Curse The Wind

Wind was a nearly constant source of annoyance during out first week and a half in Florida. It just never ceased. After our first week of camping in our little home away from home, we'd planned some time elsewhere. Unforeseen circumstances resulted in plans changing and we needed to drive back north to pick some things up I'd left at my grandparents. This wasn't a bad thing as we had in mind a couple places to fish up that area anyway, and especially wanted to get some time in a likely speckled trout area. Well...

...the wind said no. It had said no to a lot of things Noah and I had wanted to do already on this trip and yet again we found ourselves looking for a plan B. We did, fortunately, have a couple of viable options. We decided on an area we'd found on our first Florida trip in 2017, a large canal with some smaller offshoot drainages where we'd found some juvenile tarpon. It wasn't looking so hot this time around, the best spot was fairly dry. Looking into a completely cut off puddle though, I did see fish.

After a bit of a wander looking for snakes (unsuccessfully), we returned and attempted to catch the fish we'd seen in the puddle. After a time it became clear that at least some of them were African jewelfish, one of the numerous exotic invasive cichlids that are now abundant in Florida. It took a little while to catch one, given that they would be a lifer and that's just how it works... it took me a while to catch my first eastern mosquitofish, now any time I'm micro fishing in an area they exist, I can't keep them away. I did, of course, eventually get a jewelfish to eat a midge pattern and kept it pinned long enough. It was not a good looking one... also a common occurrence with lifers.

African jewelfish, Hemichromis bimaculatus. Life list fish #160. Rank: species.

Noah was able to catch his lifer as well just a short time later. His looked quite a bit nicer but as this species goes, still was rather bland.

We each ended up with a few more while trying unsuccessfully to catch some other unidentified possible lifers that we could see in that pool. None of them looked great, and in no time we were pretty much used to them. It's a bit odd, being that we'd gone to area that have them a bunch of times and never caught any or even put eyes on one with certainty, but that often happens. I will say, I did get more excited when I eventually would catch a better looking one, but I'm getting WAY ahead of myself.

We continued southward without much aim. We wandered and wondered, and didn't find much to our liking. Curse the wind, we could have ha much better fishing on many occasions were it not for the wind. 

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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