Each of the rivers we fish on the  west coast of Cape York; Scardon, Jackson, McDonald, Doughboy, Cottrel and Crystal Creek all have unique and productive flats inside and out. These flats feature fantastic sight fishing for large Golden Trevally, Queenies, sharks and, recently, Permit! The American fishermen have been thrilled with the discovery of a genetically separate species of permit than the fish found on the Atlantic coasts of Florida, Bahamas, Mexico and Central America.


 The permit being a notoriously hard fish to catch combined with hunting for them in this remote location makes it a highly desirable target. If the wind and sun cooperate you might get to cast to actual schools of permit as close as 20 feet. Real life dictates that the wind and sun will not cooperate but what a thrill for us to see numerous schools of big permit (10 to 40 lbs) over the 6 days and be able to get some well aimed casts off. The conventional fishers just laugh at the fixation we fly fishermen have with the permit. " Suppose you are headed out to the flats again or do we even need to ask?" they would laugh.  Oh well, what do we care? We have enjoyed a front row seat to the teeming life of the flats as we search for our Holy Grail Permit.

Late one afternoon we observed a big Hammerhead thrashing his way through a school of mullet, his final pounce including a perfect arch in the air, head down, mouth open, inhaling the largest mullet on re entry into the water - again, nothing but awesome.  A few times a large Mud Crab ( Muddies) would paddle by, waving a huge claw threateningly, just daring one of us to try to catch it. Other unique captures on the flats were Giant Herring over a meter, more trevally of all kinds and even tuna.