Since we started the trip a day behind schedule, we decided
to extend the trip one extra day. My sister and George wanted to visit Magic
Kingdom and they had already purchased tickets in advance. So while they visit
the theme park, Michael and I headed to Tampa to fish.
We arrived in the same creek where we caught Jack Dempsey on
Dec 28. While we saw some Striped Mullet, they refused to bite our bread. We
fished closed to the weeds and finally found some Jack Dempsey, including this
beautiful male.
We saw some Rio Grande Cichlid swimming around but they were
extremely wary. We tried all sorts of methods trying to get them to bite.
Finally, I had one bit on a small piece of free lined bread but the fish took
me to the weeds and the hook came out! I was so adamant on catching a Rio
Grande that I made a tactical error. We should have simply spent more time
fishing saltwater for species.
Since Tampa was 2 hours from Orlando, we didn’t arrive in
Tampa until 12pm. After spending 3 hours at the creek, we only had a couple of
hours at best before sunset. It was too late to fish at Skyway Pier, but we
found a free pier along a bridge to fish for an hour.
We had no squid for bait. Honestly, I didn’t want to wet too
many rods. So we only grabbed two rods each but I mainly fished with a sabiki
rig. We only had nightcrawlers so I put on small segments of worms on the hook.
I searched by the pilings and found nothing holding near the structure.
Instead, I cast into Tampa Bay and worked the grass flats. On my third cast, I
felt a strong tap and set the hook into a smaller fish that pulled hard on the
light spinning rod and 8lb test. It was a Silver Perch!
Silver Perch (Bairdiella chrysoura) – new species #23
Michael joined me on my side of the pier and soon caught his
first Silver Perch as well. A few cast later, I was had worked the sabiki back
to the bridge when I saw a silver flash on my sabiki and I set the hook into a
strong running Horse-eye Jack!
Horse-eye Jack (Caranx latus) – new
species #24
I was hoping to find some Pinfish for Michael to add on his
list. We went back to the parking area where I saw some. We quickly caught a
few Pinfish. If we only had more time to fish, I would have cast out a cut
Pinfish on a shark rig. The bay looks very sharky for smaller juvenile blacktip
or bonnethead.
We had to return to Orlando to pick up my sister and her
boyfriend from the theme park. On that note, it was the end of our fishing
trip. We left Orlando on Jan 8 at 5am and drove to Toledo, Ohio by 1:30am on
Jan 9. We then left Toledo at 6am after a night at a motel and arrived in
Toronto at 12:30pm.
It was a great road trip to see my family and I fully took
the opportunity to catch a number of new species. Many of the freshwater
species were very challenging due to the cold weather. We had an absolute blast
fishing the Keys and I can see myself fishing the Keys for a week next time! I
was absolutely pleased to have caught a huge Grass Carp, conquered the Cobra
Snakehead, and tried our hands at shark fishing. Now it is time to read up more
on shark fishing and the whereabouts of those pesky Oscars!
With 24 new species added, I'm now up
to a total of 301 species!
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