For The Record

When Craig Williams set himself the ambitious goal of capturing every fly-fishing world record for the Indo-Pacific permit, what followed was a three-year ordeal that would put both his skill and his sanity to the test.

In late 2024 Craig accomplished the unique feat and became the first person to hold every International Game Fish Association line-class world record from 1kg through 10kg tippets for a single species.

THE BACKGROUND

I’ve known Craig for 15 years and fished with him many times, and it’s safe to say he takes his fishing more seriously than most. Born and bred in South Australia but a chronic seasickness sufferer, when we first met he was living in Carnarvon, WA, after seeking out the best land-based fishing he could find. Since then he’s lived in WA’s premier saltwater destinations — Exmouth, Broome and the Dampier Peninsula, and now Karratha where the maze of islands, flats and bays of the Dampier Archipelago are a playground for chasing permit, blue bastards, tuskfish and more.

Craig defies the preconception that record chasers are braggarts looking to prove themselves. He’s fiercely private, and driven to improve himself as much as to beat others. So if you think this story will be a ‘how-to’ guide for chasing records you’ll be disappointed.

Craig sweated blood for three years as he continually refined flies, leaders, tackle and techniques, and he’s not ready to part with those hard-earned secrets. Instead, it’s a story about what motivates someone to chase world records — a pursuit foreign to most of us, but with lessons we can all apply.

This isn’t Craig’s first foray into records. In the late 90s and early 2000s he chased game-fishing tackle records, and with some embarrassment admits to still holding a national land-based record with a 61kg eagle ray caught on 15kg tackle. ‘That was my first experience of rules in fishing — leaders having to be a certain length, line having to break below a certain breaking strain, and so on,’ he says. ‘But I never thought much more about that since moving to WA. It just became about catching as many fish as possible in as many different ways.’

THE CHALLENGE

Craig’s record chase was sparked by a period of self-reflection after finding that fishing had lost some of its ‘buzz’. ‘When I tried to understand what I liked about fishing, I realised the most enjoyable form for me is sight fishing, primarily with a fly rod in hand,’ he says. ‘What I also realised is that I have to be constantly learning and pushing myself, to be better tomorrow than I was today. And permit are the fish that people put on a pedestal as the toughest to catch, and I can see how they get that reputation.’

And then on New Year’s Eve 2021, Craig and his partner, Katrina, were talking about the year ahead: ‘It was essentially a New Year’s resolution — I said, ‘right, my challenge to myself this year is that I want to catch a world record permit on fly’.

Karratha has healthy populations of both Trachinotus blochii (Indo-Pacific) and Trachinotus anak permit, but the IGFA only holds line-class records for Blochii. And if the level of difficulty wasn’t sufficiently high, Craig set out to do it fishing solo — driving the boat, finding fish, making the shots and getting them in the net.

‘I found I was learning better doing it alone, testing my own theories as weird as some of them were, without any pressure,’ he says. ‘Sure, having more people involved is an advantage once the fish has been hooked, but I didn’t want to do that, and a big part of the reason was I felt it allowed me to be free in trying new and sometimes obscure things.’

THE CHASE

Craig exceeded expectations in year one, with two world records. ‘I started out on 4kg tippet,’ he explains. ‘I really like four — it’s strong enough that you can put some pressure on a fish, but it’s light enough that when you catch one you feel like you earnt it, and if you’re not on your game with your technique then you can easily break it off.’

At 7.2kg that first record-breaking permit is his biggest on IGFA tackle. He also added the 6kg world record, and so when New Year’s Eve came back around it was time for a new resolution: ‘I was being a bit tongue in cheek, but I said, OK, I’m going to get all the remaining world records this year.’

So he started working his way through the line classes, ‘anticipating that 1kg would be the most difficult… and I wasn’t wrong.’ He says the learning curve really kicked in when he got to 3kg. ‘I was fishing with the same technique on 3kg as I had on 4kg, but I was just snapping all the fish off,’ he says. ‘I realised that not everything just scales up and down — you can’t tie on a 3kg tippet like you do an 8kg tippet.’

He lost 15 permit on 3kg before landing one, then caught the 2kg record on the next fish he hooked: ‘But then I dropped to 1kg, and that was when the real nightmare started.’

It took another year to land a permit on 1kg tippet, with Craig losing more than 20 before he stopped counting. ‘I lost them every different way — any way you can imagine of losing a fish, I lost them,’ he says. Flies dropped out of fish because of the difficulty setting a hook on light tippets, leaders popped ‘like a fuse in the line’ when a reel handle brushed a knuckle or there was a moment’s hesitation in a reel drag, if the leader brushed the landing net or the boat, or a knot dragged against a rod guide.

The seeming impossibility of landing a permit on 1kg while fishing solo called for a reassessment. ‘It occurred to me this was the textbook definition of insanity — doing the same thing over and over and hoping for a different outcome’ he says. ‘Going out every day and breaking fish off, I thought, what can I change; what small piece will make the difference? That was certainly when I spent a lot of time evolving flies and leaders.’

‘When you try things and they fail, sometimes it’s obvious but other times it’s not, and you just think, why did that not work? It’s constant evolution, constant trial and error, and that’s a big part of the difficulty — having to come up with new ideas on how to constantly manipulate the variables.’

THE FLIES, THE TACKLE

Craig says that in the 15 years since catching his first permit, advances in fly design have made a huge difference. ‘When I first started targeting permit there weren’t a lot of options for flies. We knew they ate crabs, but that’s evolved considerably and what I’m tying now is worlds apart with the evolution in patterns and materials,’ he says.

Craig has borrowed from patterns like Alphlexos and uses materials like commercial legs and bodies, but has evolved them to suit his needs. ‘All I’m trying to do is make a fly that catches more fish, and whatever inspiration I find I’ll use,’ he says. ‘I’ve certainly kept an eye on what other people are doing, but most of my time has gone into saying, right, that’s not working — what can I do different? It’s been a constant process of evolution.’

He’s used a range of rod weights during the record chase, and tippet size is just one consideration in choosing a rod, along with factors like wind, presentation and fly size. He gravitated to older-style cork drag reels for their ease of serviceability, and with the need for seamless drags he was pulling them apart and servicing them weekly. ‘The reel is of utmost importance — especially when you get into the lighter line classes, you need a smooth, reliable drag,’ he says.

THE INNOVATIONS

‘My mindset at the beginning was that I’d only cast to Blochii permit, but of course there’s other flats species that overlap. In the first year-and-a-half I’d just drive past them; they would’ve taken time away from my goal — if you hook up a big blue bastard it might take an hour to get it in, and 10 permit could swim past,’ he says.

But as the quest for that elusive 1kg record dragged on, Craig decided he was prepared to catch other species to fine tune his tackle and technique: ‘Those fish are different, but there are enough similarities that it was worthwhile.’ As a result he also set IGFA all-tackle world records for Anak permit and blue bastards twice each, an all-tackle length fly record for GTs, and 45 Australian records.

The IGFA stipulates fish have to be weighed on land with scales verified for every capture, along with submitting the leader, and pics of the angler with the fish, the tackle and the scales. Record chasing has a reputation for killing fish and hanging them from gantries, but Craig was at pains to avoid this, including creating portable scales that could weigh fish on location. ‘I developed a tripod weighing system that I could cart around with me and erect onshore, next to the boat,’ he says.

‘You’ve got to be real — all fishing techniques can injure and kill fish, they’re fighting for their lives and sometimes the stress and injuries they sustain are too much for them to recover from. But I didn’t want to be needlessly injuring or maiming fish for the purpose of chasing records.’

Another reason for choosing permit as his target was they receive little fishing pressure, and in contrast to billfish or big GTs, he’s happy to eat them if they die or are unfit for release. ‘If a fish was healthy I’d generally release it, but if it was showing signs of extreme stress or injury I’d take it home to eat,’ he says.

THE RESOLUTION

The 1kg line class record was vacant when Craig set out, and IGFA rules only required a fish weighing 500g or more. ‘I did initially go out and cast at any Blochii permit that came along, but I got to a point where I decided that to achieve my goal in the timeframe I’d allowed myself, I’d have to look for smaller fish,’ Craig says. ‘Essentially to achieve my goal I just had to catch a permit any size over 500g, so I focused on smaller fish because it was so troublesome and so difficult.

‘There’s always a bigger fish, that’s what records are all about, but in this case it was just about putting a line in the sand — maybe that record will stand for 20 years or maybe it’ll be broken next year.’

The first permit Craig ultimately landed on 1kg tippet turned out to be an Anak of 1.48kg and so wasn’t eligible for the world record, but did set an Australian record. ‘But then I went out and bagged the world record the very next day with an 880g fish — I wished it was a 1.48kg fish, but that was the fish that came along,’ he says.

With mission accomplished, Craig encourages others to push the envelope. ‘I don’t have any grand illusions about being some supreme angler with unique abilities — many great anglers could achieve what I’ve done. I believe it largely comes down to the significant life sacrifices made, opportunities afforded through circumstance, and enormous amounts of time devoted to the pursuit,’ he says.

And how much time was that? He can’t even guess at how much time he’s put into it, not just fishing but tying flies, researching materials, cleaning lines, servicing reels, maintaining a boat, preparing record submissions and more: ‘My partner recently told me that during the last six months that I’ve not been working at my day job, I’ve spent almost as much time on the preparation for this pursuit as I did working a full-time job — and that’s not including the time spent on the water.’