Well I have been off the water for most of the last 2 weeks having some family vacation time a little south of home. But I did manage to sneak one day of fishing in while away.
Last Friday I left the hotel my family was staying at, in the early morning hours and made the 3 hour drive to meet up with Captain Skip of Bass And Exotics Charters to fish Lake Ida in Delray, Florida in search of peacock bass and the elusive clown knifefish.
Arriving at the boat launch I jump in the boat and we were off to cruise the waterways of Lake Ida.... around curves, under bridges, over floating blooms...... with a full livewell of 250 baitfish Captain Skip had caught earlier that morning.
Since you can fish with multiple rods the plan was to drift a couple baitfish behind the boat using Okuma baitfeeder reels, medium action spinning rods with 10 pound line, while at the same time pitching live baitfish at shoreline structure as we slowly worked our way along with the electric trolling motor. The fish greatly prefer lively fresh bait so we were constantly changing our baits for fresh ones.
Shortly after arriving to our first spot.... FISH ON.... and after a nice battle, with lots of head shakes and a couple jumps I land my first peacock bass!!! A nice male with a big hump.
After a few more peacock bass, I get another fish on..... no head shakes, just a constant pull and a couple runs and a flash of silver.... its a clown knifefish..... and a short time later we land my first clown knife!!!! These fish are very cool, I kept a couple as aquarium fish when I was a teenager.... they are powerful, jump out of the water and can swim backwards, making them difficult to land at times.
Education moment.... The clown knifefish are an invasive species from Asia introduced into Florida waters and has become established is a couple lakes in Florida. The peacock bass are a non-native species as well, but were introduced by Florida Fish & Game in the 1980s to control other exotic species dumped into south Florida waterways.
We continue to fish several areas throughout the morning, with steady fishing action and lots of fish surfacing. Several slow periods of 10-15 minutes would then be followed with 2 or 3 fish back to back. We had several gar bit our baits as well and a couple, most likely snakeheads blow up at our bait as well, but no hook ups.
Near the end of the morning I caught one small largemouth bass to complete my Lake Ida SLAM = peacock bass + clown knife + largemouth bass.
For the last 30 minutes or so we fished the open water area of Lake Ida for a Sunshine bass, which is a striped bass/white bass hybrid stocked in some Florida lakes, we had a few fish hit our baits but the did not stay hooked. I guess I will have to get a Sunshine bass next time.
All in all it was an awesome day of the water, catching unique fish with a great charter captain. If anyone is in south Florida and wants to get in on this unique fishing adventure get a hold of Captain Skip at Bass And Exotics Charters you will not be disappointed.
Captain Skip of Bass and Exotics Charters Delray Beach, Florida
https://www.bassandexoticscharters.com/
