November 04, 2011
By Bruce Chard
This post will be the first of many on how to breakdown a permit fly. Why would you need to know such information? Well, if you are a fly tier or an angler that purchases flies this info will be very helpful in understanding both how your fly needs to react in different water depths, different current speeds, and different weather conditions. Plus you need to know if the fly you have on the end of your leader will actually be able to hook a fish period. Knowing the different type of hooks are very important for some are very thin wired and week vs some are too heavy, long, to big, to small and so on.
Today we will talk about gap size and why this is so important. It is critical to have a large gap on your permit flies. In the photo above you can see that the hook being used is actually a good sized hook for the actual sized fly. But this fly has a thick amount of deer hair built up inside the gap for a crab body. This is great but the hair eats up over half of the available hook gap. Will this prevent you from actually hooking a permit? It could for sure and that's not good enough for me. You must have a good amount of hook gap available to give the hook more bite. Any advatage you can get the better. I think this is very important. More on Permit flies soon!
