Fly Fishing For Peacock Bass In Florida

When I found out that my son was going to be moving to Miami to attend graduate school, I immediately googled fly fishing in southern Florida.  

I was delighted to find out there are Peacock Bass in the canals there.  I have seen the amazing pictures of these fish from the Amazon in the magazines and always wished I would have a chance to fly fish for them.  A little further research showed that Butterfly Peacock Bass has been transplanted into the canals of southern Florida (1984-1987).  Florida needed a way to control the invasive species illegally introduced into the canals and the water temperature was tolerable for the peacock bass.  I hired a guide to show me best way to approach fly fishing for this spectacular species. 

I met the guide, Capt Mark, at the Coral Reef Park.  This was a convenient location that my son's family has been to a few times.  The park has an exercise circuit with a running trail and weight lifting machines interspersed.  My son dropped me off in the morning at the park on his way to school.

The canal system that runs through this park in Palmetto Bay is called the Cutler Drain Canal.  It is 30 to 80 feet wide with an average depth of 12 feet.  Lining the canals are Palm Trees and other beautiful plants that can be seen on people’s backyards that back onto the canals.

Capt Mark was waiting for me in his bass boat/skiff which had a large motor and a trolling motor with remote control.  We rigged up our 6 and 7 weight fly rods with streamers that resembled a small colorful peacock bass. The 7 weight rod had sinking line and my 6 weight rod had floating line.  

Capt Mark explained the nature of Peacock Bass, that they are carnivores and only eat moving fish.  He recommends imparting movement to the fly by twitching the streamer with the rod tip and then stripping in line and repeating.  This gives a fast jerky motion to the streamer making it look like a wounded bait fish or one that is about to escape. 

I caught a small Peacock Bass right away.  It was probably 10 inches long.  That was a good fish to break the ice and have one caught while still beginning the day.  These fish have a false eye near the tail that is black outlined by yellow.  Sometimes the spot is perfectly round and singular; other times there are a couple smaller false eyes and sometimes they kind of morph together.  

They have three vertical black stripes down their bodies, but again, they all vary.  Some have dark stripes and others are very faint.  Some have various black-green and yellow spots while others have very few spots.  As they begin to spawn, they get a bright orange color underneath and the older males grow a hump on top behind the head.

One thing I was amazed with was the temperament of the Peacock Bass.  When hitting a streamer, they would hit it fast and with full force, same thing fighting.  They would fight hard, sometimes jumping and sometimes just dogging it, taking the line down deep or into the weeds.  But once you brought the fish to hand, they wouldn’t flop around or wiggle, they would just calmly let you take out the fly, even if it was deep.  

They would let you hold it for pictures without feeling like you were going to drop it.  They would lie still while taking its measurements.  When you placed them back into the water, they wouldn’t turn over on their side and make you worry that they were hurt; they would stay right side up and quickly swim right away.  Although a net may have been useful at times, with their big mouths, similar to a large mouth bass, it was easy to grab them by their lower lip and lift them out of the water.  They don’t have sharp teeth but kind of sandpaper like teeth so you won’t get cut or scraped by their teeth but by the end of the day the skin on your thumb will be a little rough.

Action this day was pretty constant, catching various sizes of fish ranging from 10 to 21 inches long at roughly half hour intervals.  Because these canals are in the city, we were able to pull over to the bank of one the arms of the canals and hop out to run over to Wendy’s for Baconators and strawberry lemonade for lunch.