During previous trips to Miami I would notice a fish in the
canals that looked like a golden bluegill.
I looked up the species and it turns out to be a Midas Cichlid.
Peacock Bass are also in the Cichlid family
but more closely resembling a bass than a bluegill. These Midas Cichlids are real wary and tough
to fool.
They seem to sense when you are on a nearby bank and maybe they have
to be since they are so easy to spot.
They haven’t ever taken the larger flies that I use for the Peacocks so
on this trip I put on a small woolly bugger.
After spotting one, I stayed back a bit from the bank and cast the fly
further out and stripped it in close to where it was located. It struck.
It put up a small fight until I hoisted it onto the bank. On shore it was calm, similar to the peacocks
and allowed me to extract the fly and take pictures without a struggle.
Later that same day, I noticed a turtle resting with its
head out of the water. Since I had a
turtle actually hit my lure the day before, I brought my fly close to it. The turtle didn’t strike the fly but the fly
foul hooked the turtle in the shell and I was able to bring it to bank after an
awkward struggle.
The most surprising bit of wildlife I saw was a manatee
swimming right by me in the canal. This
is on the fresh water side of the salinity stations and usually I only see them
on the salt water side.
News in the
local newspaper that week was that the manatee may be taken off the endangered
list soon.
The weather this week was a bit cooler, with daytime
temperatures in the low seventies and at night reaching into the sixties. This being the case, the peacock bass were
deep.
Usually you find them hanging out
in the plant and rocks near shore and you fish your streamer accordingly.
It took me some time to figure out I needed
to cast near the middle and deepest part of the canal.
Using a sink tip line, I would let the
weighted streamer sink for a few seconds before slowly stripping and teasing it
in. The fishing was slow with the peacocks
being mostly sluggish but I did manage to coax a few of the mid-sized ones into
striking.
