This one was landed and released just off the beach.

The look on John Brenner’s face said it was time to move, but some inner sense told me to stick it out, that the fish would be here.

“Let’s give it 10 more minutes,” I told Brenner, knowing I could stretch it to double that. “If we don’t see them over this next reef, then we’ll move on.”

We were sneaking down the beach in 20 feet of water along a stretch of patch reef while staring into gin-clear water that had a substantial population of sheepshead and porkfish, but not much in the way of the studs we were targeting. As we approached a break in the reef bordered by scattered large rocks, I caught a glimpse of white and tilted my head for a better angle against the glare. As the shapes came into focus, I almost dropped my rod.

“Eleven o’clock, 30 yards,” I puffed out in a hushed voice that’s more a force of habit than preventative technique. “Just this side of that black edge. See the lips coming at us?”

Brenner fired a live crab on his 12-pound spinning rod, and I made no hesitation to follow it with a backup bait. As the school moved down the reef, and the grouping of white lips materialized into dark tails and pale yellow backs, John got his first good look at the fish.

“Those permit are huge! I’m doomed with this tackle,” said Brenner. “That lead fish must be 40 pounds.”

“It’s mostly open water, although they’ll definitely run for the reef at some point,” I replied.

As the conversation was taking place, the school swam by our baits and one fish bobbed its head out of the water. Both lines started moving, and we set the hooks in unison.

For a second I thought we had the same fish, but Brenner’s fish kicked in the afterburners, leaving a gulf between the two lines. Seconds later my fish made a similar run and then dug through the reef, and I could feel the line skipping off the rocky shelf before it went slack.

“Well, you’re the only game in town now,” I said at almost exactly the same time his own line parted.

He turned and stared at me and I knew he was thinking I’d just “put the mouth on his fish.” At the time, the only thing I could think to say was, “Jinx.”

The author hoists one in the 30-pound range.

At least it brought out a laugh and some humor to the moment. We’d both been spanked by massive permit that took us to school and threw our books in the sand.

“That was cool,” I said, finally gaining back my vocabulary. “Let’s do that again!”

“Again?” he replied. “You mean they’re not gone?”

And so it happened that John Brenner got his first day of pain over the Jupiter Island sand. We quit around noon to run to some wrecks and look for cobia that were supposedly moving north prior to the July moon. Our hooked-fish to landed-fish ratio on permit looked more like a day of tarpon fishing, with each of us hooking close to 10 fish and landing three. All of our fish topped 30 pounds, which is a pretty respectable permit to find within sight of the beach and 150 miles from the Florida Keys.

On the run back to Stuart, we stopped off at a small wreck in 40 feet of water to continue the cobia hunt, and watched several pairs of giant permit swim just under the surface along the outskirts of the wreck. By that time neither of us wanted to lose another fish in the reef, so we passed on the shots and headed for the inlet to see if any tarpon were in town.

The Florida Keys get all the publicity about permit. However, during summer when spawning populations of these fish move along the beach and out to the shallow reefs, fishing along both Atlantic and Gulf coasts can be some of the finest in the world. It’s not the same game as sight-casting to finning fish in two or three feet of water, but that’s about the only thing missing. Given my current proximity to the nearest bonefish flat, I’ll take it on any trip.