Rules Shmules

I once asked a new client from France how many permit he had caught on fly. His response, there in the middle of the Marquesas, was “23.” He proceeded to pull a small, label-less tube from his fishing bag and soak my permit fly with the contents. When I asked what he was doing, he informed me in a conversation-ending tone that “you can’t catch permit without scent.”
John Merwin takes a more enterprising (American?) look at the practice of breaking the rules in fly fishing in this month’s Field & Stream.