight rod with a gleaming new Van Stahl reel filled with Shark Skin line, a sandpapery, olive-drab line that seems to cast a bit easier, avoid knots better and camouflage its purpose better than some other floating lines. The line was fastened to a graduated 16-pound tippet. The fly was one Cardenas tied himself -- a lead-eyed crab pattern with a sparse, wooly body and knotted rubber legs.

I had already blown a couple of casts when Cardenas, striving for calmness, announced, ``There's a really big permit at 12 o'clock, about 70 feet. Coming toward us.''

I scanned the flat just in time to see a silver flash outside my motley casting distance. That probably meant the permit had rolled over onto its side to eat a crab.

''I'll bet he's 35 pounds,'' Cardenas said, trying really hard not to sound too excited and therefore get me more rattled than I already was.

Here it is: the fish of dreams. A huge permit, nonchalant and happy, and quite a bit larger than the IGFA women's world fly-rod record on 20-pound tippet, which was 29 pounds and was caught on an 80-foot-deep wreck in the Gulf of Mexico. I know this because I've held that world record for more than a decade.

As I stood on the bow waiting for the fish to get close enough to make a cast, it meandered over to a sandy hole about five feet deep and sat there.

STAYING CALM

Unbelievable. Permit don't normally just sit. They dart around erratically, or tail, or dash in a straight line at warp speed.

''You can do it,'' Cardenas breathed.

I made a cast that landed just short of the hole. The permit didn't move, and it was obvious that it didn't see the fly.

''Pick it up and re-cast,'' Cardenas directed, no doubt straining mightily for calm.

I stripped in the line and cast the fly into the hole, just left of the fish, and groaned inwardly as I saw that the line hovered directly above it. I was about to shake my head in self-loathing at having lined this miraculously dumb fish when Cardenas said, ``Move it.''

I made a small strip, and the permit suddenly tipped down with its black, scythe-like tail sticking up.

''He's GOT IT!'' Cardenas shouted.

As I gripped the rod, we both watched the permit charge out of the hole, swimming west so quickly that the fly line cleared from the deck in seconds.

''I'm going to get him!'' I thought jubilantly. ``At last!''

As the huge permit disappeared with my fly in its jaws, I happened to look down just in time to see the remaining fly line go taut beneath the bow. Before I could register what was happening, Cardenas -- lurching with his knee brace -- jumped heavily down from the poling platform, scrambled to the bow and grabbed for the fly line.

He was about three seconds too late. The line had caught on the thru-hull ring for the trailer hook. When it came tight, the fish was able to break the tippet and keep going.

I had never so much as hooked a permit on the flats with a fly rod before, and now it was gone. I was in shock. I think I was shaking.

We fished the rest of Tuesday and Wednesday, but I never hooked another permit despite having some reasonably good shots. I am trying not to relive the moment over and over, but it's hard. The consolation is the feeling of getting closer.

The marine version of the Hundred Years War continues.

Join the discussion

Note: If this is your first time using our NEW commenting system, you will have to LOG OUT and then LOG BACK IN.

The Miami Herald is pleased to provide this opportunity to share information, experiences and observations about what's in the news. Some of the comments may be reprinted elsewhere in the site or in the newspaper. We encourage lively, open debate on the issues of the day, and ask that you refrain from profanity, hate speech, personal comments and remarks that are off point. In order to post comments, you must be a registered user of MiamiHerald.com. Your username will show along with the comments you post. Thank you for taking the time to offer your thoughts.

     Showing: Oldest first Newest first Most-recommended first Least-recommended first

@Nyx.AuthorDisplayName@ wrote on @Nyx.PostedAtTime@:

@Nyx.CommentBody@

@Nyx.Recommender@ @Nyx.AbuseReporter@