Lifelike patterns like this are especially effective.

Warm water is the most important requirement for permit to migrate along both coasts, so that means the heat of summer is the time to find these fish. In early spring they can be encountered off deeper reefs and wrecks, but for the most part these fish don’t show up with any consistency until the sweat drips down your back in the predawn darkness. The hotter the air and water, the more these permit seem to thrive.

July and August are the most consistent months for permit from Palm Beach to Sebastian inlets, with calm seas and clear water to go along with the soaring temperatures. By early September, the first of the tropical fronts come through, bringing high seas and surf that muddy the water close to the beach and push the permit back out to the offshore reefs. Surfers may like the waves, but silty or milky water leaves these fish susceptible to predation, and the same blacktip and bull sharks that favor fall mullet along the beach will dog the permit schools.

Once permit move out to deeper water, the first cold front signals a drop in water temperature that coincides with a general movement of fish to the south. A good number of fish remain along the Gold and Treasure coasts, but those fish tend to be scattered and not the tight schools found during the summer spawn.

Back when I worked as a lifeguard along the beaches of Martin County, Hobe Sound Beach on Jupiter Island was the place to fish for permit during fall, when the fish worked their way south along the shallow beachfront reefs. Here, a live sandflea meant to attract the first of the winter pompano would regularly end up on the menu for roaming permit. I’ve seen surf rods jump out of sandspikes with such force they never touched the beach before hitting the water, with a sprinting angler just behind. These fish average well over 20 pounds, and are followed by the smaller school-size fish under 10 pounds that tend to push south with the first big showing of pompano, typically in late October or early November.

The fall fish are inconsistent at best, but the summer months can regularly produce multiple schools of fish on every outing. As the permit work their way up the Southeast Florida coast, the fish stop off on rockpiles, inlets and other structures that offer a steady source of food and comfort. As long as the fish aren’t pressured too hard, they’ll remain in that general area for several months at a time.

Depending on the size and number of fish, the schools may be extremely sensitive to the sound of an outboard, or just slightly nervous when a motor is running in the area. There’s a huge value to chasing permit with a trolling motor or by anchoring or drifting. The larger the fish, the more wary they are.

A lot of the time I use the trolling motor in short bursts of low power, letting the blade turn slowly to minimize the sound emitted under water. Once I get close enough to the structure for a good cast, I’ll drift along with the motor turned off. Big permit tend to drift or float along just under the surface, occasionally bobbing on top or finning as they investigate small clumps of weed. Patience is the key to fooling these fish, as is a cast placed in the fish’s path well before it comes into range.

It’s not often that crustaceans fall out of the sky in the open ocean, and a permit may treat a blue crab or live shrimp falling on its head like an alien attack. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth a shot, as one of the largest permit I’ve ever had hooked on my boat fell for a live crab that landed on its tail, spinning with such speed and agility that my angler thought the fish spooked and was in flight and it wasn’t until the line came tight that he learned the crab was lunched.