Posts tagged “peacock bass

FLORIDA: Brownline South

Posted on February 12th, 2009

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 …

FLORIDA: City View

Posted on February 10th, 2009

This is what I’m looking at right now out of my hotel window. Not bad, but I should be looking into the prehistoric glowing eye of a night time tarpon. Plans get cancelled, beers get purchased, balconies get occupied. Plan B is in effect. Sneak off for a pre-work scramble after some freshwater invasives. Show up to the 10 A.M. bidness junket with fish slimed clothes; shake hands with a sandpaper thumb.

More Peacock Love

Posted on November 5th, 2008

I’m about to go striper fishing tonight in a cold November rain (no Axl ripoff intended) and thinking back on how enjoyable it was to sweat out the minerals just standing around doing nothing, then seeing this rooster, making a cast, and watching it destroy my fly and make hay into a drainage pipe, forcing me to flop on the ground with my rod completely underwater and hoping I didn’t lay on top of a fire ant nest or within five feet of a cottonmouth (water moccasin). Man I miss that.

FLORIDA: Little Hits, Big Misses, Wildlife

Posted on July 11th, 2008

The thermometer in the rental car read 86 degrees at 7 in the morning, so I knew the canals were going to boil.  So would anyone making the effort to walk them in search of fish. Peacocks like it hot, but I had a hard time getting anything but follows out of the bigger ones. A few little ones ripped the fly off its hinges. I had a surprise visit from this tiny bass at high noon. I also had several follows from always-elusive snakeheads, big ones, that did what they always do–patrol behind the fly until I run out of stripping room. Speaking of invasive species, I chased this iguana out of my parking space. The mud ducks would have none of it.…

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