PERMIT PROS C AT C H I N G O N E P E R M I T I S H A R D E N O U G H . H O W A B O U T S I X I N O N E D AY U N D E R C O M P E T I T I O N P R E S S U R E ? T H AT ’ S W H AT T E A M M AT E S JOSE UCAN BRICEÑO AND JUSTIN REA PULLED OFF EARLIER THIS Y E A R AT T H E M A R C H M E R K I N T O U R N A M E N T K E Y W E S T, F L O R I D A . Photos. John Wolstenholme, Ian Davis
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t’s amazing how a proper hangover, a stomach bug and throwing up off someone’s boat can forge a friendship. That’s exactly how Justin Rea, who guides out of the Florida Keys with Sting Rea Charters (stingreacharters.com), and guide Jose Ucan of Kay Fly Fishing Lodge (formerly La Pescadora) in Punta Allen, Mexico, first connected.
Justin says, “I was fishing a Redbone (redbone.org) tournament in Mexico over ten years ago and was paired with Jose. I got really drunk the night before. It was a disaster. The next morning when I got in the shower, because I kind of didn’t know where I was, I frickin’ opened my mouth and I ended up getting Montezuma’s revenge. Halfway across the bay in his boat, I’m puking all over and Jose must have been thinking, “Who is this fucking gringo?’ Anyways, I ended up catching two permit that day and, as sick as I was throughout the tournament, I ended up winning it.” From that inauspicious start, their partnership has gone from strength to strength. Justin joins Jose in Punta Allen to teach permit schools every August, but it’s in the competition scene in the US and Mexico where they are making the biggest waves. A formidable team, with Justin on the pole and Jose on the bow, they have not only won prestigious tournaments like the Del Brown (delbrown. com) and most recently, the March Merkin (marchmerkin. com), but they have dominated. We spoke to them about their most recent record-breaking win in the March Merkin, their connection, and techniques for upping your permit game.
THE MARCH MERKIN
The Mission (TM): Right, so you caught seven permit in three days of competition at this year’s March Merkin including six fish on the final day. To put that in perspective for our readers, a total of 23 permit were caught between 24 boats. In 2021 only seven fish were caught between 25 boats. Tell us about your history as a team and how it all went down in this competition.
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Justin Rea (JR): About three years ago I invited Jose to fish the Del Brown in Key West. A few people knew who he was, but we just smoked the competition. We caught six fish during that tournament. On the second day I think we caught four. We won the Del Brown, hands down and we’ve been fishing together ever since. We fished the Del Brown again the following year, caught seven fish and tied for first place with Will Benson, but he had one fish that was a little bit bigger than ours so he got first and we got second. That was an awesome tournament, because the last fish that Jose caught, we were getting off the edge of the flat and there were 30 seconds left to go on the clock. As I jumped down to put my push pole away, he cast out to reel in. As he’s reeling in, he hooked a permit. He’s like, “I got one.” I’m like, “Got what?” He says, “Palometa! Start the motor.” I say, “Bullshit, that’s a snapper.” We ended up hooking it three seconds before the buzzer went off, so it counted, and that was our seventh for the Del Brown. When he came out this year for the March Merkin we went out pre-fishing the day before the tournament, which we don’t normally like to do, because if you catch one in pre-fishing, you have bad luck. Right? Well, we had two shots and he caught one. Damn! We went in, had lunch and just chilled. And of course, on day number one, we were getting lots of shots, but we were not feeding them, we didn’t catch and we started getting frustrated. On day two, we were getting more shots in. I don’t want to give a whole bunch of secrets away, but we unlocked a little bit of a code on day two. We only ended up catching one fish, but we saw the fish react to something we did and we capitalised on that the last day. Going into day three, somebody else already had three fish on the board and we only had the one, but we were convinced that we were going to do well. Jose Ucan (JU): At the tournament this year, we were
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