Peacock bass on fly rod in Palm Beach County

Took a short drive up to Boynton Beach today to try the canal system north of Lake Ida.  I did very well in this spot four weeks ago, also when we were in the "new moon" period. Some anglers swear fresh water fish are affected by the moon cycles just as salt water fish are.  I've been somewhat skeptical, myself, since there are no tides in fresh water to cause lakes, rivers and streams to rise and fall, which in turn causes bait fish and predator fish to move from one location to another.  However, I did so well a month ago that I wanted to see if I could repeat that experience today.

The sky was pretty overcast when I arrived at the boat ramp.  Another front is headed our way, so in addition to the clouds, I also was dealing with pretty strong winds out in front of the approaching weather.   I'd say today the wind was blowing between 20 and 25 mph, coming from the east-southeast.  My best tactic was to hug the south bank of the canal I was on, allowing the bank itself and the houses built above it to block the wind a bit.  I started out throwing a chartreuse and white clouser-type fly.  After an hour of no action at all I switched to the tiny green popper fly that's caught so many fish for me lately. That didn't produce either, for a bit, but then something took it hard and began pulling line off of my reel.  Since the fish didn't surface, I was pretty sure it wasn't a largemouth bass.  It could have been a mayan cichlid.  But if it was, it would have to be a sizable one. When I finally pulled the fish to the surface I saw that it was a peacock bass.  Peacock bass are not related at all to largemouth bass; in fact, I believe they're a kind of cichlid, like the mayans, though they grow quite a bit bigger.  The one I caught was about 12 inches, maybe a pound or two.

Peacocks are an exotic species here in south Florida, first stocked in canals in the Miami area back in the 1980s.  They've since migrated northward, as far as central Palm Beach county, although almost all in this region were killed off several years ago by an intense cold spell.   Peacocks are native to the Amazon basin in South America and can't tolerate water much below 60 degrees.  I've been hoping for a while that they would make a comeback here in Palm Beach County.  Now I've got confirmation that they have.  This one may only be a couple years old, born after the cold snap of 2010.

A little while later, I caught a second peacock, a little smaller than the first.  By then, the clouds had dissipated and I had full sun, although the wind seemed only to be getting stronger.  As often happens in this location, the action improved as the day grew warmer. Between noon and one-thirty I caught a nice largemouth bass and quite a few bluegill. So all in all, it was a pretty good morning.  Maybe there's something to those lunar cycles in fresh water after all!

Urban canals in Broward County

Since I haven't been doing particularly well in salt water so far this year, I've decided to explore more of the fresh water opportunities here in south Florida.  Although I'd be happy to catch big redfish, snook, tarpon and sea trout in salt water, that isn't happening for me.  Fresh water species like largemouth bass, bluegill, Mayan cichlids, snakeheads and peacock bass are plentiful in this area.  The lakes, ponds and canals are closer to me than salt water venues to the north and south, so at least for the time being it makes sense to stick close to home, where I tend to have pretty good luck. Also, fresh water fish that I catch on a fly rod give me just as much of a battle as larger salt water species that I occasionally hook on spinning tackle.

Today I spent the morning pedaling around some canals in western Broward county.  I launched at a small county park onto a wide east-west canal.  Unfortunately, there was a brisk easterly wind that stirred up some small rollers on the canal.  It wasn't going to much fun fishing in those conditions, so I quickly ducked down a side canal that vectored north-south.  I got immediate relief from the wind, thanks to the trees and houses that lined both banks and at least partially diverted the wind.  We had another cold front come through a couple days ago, which dropped our evening temperatures down into the forties.  The water temperature today in the canal where I was fishing was 74 degrees, which was probably down two to three degrees from what it would have been before the front.  I figured that would affect the bite today, and it did.  I caught one bluegill and two small bass in about three hours of fishing.   That's pretty slow action, compared to what I've gotten used to.

I passed a couple fellow kayakers who'd done somewhat better than I was.  They looked to be throwing chartreuse spinner baits, which are much bigger and make much more commotion in the water than the small flies I was throwing.  For a time, I switched to spinning tackle myself and my old stand-by, the plastic worm.  The two small bass I caught came on that rig.

Some of the canals I was on today are quite narrow and the backyards of homeowners back right up to the water.  So you're not exactly out in the wilderness.  I guess those folks must get used to people floating right by their back porches and lawn chairs. Several dogs came out to bark at me.  All except one were fenced in.  The one that wasn't was just about the biggest, meanest looking pit bull I've ever seen.  He came right down to the edge of the water.  Thinking about it now, I might have turned my video camera on him. But at the time, I just pedaled on by, pretending nonchalance.

I did pass over a couple of enormous carp.  They were probably grass carp and in the 10-15 pound range.  It would be something to hook one of those on a fly rod.  Not sure what kind of fly you'd use on them, though.

By about 12:30 I could see that the action probably wasn't going to improve, as the sky was mostly overcast and the sun wasn't going to have a chance to warm up the water.  I got back to the boat ramp around one o'clock and headed home.

Here's a link to the video I shot this morning:  http://youtu.be/cPIsz5oe9Sk

Two of my books are now available as ebooks on Amazon.com:  TRUSTING THE RIVER and THE FLAME AT THE EDGE OF THE FOREST.  The first one is about fishing, the second is a collection of original tales.  I've recorded an audio version of TRUSTING THE RIVER for audible.com.  I myself like to listen to podcasts and audio books on my drives to fishing location.  I thought fellow anglers might be interested in listening to fishing stories as they drive as I do.

Here's a link to the audio book:

http://www.audible.com/search/ref=a_mn_at_ano_tseft__galileo?advsearchKeywords=trusting+the+river&x=0&y=0

Last visit to the cypress swamp

I haven't posted in a while because the fishing action has been somewhat less than stellar, especially in the salt.

I hadn't been up to Riverbend Park near Jupiter in a few weeks, so headed there yesterday.  I wanted to try a section of the cypress swamp I haven't fished in years, before I discovered how good the action can be on and around Cowpen Lake.

I went looking for a spot called West Lake and found it pretty easily.  My memory of it from my first visit several years ago was that it was rather shallow, with excellent water quality.   I remember not spending much time there fishing because the shallowness and water clarity showed me there weren't all that many fish swimming around in it.

Well, my memory turned out to be pretty good.  It's a lovely area, peaceful and full of wildlife of various kinds.  I did spot lots of small bluegill but saw no evidence of larger bass.  They may well have been there, but to find them you'd have to be there at dawn and dusk.  Since Riverbend doesn't open until dawn and closes at dusk, that's not going to happen.

After paddling around West Lake for an hour or so without much action, I headed over to Cowpen. The action was pretty good there until the early afternoon.  I caught nothing huge but was pulling in a number of bluegill, smaller bass and even a crappie, which I didn't realize inhabited that region.  For a while I switched from a micro popper to a much larger one, which might attract some of the two and three pound bass that I've caught in Cowpen.  I did get a couple of strikes.  I remember one cast toward a cluster of lily pads away from the shoreline that resulted in a nice bass zooming up toward the popper, missing it on the first try, then pursuing it a second time, only to miss it a second time as well.

By around 3 o'clock my arm and shoulder were getting weary from casting.   And since the action had slowed down quite a bit, I decided to move again, this time to the main Loxahatchee Canal.

Usually around this time of year, the amount of water in the sloughs that lead from the main Loxahatchee to the cypress swam becomes an issue.  By mid-March we're into the dry season of the year and the water level in the sloughs drops to the point that it becomes hard to paddle (or pedal) a kayak through them.  This year, there's actually still plenty of water in the sloughs, thanks to a wet rainy season in 2013 and a massive storm we had back in January.  However, I discovered yesterday that skeins of wooly aquatic weeds are rapidly growing up through the water column of the sloughs and choking the passageways.  It was a struggle to paddle back to the main Canal from Cowpen.  In a week or two, they will be impassable, even though they may contain sufficient depth to float a kayak.  These weeds, which I think are a form of algae, may die off again in the early fall.  I do know that they weren't there this past November, when I began making trips again to the cypress swamp area.  At any rate, yesterday was probably my last visit to Cowpen Lake for a while.

I spent the final hour of the trip on the main Canal.  I pedaled up past the wooden bridge, which marks the park's boundary, and then allowed the current to pull me downstream for a half mile or so.  I was back to throwing a micro popper by that point and allowing it to sink down a few feet below the surface.  But nothing came up from the depths for a closer look.

I've posted video about yesterday's trip on youtube:

http://youtu.be/1vUVJWa7wr8

Since I've announced it on my Facebook page, I might as well here as well.  I've just published another e-book on amazon.com.  This one has nothing to do with fishing at all.  It's called THE FLAME AT THE EDGE OF THE FOREST:  TALES FOR YOUNG AND OLD.  It's an integrated collection of original fairy tales written in the spirit of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen.  For the next few days it's available as a free download:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Flame-At-Edge-Forest-ebook/dp/B00IW87L9U/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395328109&sr=8-1&keywords=flame+at+the+edge+of+the+forest

Excellent afternoon

About six weeks ago I drove to a freshwater canal a little north of here the day after a massive rainstorm.  This wasn't a very smart move, as the canal had flooded up over its banks and inundated the surrounding neighborhood.  I wasn't able to reach the canal at all; in fact, I could have used my kayak in some of the nearby streets, which were full of water.

I went back to this canal yesterday and found all had returned to normal.  The boat ramp is in a quiet neighborhood park and doesn't seem to get very much use - or at least it hasn't when I've been there in the past.  The setting isn't particularly scenic.  One shoreline has back yards with wooden boat docks, the other has some commercial properties.  And I95 is just a few hundred yards to the east. Nevertheless, I've caught some nice fish there, including a couple of peacock bass, which are trying to make a comeback after being killed off by cold weather a few years ago.  In the past, I've always fished this spot in the morning, although it has seemed to me that the action got better as the sun rose higher in the sky.  Yesterday morning was cool and overcast, after a bit of rain the night before, so I decided to wait until after lunch to launch my kayak.

I was in the water and fishing by two o'clock.  I've had good luck recently using my seven weight flyrod, a tiny chartreuse popper fly and a sink tip line.  So that's what I started with.

A good breeze was blowing down the canal from the west and I pedaled in that direction. A quarter mile from the boat launch the canal intersects another canal, which runs north/south.  Once I reached that intersection, I let the wind blow my kayak slowly to the east, back toward the boat ramp.  There's a line of submerged weeds a few feet from the shoreline and I cast my popper close to the weeds and let the sink tip line pull it down a few feet once it cleared the weed line.  Within the first ten minutes I had brought to the boat two sunfish and a mayan cichlid, another of south Florida's exotic species of fish.

That action pretty much continued throughout the rest of the afternoon.  I worked both shorelines of the east/west canal and also spent some time on the larger, north/south canal, where I saw quite a large fish come up and take something off the surface.  I didn't get a good enough look at it to identify it.  I'm hoping it was a peacock bass.  The peacocks I've caught in that area in the past year or so have been on the small size.  If what I saw yesterday was a peacock, that would be very encouraging indeed.

I lost what would have been the biggest fish of the day when it came "unbuttoned" while I was dragging it up to the surface after an extended fight.  I never managed to get a look at it, so I can't say what it was.  The biggest fish I did get into the boat was a largemouth bass that was around 15-16 inches.  There are bigger fish than that in those waters but when I'm pulling in fish after fish on a fly rod using a surface fly, I'm not gonna complain that none were monsters.

I headed back to the boat ramp around 5:30.  There was caution tape across one of the two ramps and as I drew closer I saw that a boat lay submerged and upside down just off the end of the ramp.   That was definitely not there when I first put in at two o'clock. Apparently, someone had had a disaster of a boat launch since I had pedaled away from the area.  Two young men were launching wave runners from the other ramp.  I managed to get my kayak up and over the submerged boat and onto my trailer. The wave runner guys meanwhile were gunning their engines out in the canal, creating huge waves that they then ran up and over, as they circled around and around like they were practicing for a stunt wave-runner team.  Every fish for a mile in either direction would have been freaked by the roar of their engines and the turbulence they were creating.  I'm just glad I came in off the water before the wave-runner guys got out onto it.

Here's a link to the video I shot:   http://youtu.be/UjXt9DpPk2g  Sorry for the extended view of my bare legs as I pedaled my kayak and set the scene at the beginning.  I'll try to avoid that in the future.