As Noah and I drove across peninsular Florida once again, I felt partly fulfilled and partly frustrated. In our time on the Gulf Coast, I had not gotten a single new species. I failed to get my redfish. But I had caught a lot of snook, a few good snook, and one quite big one. The end was in sight now. We had caught a lot of new species in Florida this time. I had already reached my goal of adding at least 15 to my life list. It was time to buckle down and really get a lot done in the time we had left.
As we traveled, we passed lots of oranges. Some growing, some in transit. The growers seem not to mind loosing some product: The trucks are filled as much as they can be, providing an explanation for the piles of roadside oranges we saw in Arcadia. Noah and I joked that if we tailgated the a truck long enough with a catcher's mitt on one hand out the window, we could probably get a free snack.
We spent a night at my Grandparent's again before going back to our base camp. It gave us a good chance to just relax a little. We needed it badly. But in the morning, we were ready to go. On our way south towards Jupiter we decided to hit some familiar places and some new places, starting in Melbourne.
Our first spot was quite productive. I had found some funky species here in November and wanted to get some of them, and this time I did. We both got ourselves frillfin gobies, which were easy to find and fool but not as easy to bring to hand. Dropping my tiny flies into different cracks and holes produced many takes and I eventually did bring some to hand, but I found that, much like darters, the little turds liked to attack my split shot instead of the fly. That is an annoying trait of some of the more aggressive micros I target. These little gobies did have a big attitude. It makes them pretty adorable.
frillfin goby, Bathygobius soporator |
Mangrove snapper were pretty abundant there this time, though they were genuinely difficult to get on artificials and bait. I got a fair number of takes and just two to hand. Also abundant were scaled sardines (pilchards) and some other kind of tiny baitfish, which were periodically getting trashed by either jacks or spanish mackerel. We didn't catch any of the blitzing fish, so we'll probably never know which.
mangrove snapper, Lutjanus griseus |
Eventually Noah wandered elsewhere while I continued trying to get new species in the rocks. He found some hardhead catfish and was sight fishing them. He called me up and I made my way over. Sure enough there were some cats meandering around a weedy area. He had already caught more than one. I took a few shots before I hooked one. These were a pretty unique fish. Just seeing a catfish swimming around in salt water was weird enough, but these things jumped sometimes when hooked and had a funky metallic sheen to them. Though widely considered a trash fish throughout their range and being very difficult to handle, I found them pretty interesting.
hardhead catfish, Ariopsis felis |
common stingray, Dasyatis pastinaca |
scaled sardine, Harengula jaguana |
There is so much water in FL to be fished. Love the Stingray.
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And a lot of water that just can't be fished.
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