FishnDave

Everybody should get some fans. Ceiling mounted would work.

Wow! That's a GIANT bass, Jim!! Congrats! 🏆🎣

Between tying flies for a friend and picking my wife up from the airport, I squeezed in some hot (90 degrees) fishing at (as @Ham calls it) Beatdown Creek. Miserable place on most days...doubly worse on hot days. First (little) Channel Catfish of the year...my 2023 Flyrod Species total is now at 58. Best year ever, with over 1/2 year to go. New species for the year will get much harder to come by from here on out...travel will be required.

Redspotted Sunfish: Longear Sunfish: Thanks to @Johnsfolly and @Ham for helping me I.D. this fish, it was a first for me. Blackspotted Topminnow:

I lieu of a Sunkist Salute, I suggested we do the Electric Slide....but I was over-ruled.

The Florida Gar we caught, compared to Shortnose Gar, were much thicker, wider, and heavier for their length. Fun catches! Also frustrating when they wouldn't strike, or wouldn't stay hooked. "It was a grind." (Or is that something only bass tourney guys are supposed to say?... a little joke from another recent thread on OAF. )

It was a teaching moment.

Conjecture here... Maybe the super-aggressive fish of old got caught and harvested (as was more common then), leaving the lighter biters. Or, even if those aggressive fish were released, they learned to be a little more tentative with their strikes after being caught? I've seen in just a year or two of fishing smaller waters, how fishing pressure will push the bass to feeding at unusual times....after dark, for example. Magazine articles have been written about such phenomena. Anybody else seen similar behaviors? Also, what about.... perhaps when we select for big deer and big fish (for example), it leaves the smaller ones to pass on their genes, creating a loop of ever-smaller game? 10" Bluegills aren't nearly as common now.

As the unfortunate ladies learned, that held the elevator door open for us at the hotel,.... we were fishermen who absolutely SMELLED of success!

Thanks! I caught 4....the other 3 were much smaller. 34"+ is pretty nice for this creek...I've caught a few others around that size, and biggest in the creek so far was 36.5". My biggest ever was a fat 41" fish that weighed around 35 lbs. This skinny 34.5" fish was probably only @ 15 lbs at best. Very glad to have caught it!

34.5"

It really was an epic trip. @Ham put us in spots to catch species I've wanted to catch for quite some time. Probably would never have managed all these on my own! I'm super-happy with what I was able to catch, and NO REGRETS on stuff I didn't catch. On Tarpon, I went 0 for 0, as far as I know. I think I had one snook roll on my fly, and on the last day saw a HUGE snook swim by at our last spot. Other than that, they were extremely absent in places they should have been in good numbers. Fun times and good laughs for sure!

Good luck on your quest, John! 🍀

I think @Ham just forgot to post his picture. They were RARE! We saw maybe 1/2 dozen Oscars total during the trip. And the ones we saw were usually a pair that were guarding fry and would not eat... they'd just back away.

I don't. 😜 I mean...it is what it is. I don't plan to ever chase those split-offs. I did it for the Bowfin split, though, so obviously I'm not against it.

So, again, a HUGE thank you to @Ham for inviting me along on this trip! I ended up catching 25 species for the trip, and 21 were new FLYFERS! That brought my Flyfishing Life List up to 105 species! I just need Alligator Gar in order to complete the U.S. gar list, and Northern Sunfish to complete that list. Really enjoyed the trip!

Day 7 was squeezing in some last minute fishing spots to eke out what we still could before heading for the airport. We visited quite a few spots, and they did not give us any love. On the bright side, it rained and the mosquitoes came out in force! The last spot we fished is where I caught my first 2 fish of the trip...hoping we could get Hamilton a Jaguar Guapote. We each caught one fish there, I think, but not what we were hoping for. I did see a HUGE Snook, almost glad I didn't hook it. My last fish of the trip was a Peacock Bass. I worked it into a frenzy until it just HAD to kill the fly!: Here's a Basilisk in a tree: Also, in a humorous moment of the trip, we watched in awe as a Peacock crossed a huge busy intersection USING THE CROSSWALK! Nobody batted an eye...

a Porkfish. They really do make an "oink" sound, like a pig! Yellowtail Snappers And a Tomtate:

Houndfish I had a stingray on the line, and it made a straight beeline down the shoreline and eventually cut the line on coral. I caught a bunch of these White Grunts. Which, as it turns out, are not white. The inside of their mouth is often very red, however. I caught a couple Bermuda Chubs