FLORIDA: Brownline South
It’s a driving game. The suburban sprawl is such in Southeast Florida that it extends all the way out to the berm of the Everglades. Spliced through it all is an intricate maze of manmade lakes and ponds and freshwater ditches plugged into the main engineered drainage canal system. The entire system is rife with species that aren’t supposed to be there based on the natural order of things. Which is kind of fitting for a manufactured ecosystem gone awry.
Peacocks, though, were introduced on purpose. Mostly to combat the proliferation of unwanted fishtank pets dumped into the system. They have thrived.
I started fly fishing for peacocks 10 years ago almost by accident. My buddy ZB’s Dad had a place out west where he had hammered big largemouth on poppers. I came out and we made some casts and hooked into something a little more explosive. We drove around the area finding waterfront we could walk.
I brownline in Florida because of access and economics. Salt is still king; it still takes precedence over any other possible thing when opportunity arises. But those opportunities come in the form of getting friends with boats to skip work or paying hundreds of dollars for guides. Not always possible to arrange around a work travel schedule.
A travel rod, a rental car, and accrued local knowledge remedy that. Whether 45 minutes or four hours are in the offing, there’s a place that can be hit that provides satisfaction. Satisfaction in bio-electric greens, blacks, blues, and oranges.
Fish Porn at its best!…..just a nice read…..nuff said!
I need to hit that.
What the hell is is that brown and yellow thing next to your reel and the garbage?
my guess is a coconut or some sort of palm fruit
Killing me ….Killing me….Checking the e-saver flights to S. Fla right now.
Very cool. Those Florida peacocks are sort of a lifetime fish for me- one year I’m absolutely going to get down there and give that a try.
Love it! Nice job.
@Jason/JPL –
Guys, that yellow and brown thing is Pete’s homemade fishing helmet – it is to protect Master Jones’s head when he’s trying to unwind those bass from the bridge pylons.
Next to it is the wrapper from his last Cuban sandwich.
That’s still the prettiest damn fish I’ve ever laid eyes on – and to have a jewel like that come out of Brown water is doubly amazing.
I’m thinking of adding a couple cans of spraypaint to my vest just to see some color once in a while. Shouldn’t hurt ‘em much, they gargle medical waste already.
Helmets are for pretty boys. That’s the coconut I use to fend off iguanas and mud ducks.
KBarton don’t those pikeminnows glow in the dark?
They will after I spraypaint their arse and staple some crime scene tape to the pectoral. Brownwater fishermen “tag” both fish and buildings with the same arsenal.
AWESOME pete!!!!! love this … gettin’ it done – urban style — i’m gonna call you the “peacock master” from now on — you always seem to find those fish, for years now — i go to roughly the same area (more or less) and try my luck every time .. but zippo for me. one of these days though – i’m gonna get me one of them florida peacocks .. great post here.