It’s odd to wake with a smile to what sounds like someone being killed outside of my bedroom window, but in this case it was a good thing. I was waking up in the rainforest of southern Belize, awakened by two troops of Howler monkeys trying to yell one another down at the boundary between their territories. Although another hour of sleep would have been nice, this meant that in just a couple of hours I would be scanning the water for permit.
I awoke to the sounds of the Howler monkeys numerous times over the next week, as did my fellow traveling anglers, all of us lodging at Belcampo Belize, our host for this Traveling Angler trip. Our goal was to catch and tag 
as many permit as we could with “spaghetti tags” as part of a project to track the movements of permit. One of the main questions we hope to answer with the tagging program is – are the existing protected areas (Paynes Creek and Port Honduras Marine Reserves) large enough to protect the permit population?
Another goal, an ambitious one at that, was to catch a permit larger than 18 pounds so we could fit it with a mini-satellite tag. (In 2013, we tested whether a permit of this size could physically handle the tag by fitting a tag on a permit that was kept in a large tank, 
and it handled the tag without a problem.) The tag will record light level, time of day, water temperature, and salinity, so will provide some clues about the permit’s daily movements onto and off of the flats, and in and out of the estuaries.
The daily routine was to board the shuttle in the morning for the ride down the hill to Garbutt’s Marine in Punta Gorda, where we boarded the pangas for the day of fishing. The Port Honduras and Paynes Creek areas are a short ride from Garbutt’s, and the Pangas made for a 
comfortable ride even when seas were rough.
Eight permit were caught during the week, each one of them tagged with a spaghetti tag. One captured permit was estimated at 25 pounds, but unfortunately the chase boat with the satellite tag was too far away. This healthy permit was released with a spaghetti tag.
The Traveling Anglers on the trip were a fantastic group, Belcampo Belize did a fantastic job hosting the trip, and the guides were top notch. We’re looking forward to another trip next year.
