Unless you have been there, it is impossible to imagine a place like Casa Blanca...

the vast bays, immense expanse of flats, hidden lagoons rimmed with mangroves...endless, isolate world of turquoise shallows, it semms.  Pelicans and frigates hover above the small island catching the rising currents of air; herons and ibis wade and hunt the margins.  Rays and lobster track the bottom.  Barracuda hang motionless...and then are gone.  And again and again, passing like a cloud over the flats, come permit and bonefish in schools, pushing water, tailing, cutting their own curious paths across the sand, through the turtle grass, awaiting your cast, your strike.  It is hard to imagine the sure of adrenaline as you lift your rod, the line sizzling through the water.  It almost seems as if time is suspended.  It is a moment impossible to forget.  An image that stays with you, in the mind's eye, long after you have put away the rod and returned home to civilization. 

"Permit" It has been said that Casa Blanca has the world's largest population of permit.  As many as twenty six have been boated in a single week on the fly.  It is not extraordinary to see within casting range twenty five to fifty permit in a single day...their familiar sickle shaped fins piercing the surface of the waters near 'Esperanza' or the 'Tres Marias'.  It is an extraordinary experience to catch one though...an experience of which you will never tire.  That is the beauty of permit fishing.

 


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