“The Smallest Record”
They call it madness — chasing permit on 1kg tippet. Some of the most respected anglers I know laugh off the idea, calling it a fool’s errand and almost impossible to achieve solo. I understand why. Permit are notoriously spooky and difficult to fool in the first place, let alone subdue on such fragile tippet — the kind that can part from nothing more than a slightly sub-optimal cast.\
This capture — a 0.88kg Trachinotus blochii — wasn’t just the result of years of trial and error. It was an immense moment of relief. Just weeks earlier, I’d started to believe the goal of achieving this solo might remain forever out of reach.
When sight fishing for permit, conditions already need to line up precisely. But on 1kg tippet — the lightest IGFA category — the window narrows even further. These smaller fish become almost invisible on the flats, ghosting in and out of view against the bottom. If you do everything right and luck goes your way, you get one shot — and it has to count. On this occasion, it did.
Once hooked, this blochii showed why it’s often considered the trickier of the two Indo-Pacific species. Its fight was classic: a long initial run, sudden turns, and a series of last-ditch charges beneath the boat. Solo, I had to manage the rod, the boat, and the tippet — all while anticipating every change in direction with split-second timing. But this time, the 1kg held.
I used a hand-built gaff I’d made specifically for this purpose — one of many small refinements developed over years of chasing this fish. Quietly, I brought it aboard. No cheer. Just a long breath. I knew what this capture meant. Not just another potential record — it was the final piece in a personal goal I’d worked toward for years: to achieve world record captures for T. blochii on every IGFA tippet class.
To my knowledge, no angler has ever achieved this feat for any other species. That’s partly what made this fish special. But more than that, it didn’t happen by chance. It came after dozens of failures, broken leaders, fish lost beside the boat, and a seemingly endless chain of lessons. It’s hard to believe how a 0.88kg fish could carry so much weight.