Indicator Fishing for Reef Fish: Failure and Redemption

Maybe this would more appropriately be called float fishing for reef fish, because for the most part that's exactly what it was. Whether indicator nymphing is fly fishing is neither here nor there, I contest that it is, but I was categorically not fly fishing.

After catching three remarkable new species at Boca Raton Inlet Park, Noah and I left to try a place nearby that we'd never fished before. Satisfied with how I'd already done, I wanted to just relax and catch a bunch of fish, so I decided to fish with bait the rest of the day. I tipped my fly with squid and affixed an indicator to my leader and promptly began catching a ton of fish. Noah followed suit and started using a float as well. It was wildly effective, didn't result in as many hangups, and produced  variety of species.

Slippery dick, Halichoeres bivittatus

Pinfish, Lagodon rhomboides

Spottail pinfish, Diplodus holbrookii 

Slippery dick, terminal phase.

 I spent a lot of the time just sitting on the wall, relaxing, enjoying a kind of fishing not comparable to anything I've done in the northeast. In the back of my mind though was the distinct and very likely possibility that I could at any point hook a species that I'd never caught before. I don't keep a hook and line lifelist, I'm not particularly interested in trying to catch every species possible on hook and line. I am really only interested in catching as many species as possible on the fly. So any species I caught doing this would represent, essentially, a failure on my part to take advantage of a possible opportunity to catch a new species on the fly.

Inevitably, I caught a species I'd not before: a lane snapper, probably the prettiest snapper species in Florida. That was a disappointment. I would have loved to have caught this fish on the fly, and maybe I could have.

Lane snapper,  Lutjanus synagris

I didn't change what I was doing though as I really wasn't that confident I'd be able to catch a lane snapper on the fly at this spot anyway. a short time later I caught a very cool looking scrawled cowfish. I was thankful I'd already caught one on the fly the same day.

Scrawled cowfish, Acanthostracion quadricornis

Mangrove snapper, Lutjanus griseus

About an hour later, another species I'd never caught before ate my squid. This time it was a grunt.

Smallmouth grunt, Haemulon chrysargyreum

With two species that would have been exciting editions to my life list caught on bait I started just fishing the fly under the indicator hoping to redeem myself, and I did catch fish on the fly... just tomtates and sergeant majors though. I left not really feeling frustrated, because what had transpired wasn't at all surprising. But I decided I'd like not to fish bit anymore that day. We headed back north but visited a place that Noah had found, a spot that definitely contained a lot of reef fish based on diving videos Noah had seen. Though it was now night, I kept with the indicator technique as I could still see it in the glare of the streetlights and it allowed me to keep the fly suspended on long drifts. I caught a new species on a small Clouser under the indicator almost immediately: a blue striped grunt. The the smallmouth grunt would remain one of only a tiny handful of fish species that I've caught but not caught on the fly, at least I'd add a fourth species of grunt to my life list. And it was a beautiful fish.

Blue striped grunt, Haemulon sciurus. Life list fish #154. Rank: Species

I then hooked and lost two fish on the same small clouser that fought in an incredibly strange fashion, completely unlike any fish I'd ever hooked before. They were both substantial, and the second broke off. In retrospect I think they could have been small morray eels but I'm not sure. The fight was closer to that of an eel than anything else I can think of. However I wasn't out of the count yet. Changing to a size 12 Hare's Ear, I then caught my lane snapper!

Lane snapper, Lutjanus synagris. Life list fish #155

I felt a bit redeemed by those two fish, and we'd be back at this same spot very soon to see what we could find there during the day. We had no idea what we were in for.

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.

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Leo, and Franky for supporting this blog on Patreon.

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.

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Leo, and Franky for supporting this blog on Patreon.

Florida: A Plethora of Weird Fish

If you enjoy what I'm doing here, please share and comment. It is increasingly difficult to maintain this blog under dwindling readership. What best keeps me going so is knowing that I am engaging people and getting them interested in different aspects of fly fishing, the natural world, and art. Follow, like on Facebook, share wherever, comment wherever. Also, consider supporting me on Patreon (link at the top of the bar to the right of your screen, on web version). Every little bit is appreciated! 

"What the f*** is that thing" was the common theme for Noah and I on most of our visits to inlets south of where we were staying on the East Coast. We saw some weird stuff down there. Huge scrawled filefish... like, easily world record sized. All manor of species and color phases of parrotfish. Some very strange wrasse. I saw a huge lime green moray eel. Giant angelfish. There were things swimming in that water that I just could not identify.

This was a life-lister's wet dream. How many species down there would be new ones for me? The number could easily have been north of 50. And throughout the year I have no doubt at least 200 species I've never caught spend some time in this same water. Noah and I knew this before we even saw a South FL inlet, and it's why we fished them so much. We were down there to catch new species, and inlets and piers were going to put us very close to a lot of them.

I myself got 13 new species from one inlet that we fished three times. I'm not sure exactly how many Noah got but it was substantial as well. I should add that just because there were hundreds of fish and a lot of new species didn't make it easy to catch them. I had to work for new species. But the sheer biomass of the place meant I was assured to catch at least a few new ones. If you haven't already read it, this post covers the first trip and six species I got at this inlet: flyfishingcts.blogspot.com. Ideally you should read that one before finishing this one.

Our second visit to this particular inlet was great fun for me because it yielded a few species that I really wanted to get. Of course I started out catching the ever present sergeant majors. We need to find a time when those buggers aren't so prevalent. I do wonder if there even is such a time.

Abudefduf saxatilis

Noah saw a yellow thing in the mix. He dropped his shrimp in front of said yellow thing, then hooked said yellow thing. The yellow thing turned out to be a French grunt. Did I say yellow thing enough? Yellow thing. You'd get it if you had been there.

 Haemulon flavolineatum (yellow thing)

Noah then went up the wall, and I was left to catch one of two new wrasse species I would catch at this inlet. Both have very hilarious names. This one probably has the funnier of the two. On a pheasant tail nymph with a soft plastic tail, I caught two slippery dicks. No, I did not make that name up. They are slippery though, and they are dicks about letting you get your fly back from them. So, aptly named I guess. They are gorgeous little fish though, in contrast to the rather dull colored wrasse we see in New England, bergalls and tautog.

Halichoeres bivittatus

Not long after I caught the slippery dicks I got a couple of damselfish. Some of the damselfish in Florida are very tricky to identify, namely longfin, cocoa, and dusky damselfish. Sergeant majors are a damselfish as well but they stand out from the crowd. Cocoa and longfin damselfish havevery distinct color phases, unfortunately when inshore their color varies almost none from eachother and dusky damselfish. I am fairly confident though that both of the ones I caught were dusky damselfish, Stegastes adustus.

The blue on this one's fin threw me off. Thanks to Patrick Kerwin I learned that dusky may have some blue.

As time wore on I caught fewer and fewer fish, even fewer non-sergeant majors, and even fewer fish on the fly. But eventually I managed to get something interesting to take the artificial again. A bandtail puffer! I had seen a lot of puffers on this trip and I couldn't imagine leaving without at least one, but I thought it would have been either a checkered of southern. I will get those, but catching the less common bandtail was a wonderful compromise.

Bandtail puffer, Sphoeroides spengleri

I believe that was the last fish I caught there that day. But we came back the next for more. We thought there's be more potential for new species there at slack tide. That seemed to be validated. Quickly upon getting there I made casts out into deep water, which was not fishable with the fly rod when the tide was moving, and the first fish I caught was the second wrasse with a funny name. The puddingwife wrasse. In my opinion this was the prettiest fish I have ever caught. 

Puddingwife wrasse, Halichoeres radiatus

Then a yellow thing jumped on my little streamer and I had a French grunt of my own. Slack tide was working out well.

These guys' eyes are just mesmerizing. Haemulon flavolineatum

Then, another grunt species came to the fly, my third species of grunt of this trip: a sailor's choice grunt.  

Haemulon parra

And then, a new snapper species. Schoolmaster snapper. I think these are probably the most handsomely dressed of the snappers. I caught a mangrove snapper a while later, for comparison a photo of that fish follows the photo of the schoolmaster. Though many target snapper species as food fish, keeping a schoolmaster would be a poor decision. They often carry cigutera poisoning, something found in some reef-fish and fish that eat reef-fish. They are so frequently associated with cigutera that in some areas locals just label the species itself poisonous. Though that isn't true... don't eat one. Or any other species you have limited knowledge of, for that matter. 

 Lutjanus apodus

 Lutjanus griseus

Noah caught a couple fish that I was kind of jealous of. One of them was a big, gorgeous terminal phase slippery dick. Another was a juvenile gray triggerfish.

Halichoeres bivittatus, terminal phase (Photo courtesy Noah Johnson)

Balistes capriscus

But the fish I was most jealous of was a really bizarre one. We had seen this thing swimming around for about an hour. We both got casts in front of the thing and both had interest from it. In fact, the second photo in this post shows this fish. At the time we didn't know exactly what it was, which is a shame because it was actually an all tackle world record. Eventually Noah got the fish to take a jig. We walked it down the wall, where I hopped down to help him land it (this is where things broke down if we had wanted to get this fish confirmed as a record). I leadered the fish and led it around the rocks. Touching it was questionable. There were a lot of spines to get poked by and we had no clue what kind of strange toxins this fish could be carrying around with it. 

As it turns out, this was a spotfin porcupinefish. The world record was just over 8lbs, caught by a rather legendary angler in the life-listing community,  Steve Wozniak (not the apple one). This one would have gone 12 easy. And we didn't even properly identify it until we were on our way back to camp. Oops. 

Diodon hystrix

Missed world record opportunity aside, we did really well there on our last visit and really well there in general. We caught a total of 18 species between us at this one inlet, most of them new.

Blue runner,
Horseye jack,
Yellow jack,
Leather jack,
Sergeant major,
Dusky damselfish,
Tomtate grunt,
French grunt,
Sailors choice grunt,
Spottail pinfish,
Pinfish,
Puddingwife wrasse,
Slippery dick,
Mangrove snapper,
Schoolmaster snapper,
Bandtail puffer,
Spotfin porcupinefish,
Gray Triggerfish

That's just wild. And I know we didn't even catch half the number of species we saw there. I can't wait to return to that place. It has so much potential. When we finished out there that evening we headed for our last night of the Florida trip. I wouldn't catch any new species before we left. I ended the trip with 29 new species and 1 new hybrid, bringing my life-list total to 130. My goal of reaching 150 by the end of 2019 seems very attainable if not surpassable. Time to put an inhuman amount of effort into catching fish people rarely think to target.

This Florida trip is not entirely complete though. Expect one more post, hopefully just as exciting as the rest have been. Unfortunately it seems you all haven't enjoyed these as much as I did as my readership has fallen even further over the last month, but I plan to do more trips like this in the near future whether or not they result in good numbers here on the blog.