Parrotfish, Cowfish, and a Puffer on The Fly

After sleeping in and just being well tired  most of the morning after fishing dock lights with Kirk, Noah and I eventually found the energy and headed out to fish Boca Raton inlet once again. I was ready to settle the score there and finally catch a damn parrotfish on the fly. But first, here's an obnoxious amount of sergeant majors:

Actually that's a pretty normal amount of sergeant majors. This seems to be more or less the rule at an inlet or reef in South Florida. The sergeant majors are ever present and ever annoying, but a little bit fun to catch on small dry flies. After all, how often do you get to say that you've caught a reef fish, a damselfish, on a dry fly? It is pretty cool, honestly. 

Abudefduf saxatilis on a bread crumb dry fly.

After fooling with the sergeant majors and pinfish until I became sick of them once again, I buckled down and started on focusing on acquiring my parrotfish. There are a number of parrotfish species there, including queen parrotfish and stoplight parrotfish, and some were feeding off the rocks, which I figured would make them viable targets. I put flies in front of both cruising parrotfish and ones that were feeding and struggled to get a reaction. I eventually snagged some sargassum and dressed the hook with it and that's how I got my first take, which only lead to a break off. I'd almost considered counting any fish I caught on sargassum tied to a hook but quickly changed my mind about it. Sargassum isn't meat, nor is it a traditional bait, but it wasn't an imitation, it was exactly what once of the fish were eating. So, even though it was tied to the hook no differently than would be a feather, some hair, or and artificial product, it was still bait. I decided to keep trying to get one to eat an undressed fly. This was a serious chore made harder by a variety of variables. Though the water was very clear and I could see the fish, the ripping current and surface disturbance made sight fishing thee parrotfish tricky. I knew I'd pretty much have to set the hook the instant a parrotfish took, as my experiences fishing for these reef species told me they'd nip then react the fly without me feeling anything. It's very difficult to set on sight without being able to see the fly in the water. I'd have to read the fish's body language, and they were behaving in ways I'd not seen other fish behave. I tried sitting the fly still on the rocks near where they were feeding, and I could have, for all I know, had a few takes doing so, but I just didn't notice them. Eventually I got smart though, and as a parrotfish got close to where I thought my fly was, I dropped my rod tip about a foot and let the fly and splitshot roll down the rock. The fish turned completely around and quickly pursued, travelling about a foot then stopping. I set the hook, was on, and prayed that I hadn't just snagged the fish. Miracle of miracles, it had eaten the fly. I didn't know what species it was at the times, but it was a parrotfish so it was new by default. 

Redtail/yellowtail parrotfish. Sparisoma rubripinne. Life list fish #151. Rank: species

That was the initial phase of the species. Parrotfish, like many wrasses, often have two color phases during their life, with variances overall that make it not immediately clear what they actually are. Not long after I caught my lifer, I caught another yellowtail on a piece of sargassum hooked on the fly that looked very different: 

With one really cool lifer down I was a bit more excited than I had been much of the day prior. The presence of a few huge scrawled filefish served to hype me up even more. Though I got one of a pair to chase a fly a bunch of times I couldn't seem to get it to eat. Fear not, another oddball showed up. I was using another version of the orange chenille worm I'd caught the parrotfish on, but one with a small light pink marabou tail when I spotted a scrawled cowfish. I put the fly in front of it and it quickly showed interest. 

Now, filefish, cowfish, boxfish, puffers, and other such odd shaped fish have sort of a... stupid quality. I love them, they're really cool, and they aren't actually stupid, but the way the swim and the way the approach and eat thing just makes them seem like idiots. If you've seen it you know what I'm talking about. They're the dumbest looking things, to the extent that I often can't help but laugh out loud watching them react to a fly especially. This little cowfish was no exception, it wandered on over and started sucking and chewing on the marabou tail of my fly, sort of blowing it in and out of its mouth. It was very goofy. It took me a number of tries to actually get the hook in him but I eventually did. The fly didn't stay in him long, but I had him over land when it popped out... disaster averted! 

Scrawled cowfish. Acanthostracion quadricornis. Life list fish #152. Rank: species

Look at this fish! What a weirdo. 

Now I had to long standing targets out of the way, and I relaxed a little bit. I was still excited but I wasn't nervous. I kept trying to catch new parrotfish and dropping a small white Walt's Worm into crevices hoping for a bluehead wrasse. A couple dusky damselfish found it instead.

Stegastes adustus

Then, from one of the crevices came something I'd not expected, something I'd never even heard of. It was clearly a puffer of some description, but as I held it in my hand I had no clue exactly what it was other than simply one of the coolest fish I'd ever caught. Later, I'd learn that it was a Caribbean sharpnose puffer, a species I'm certain very few have ever been privileged to catch on the fly. For me, this is what it's all about. Look at this freaky, beautiful little fish!

Caribbean sharpnose puffer, Canthigaster rostrata. Life list fish #153. Rank: species.

That's the last fish I caught on the fly in daylight that day, I spent the rest of my time fishing bait. It lead to a couple of frustrating captures. The next story in the Florida saga will about that frustration, and the redemption that followed. Stay tuned.

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: Jacks and Salt Water Dry Fly Fishing

Noah and I spent the first chunk our last East Coast day before going to Punta Gorda bouncing around freshwater spot with very little success. We found waterfowl. We saw some fish. And we found really good looking spots that we could not fish. It was frustrating. We had planned on breaking up our east coast time into fishing certain areas and certain types of water on certain days. This freshwater species hunt was not going well, so we changed the agenda, called an audible...

...and ended up close to Fort Lauderdale, fishing for strange new species in an inlet. There were things swimming around down there that we did not have names for. Names exist, of course, but we were not remotely prepared to put them to the species we were seeing. There were also tons of things swimming down there that we had seen, but never in person. This was going to be really, really cool.

My first move was to target the numerous small jacks that were hanging out on a few of the many buoys. I thought the first one I caught was a crevalle at first. Actually, it was a horse-eye jack. My list of jack species had just begun to grow.

Caranx latus

The next few to come up were blue runners, a jack species I had already caught back in CT in early fall.

Caranx crysos

 Thinking I had exhausted the jack species I started probing the bottom. I found tomtates to be the most willing species down there at the time. I added my first grunt to my life list.

Tomtate grunt, Haemulon aurolineatum

No, I didn't break his jaw. These little fish just have a huge, bright red mouth.

Finding another school of tiny jacks, I decided to bother them a little longer. My toying around with them payed off! I got something I was very much not expecting, a gorgeous little yellow jack! What a gem this fish was!

Carangoides bartholomaei

 The fish then got a break while I tried, and nearly succeeded, in catching iguanas. They are mean buggers. I learned a few things while trying to catch one. They are much faster than they look. They aren't great swimmer. Catching their tails is a lot easier than catching the rest of them. So... Noah ended up catching a fair number of fish on pieces of iguana tail.

After Noah caught yet another species of jack while casting out, I started to fish flies more actively as well and caught a few for myselg. My third new jack species of the day and fourth total jack species of the day was the leather jack. Handling these buggers was tricky. Their spines give quite a severe sting. But they are very pretty fish and it was a lot of one to see them swarm the fly.

Back to fishing near the bottom, I really wanted to get one of the sergeant majors that were just all over the place. I had one on briefly, had numerous takes... but I couldn't get one to hand. Then some folks came along throwing bread in the water. This resulted in a wild feeding frenzy of hundreds of sergeant majors. It was wild. Casting into the micro fish blitz I got a take. It wasn't a sergeant major, but a spottail pinfish.

Diplodus holbrookii

 Noah went to get out own bread, and soon enough we were creating our own feeding frenzy. The bulk of the aggressors were sergeant majors, with a handful of other damselfish and some pinfish mixed it.

Fishing subsurface proved to only be so effective. Looking into my box, I had a few foam bread dry flies. I tied one on and had a sergeant major first cast. I kept fishing it and kept catching. Salt water reef fish on a dry fly.
Yup.
I did that!

Sergeant major (Abudefduf saxatilis)

Noah and I both got a few new species there, but we saw potential for more. So even though we were going to be on the Gulf Coast for the next four days, this little taste of East Coast South Florida inlets left us wanting more. We would be back.

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Thanks for joining the adventure, and tight lines.