A few weeks ago I was fortunate enough to head
down to Florida for some fishing and fun with my girlfriend Wendy, her son
Collin, Wendy’s mom Sharon, and her stepdad Mark. One thing we were all excited about was the
prospect of doing some fishing. My goal
was to catch a peacock bass because as far as I know, you can only catch these
beauties in Florida and South America. I
would have settled for just seeing a peacock or even just catching a fish in
Florida. I’ve caught fish in Missouri, Canada,
Colorado, and Arkansas but never in Florida.
I brought Wendy’s Echo 5 weight for smaller flies and my Echo 6 weight
for slinging bigger meat. While we were
there, Collin purchased six foot telescopic Zebco spinning rod as well. As far as flies go, I brought some small jigs
& indicators, wooly buggers, and streamers.
Collin picked up some number 7 Rapala X-Raps and some ¼ ounce Rooster
Tails. All of this info will come into
play later.
Before we arrived in Florida, I did some
research. I heard that canals were the
best to try but we didn’t have a boat and I didn’t want to learn about
trespassing law in Florida. I also read
that getting a guide was the best bet too, but I didn’t have the money for
that. So that narrowed down things to
public water. Upon investigation, I
found out there were plenty of public places to catch peacocks. I found about 4 parks near where we were
staying in Fort Lauderdale, but I’ll be honest, I didn’t have high hopes. I thought I would pick up a fish here and
there but knew my limited time would make catching a peacock difficult.
We decided to hit T.Y. Park first. It had a pier and some fishable shoreline
that looked promising. While I was
rigging my rod, Collin came running up to me telling me that he spotted a
peacock near the pier. I was optimistic
but skeptical. Collin is fairly new to
fishing and I wasn’t sure he would be able to tell the difference between a
peacock and a largemouth.
You can only imagine my surprise when I walked
over to the dock and found not one but three peacocks patrolling the area. They seemed to be hanging out near cover in
deeper water but in casting distance. We
all took turns throwing at them with in-line spinners, mini jigs, X-Raps,
zonkers, and clousers. The only thing
that they seemed interested in at all were the clousers, but even then, they
wouldn’t bite. They finally dispersed and
we were forced to find a new spot.
About fifty yards away I found another spot
that looked a whole lot like the other spot.
Everyone else decided to take a break in the shade. It was getting hot and I didn’t blame them
but I really wanted a Florida fish…any Florida fish. I tied on a conehead Madonna with a
chartreuse body/tail and a natural deer hair collar. I didn’t have a good reason for picking this
other than it was smaller and had some good action to it.
Right when I arrived at the new spot, I
immediately saw fish. The water was a
little murky so I couldn’t tell what they were, but to be honest, I really didn’t
care. I made a couple of casts and they
were definitely interested in my fly. It
kind of reminded me of fish looking over a fly at Bennett Spring or Roaring
River. They were so interested in the
lure, you just knew that one of them was going to slip up and make a
mistake. On my fourth or fifth cast, a
fish absolutely smashed my fly on the drop and I was hooked up. I had no idea what I had hooked but it put up
a nice fight and made a solid run. I
eventually got it to the bank but had absolutely no idea what it was. I grabbed the line and hoisted the critter
out of the water while I ran back to the group like a little kid. After we snapped some pictures and let the
little guy go, I used the Internet to identify the fish as a tilapia. I gotta say, I was pretty pumped to catch not
only a Florida fish, but also a new species on a fly rod.
The rest of the group followed me back to the
same spot. I was anxious for them catch
some fish too. We started pounding the
water pretty hard with all kinds of flies and lures in hopes that we could
duplicate my catch. I spotted some fish
out of Wendy’s casting range so I made a few casts for her. On her fourth cast, I saw a fish dart out of
the shadows and destroy her conehead Madonna.
When she got it to shore I recognized it as a largemouth bass and she
was all smiles.
We made some more casts but the fish seemed to
spook and head to other water. It also
looked like rain was headed our way and the group decided to call it
quits. However, before that could
happen, we ran into some really nice locals that had been watching us catch our
fish. I guess it appeared obvious that
we were excited tourists that wanted to catch some fish. We started talking and they started to tell
us about a spot that only the locals knew about. To say I was excited would be a gross understatement. They told us there was a lake at Brian
Piccolo (yes, Brian Piccolo as in the guy from Brian’s Song) that had big
largemouth and peacock bass. We all got
in the truck and headed to Brian Piccolo Park.
