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collecting trip 01/01/2010 - pictures inside!


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#1 Guest_trojannemo_*

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Posted 03 January 2010 - 01:00 AM

hey guys.
I wanted to start the year right, so made plans to go dipnetting New Year's Day in Big Cypress. however my plans for dipnetting for two turned into hiking, fishing, dipnetting, and restaurant-eating for 7, so ended up with very little actual time for dipnetting :evil: still, considering the heavy rains and limited collecting time I think we turned up a good variety of fish :P

on the way in to the hiking trail in Big Cypress I stopped at a spot I had visited before that I knew was full of Florida Gar.
As expected we found countless amounts of gar, of all sizes - what I didn't expect was to find them all in such a close group, most of them at the surface of the water...and the water was full of small fish. I first I thought they must be gar babies because the gars really seemed to be protecting something, but a scoop of the net turned up countless Eastern Mosquitofish (Gambusia holbrooki), American Flagfish (Jordanella floridae), at least one Least Killifish (Heterandria formosa), Golden Topminnows (Fundulus chrysotus) - both regular and melanistic forms, and a Fundulus sp. fish that I have not been able to identify (pictures below)...but no gar babies. to give you an idea of how many gar were there, with my dipnet i caught TWO gars in one swoop when I wasn't even trying! :o
the water was clear enough to see there were at least 5 other types of fish there that I didn't catch, but unfortunately I was bamboozled by the other members of the group into going hiking first ("we'll stop here on the way back") and only spent about 5 minutes there :x i'm certain i'm going back to that spot to really check it out well :)
anyways, here are some of the pictures:

this is about 1/4 of the width of the area i was in...i'm talking about maybe 8 feet at the most from this side to the other end, and maybe 1-2 feet deep only...and so full of fish!
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as I said, I had very little time there, this is one of 3 scoops I did at the top of the water:
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the second scoop I caught the two gars, and they released so much slime that they covered the other fish, so i just put them all back.
then the third scoop caught some more gambusia to use as feeders for my turtle and cichlids. i must have taken home 100-150 feeders?
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beautiful little flagfish:
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when I put the feeders in the turtle tank i noticed this gambusia had a striking coloration to it.
its body was half black and half regular coloration. of the thousands of gambusia I have caught, I've never seen this before?
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and here is the unidentified Fundulus sp. fish...i've caught F. chrysotus and F. confluentus, and these didnt look like either.
the bigger one had an eye-like mark on the dorsal fin. I also noticed that they were probably one of the most difficult fish to photograph because they insisted on putting their bodies straight, rather than lay sideways like most fish do when they're in my hands :?
Can you help me identify this fish?
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on the way out from Big Cypress I wanted to stop at a couple of places down Tamiami Trail. unfortunately we lost a lot of time due to the rains and when it finally stopped raining we had less than an hour to drive and find a spot. this first place was just great. you could see the fish, and the water must have been less than 2 feet deep. unfortunately we also noticed a 8 foot gator that swam under us, literally under us as the mouth of the connector to the other side of the canal was under us.
undaunted, I decided to try my luck with the castnet before the gator decided to return. i was partly encouraged by some 3 or 4 albino catfish (no clue on the species) that we saw, but did not catch. anyways, here's what I caught the ONE time I used the castnet:

spotted sunfish? this is probably the biggest sunfish i've ever caught...
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spotted tilapia - caught 2-3 of these (in one cast remember):
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bluegill sunfish - caught 5+ of these:
http://www.keepitfis...s2/bluegill.jpg

i think also bluegill? big coloration difference to above fish...
http://www.keepitfis...2/bluegill2.jpg

what is this sunfish? had a LOT of green in it, could be it a spotted x bluegill hybrid?
http://www.keepitfis...ress2/green.jpg

and last but not least, also in the same cast, caught this catfish.
can you help me identify it? I've caught walking catfish near this location, so I assumed that was it at the time, but I did notice the fish had a very deep body, a brown coloration rather than black, and was covered in spots, whereas the walking catfish i've caught before have been all black.
so what fish is this?
http://www.keepitfis...ss2/catfish.jpg
http://www.keepitfis...s2/catfish2.jpg

in this location i've had some good luck with dipnetting in the past (this is where i caught the eel!), but i think the cold temperatures had driven the small fish deeper, so almost caught nothing on the dipnets:

small spotted sunfish:
http://www.keepitfis...s2/spotted2.jpg

small warmouth:
http://www.keepitfis...s2/warmouth.jpg

and swamp darters:
http://www.keepitfis...ss2/darters.jpg

night came on and we had to leave. i plan to go back, as I can see a lot of potential with the reduced water levels and cold temperatures...

last picture for the night...the cichlids really enjoyed the treat they got yesterday:

http://www.keepitfis...s2/fishfood.jpg

hope you enjoyed the pictures!

#2 Guest_CATfishTONY_*

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Posted 03 January 2010 - 08:53 AM

one scoop record? was it your personal best for the most fish in volume or different types?

man one of these days i would love to sample florida.
your state has some very cool looking fish
plus you have a lot of exotics as well.
it looks like your cichlid eat one of the killifish tail first.

Edited by CATfishTONY, 03 January 2010 - 08:56 AM.


#3 Guest_trojannemo_*

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Posted 03 January 2010 - 10:32 AM

definitely volume record, not variety! and the thing is, i wasn't even going for "let's see how much I can catch," rather i was just doing a quick sample at the top of the water to see what type of fish it was all over the place!

i know if i had tried i could have caught 400-500 in one net full :shock:

#4 Guest_bart_*

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Posted 03 January 2010 - 01:40 PM

Great pictures and post! That was one serious haul! Seems like you have some wonderful collecting opportunities down there though the gator deal is pretty intense.

#5 Guest_smbass_*

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Posted 03 January 2010 - 10:10 PM

The catfish is a brown bullhead, the rest of the sunfish that you caught in the cast net and photoed are all bluegill (except the blackspotted sunfish), and I'm not sure what the killifish are.

#6 Guest_keepnatives_*

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Posted 04 January 2010 - 12:42 AM

Is it possible the killies could be Bayou killifish, F. pulvereus? Don't know if they are in that area. But the Gulf killies I've seen were beefier, though I admitedly haven't seen either too often.

#7 Guest_igooglemyself_*

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Posted 09 February 2010 - 06:11 PM

I have to disagree on the catfish ID. Looks like yellow bullhead which can be difficult to distinguish from the browns, but look at the ventral barbels. On the yellows, they are light. On browns they are dusky. Plus, in the picture you can just barely make out the bright yellow spot they have on their edge of where their dark coloration meets the light on their side.



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