100 SPECIES (and hybrids) ON THE FLY

Today was do or die day. I was either going to catch my 99th and 100th life list fish today or go home frustrated and have to come back in three weeks for redemption, making that trip more stressful than necessary. Fishing salt water would give me the best chance. I picked a spot on the Indian River and got about an hour to spend there. I was hoping the place was going to be just packed with species, unfortunately it wasn't. The first fish I saw were finger mullet. Then big fat ones that were eating algae off the rocks. I knew my chance of getting one to eat was very slim but any time one made itself a target I cast at it anyway because there was only one other species in abundance in that particular location, more on that shortly. Out of the blue, one of the smaller fish in one of the schools I cast to calmly swam up and slurped down my red and orange woolly bugger. Not at all how I envisioned catching my first mullet, but if I've learned anything over this life-listing adventure it is that fish like to ignore the rules. 

Life list fish #99: striped mullet, Mugil cephalus

The other aforementioned abundant species was sheepshead. These buggers pose a pretty solid challenge. They were being pretty lazy, not really feeding at all, and had almost no interest in my flies. I got a couple half hearted follows. I wandered away from them for a little while to look for easier targets but could not find the puffer I was looking for. I made a couple casts at a small stingray and watched a spin caster land what looked like a snagged pleco and a small trout. I was ill equipped to fish for trout with my 3wt and minimal fly arsenal. Eventually I went back after the sheepshead I rolled a few rocks, and besides finding a few blennies I was too lazy to change up to target, I found some small crabs. I decided to suck up my pride and just see if these fish would take a live crab. I impailed one on the fly and walked back down to where the fish were and dropped it next to a boulder that had probably 15 sheepshead around it. One came over and made quick work of the crab, but once it was all gone he seemed to still have a real interest in the fly. He took repeatedly, and I hooked and lost him twice with not bait on the fly. This got me thinking. I hurriedly went about collecting more crabs, which I broke into little bits. I then hurried back to the sheepshead, tossed the lot out there to where the fish were sitting and milling around, and watched them go bonkers as it all dropped down to them. I cast the fly into the mix and the fish were on it quickly. They were much more suspicious of the fly because it didn't taste or look anything like crab legs, but that didn't stop them from taking it. Four fish were hooked and lost before they got shy again. While I collected more crabs I got a text that signified my time was limited, very limited. I sprinted back, chucked the crab parts out, sunk the fly into the zone, and watched a sheepshead come up and take. This one stayed pinned, thank goodness. 

Life list fish #100 : Sheepshead, Archosargus probatocephalus

So that's it. I've caught 100 different species and hybrids on the fly. I think now I'll just go back to trout fishing, permanently. Nothing else. 

HA! As if. The more I fish the less I can stand to trout fish a bunch of consecutive days. Nope. I'll be doing the same things I have since I started this quest, and there are only two things that will stop me. Death or running out of new fish species to catch. It will be the first scenario undoubtedly, but that won't stop me from trying. To cap off this short, nearly full blown panic mission, I got to see dolphins essentially blitzing on adult sheepshead. It was quite spectacular.

Photo Courtesy Malachi Lytle

Photo Courtesy Malachi Lytle

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Thanks for joining the adventure, and tight lines.