Reef Fish Frustrations

If you go to South Florida and you want to catch reef fish, don't use a fly rod and flies. It's probably the stupidest thing you can do. I got fairly lucky in getting a number of species to eat on my first attempts more than a year ago, but I caught far fewer fish than if felt like I should have and I spent most of my time watching my flies sink through hoards of brightly colored fish that had little to no interest in it or would merely give it a tiny peck and then move on. I had a sneaking suspicion that, having gotten the easy species to fool with artificials out of the way on the first couple tries, I'd probably have a much harder go at it this time. But we rolled up to Boca Raton Inlet knowing full well we'd see a ton of odd and unique fish there, and I felt I had a few tricks up my sleeve.

I didn't, nothing changed.

I've made no progress in determining better ways to target these species on the fly, and I'm not sure there even is progress to be made. Maybe a little but not much. That said, collectively "reef fish" are a treasure trove of really cool new species and I find it really hard to ignore them. So, I beat my head against the wall for a while... then I tip the flies with bait for a while just to catch a bunch of fish quickly. Then I beat my head against the wall some more. And I do it for hours. And it hurts a little knowing at any moment, I could catch something really damn cool on bait that I haven't caught on the fly yet. Somehow, though my catch ratio on bait to on flies is something like 8/1, I'd managed to avoid such a catastrophe simply by not putting bait on species that I could see would be new and spending the majority of my time fishing un-tipped flies. This wouldn't work forever, as it turns out. Or, rather, when I got sick of not catching as many fish as I could be and started fishing bait exclusively, I caught some things I'd not caught yet. But that's a topic for another day. Every fish pictured in this post caught by myself was caught on an artificial fly. All you need to know is that trying to catch reef fish on artificial flies is a grind. I brought this frustration upon myself, you may say, so I have no right to complain. And you might be right.

Boca Raton Inlet is a known spot by lifelisters all over the country and the world. If you are heavily invested in the search for fish species you've never caught before and pay attention to what other people with the same obsession are doing, you've seen Boca Raton named and you've seen fish that were caught there on video or in photos. So I don't particularly mind naming it, because that's really what the place is best for and a bunch of lifelisters sporadically showing up trying to catch small unusual reef fish isn't really the sort of thing that ruins a place like this. There's really not much else that it is consistently good for. 

My strategy, basically, was to put small pale nymphs or bread crumb flies in front of the smaller species, and things that looked like sargassum, algae, or chunks of meat in front of the larger species. I also fished some small brightly colored nymphs, and things with rubbery or foam element in their construction to give fish something to chew on. I even fished mop flies a bit. Considering how many fish were down there in the rocks, hovering under the buoys,  and schooling along the wall, nothing really drew a lot of attention. It seemed pretty random. Every once in a while, very suddenly, a fish would take a fly. The sergeant majors and spottail pinfish though were very easy, those could be fooled relatively easily simply by chumming them into a frenzy and dropping a fly in the mix and I'd catch plenty otherwise anyway. They become very annoying very fast.

Abudefduf saxatilis

Diplodus holbrookii

Down in the rocks are probably the third easiest fish to catch on the fly in Boca Raton Inlet, the blennies. Fortunately for me, the first blenny to come topside on our first visit this trip wasn't a hairy blenny, the species I'd already caught, but a masquerader blenny, distinguished by a more ambiguous black oppercular spot lacking a complete white/blue ring around it. 

Labrisomus conditus, masquerader blenny. Lifelit fish #146. Rank: Species

One of the diverse grouple of fish I was hoping to pick off a few new species from we grunts. There are a lot of grunts I've not yet caught. Of course, I've gotten the easier ones out of the way it seems and could only catch those. 

French grunt, Haemulon flavolineatum

Sailor's grunt, Haemulon parra

Tomtate, Haemulon aurolineatum

 Even when I thought I had a new grunt species, an odd looking small specimen with three distinct lateral bars and a black caudal spot, it turned out to simply be a juvenile sailor's grunt.

Haemulon parra, juvenile

Meanwhile, Noah was catching parrotfish, which I found very hard not to be jealous about. 

Stoplight parrotfish, initial phase, Sparisoma viride

Parrotfish are wrasse, and I was catching wrasse. Just not particularly cool wrasse. The most abundant species of wrasse in most of the south Florida inlets seems to be the aptly and humorously named slippery dick. I think they're cool looking fish, but they're so difficult to handle it makes it less fun to catch them. 

Slippery dick, Halichoeres bivittatus

Eventually though, I managed a sea chub. Knowing well there were two very similar species I'd only caught one of, yellow chub and Bermuda chub, I photographed it thoroughly. Not much later I caught another and did the same. And right at the end of the day I caught a third, not including the two others I'd caught in between on bait. Bermuda chubs have 11 soft anal fin rays, Yellow chubs have 12-14. I caught one or the other back in January 2019, I'm not sure which, so one of the two is lifer #147 as I caught both species on the fly this time.

Bermuda chub, Kyphosus sectatrix

Yellow chub, Kyphosus incisor

A third and final new species found its way to hand somehow as well, a new damselfish species. 

Longfin damselfish, Stegastes diencaeus. Lifelist fish #148. Rank: species.

 Now, you may see that I caught ten species and three new species and wonder how I could possibly complain about how difficult the fishing was with the fly. Now consider the fact that I was looking into water just packed full of fish species I'd never caught, hundreds of possible targets, and I only managed to catch three new species. The bulk of what I caught was the same fish: sergeant majors. So many sergeant majors. If I could opt out of ever catching a sergeant major ever again, I gladly would. They're beautiful little fish but I'd settle for just seeing them in the water and never hooking another in my life. All the parrotfishes, other wrasses like bluehead wrasse, the burrfishes, the filefish, the cowfish... they seemed like long shots. But I wouldn't stop beating my head against the wall just yet, and occasionally, I was breaking a piece loose.

Tricolor heron hunting and boat-tailed grackle sizing it up for a potential mugging.

Until next time,

Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

And stay safe and healthy.

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