Fishes of Placencia Lagoon

These are a few of the species of fish I've documented in Placencia Lagoon. This is an incredibly incomplete list, but hopefully it gives a glimpse of the diversity there.

Here's a bit of narrative about the fish. I'll add genus species names when I get a chance.

In Belizean Creole (or "Kriol" if you want to use the "Creole" spelling) these are actually freshwater fish called "Tuba" (black on the tail) and Krana (vertical stripes). I'm not sure how these fish got these names, but I am sure it has to do with something witty about their general appearance or behavior. Kriol is droll like that.

If you are ever in Belize, I suggest you learn some "Kriol" phrases. They can be fun. For instance, "Me wan beer." means "I want beer." Easy right? How about "Lef unu sorry ras dag at home." means...."Will you please leave your lovely dog at home." Or..."Unu gwan hungry if unu haf to eat whey dis maga white bway di ketch." means "I sure am hungry thinking about all the fish this fine fellow will catch."

...at least I think that's what it means.

Creole speakers sure do laugh a lot.

Southern puffer, family Tetrododae (I'll clean up the spellings later). Puffers harbor microbes that produce toxins. According to ostensibly credible academic sources, tetrodotoxin from puffer fish were responsible for the zombie legend in Haiti. A powder made from this fish was slipped to people who became paralyzed and appeared dead. Later their bodies were kidnapped while still alive, often after they had been buried (I am not making this up...I'll find the sources later...hopefully it isn't a comic book) and forced to labor for their captors who forced them to remain subservient by continuing to poison them.

Hmmm. Why does this seem so familiar?

Silk or Lane snapper. Very tasty. Very common in Placencia Lagoon.

Obviously, this is a sea horse. Get your hankies. Here's a story.

My friend Adrian, a native Placencian, took me to a spot near Placencia where he knew there would be seahorses. It took us some time to find one, but here he is.

Adrain told me that when he was a kid, he and his friends would play in the mangroves and wade to this spot to catch the seahorses. They've been there all these years.

But the area is being developed. Most of the mangrove has been cut down to make rooms for condos, resorts and houses. The water quality is poor with heavy loads of sediment stirred into the water column. The soft corals growing on the mangrove prop roots where the seahorses live are in poor condition.

You may be looking at one of the last of the seahorses from this population being degraded by the headlong rush to develop property on the Caribbean coast...

...so Westerners can go on vacation and see cool things...

... like seahorses.

Jack crevalle. Juvenile. Fights like a train. Holding this fish is like holding a rock. Solid muscle.

These were all caught in a seine near a shrimp farm. Lower right...anchovies. Upper right and left, mojarra. The one with the long fins is an Irish Pomano. Lower left, black/grey/mangrove snapper.

You don't normally see them schooling together like this. The aluminum baking tray is unusual habitat for them as well.

This is a mojarra locally known as "stone fish".

Southern sting ray. I have some things to say about him, but I'll wait until I've decided how foolish I want to appear online.

Tarpon. Gill net. Check out "Gill nets in Paradise" for this story.

Spotted eagle ray, also in a gill net. There are a few times I have been terrified in the water. One of those times was when three of these swam over my shoulder in tight formation and blotted out the sun. My thought at the time was...

"BIG! BIG! BIG! Gonna die! GONNA DIE!! GONNA DIE!!!...oh

....Ohhhhhhh..preeeeetty!"

I tend to have a limited vocabulary when I'm diving.

A croaker with no common name.

Mangrove mollies.

Ladyfish.

Snook and my fishing buddy, George.

Fringed filefish. These are related to seahorses and like seahorses, the male holds the eggs in a pouch until they hatch.

BIG snook in a gill net. These guys wanted 5 dollars for me to take their picture. Times are tough, so I was tempted to chip in but didn't. This encounter did make me think though.

How does that old saying go?

"Give a man a fish, and he has food for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he'll lay in a boat and drink beer all day?"

Surely the logical path here is to just skip the middle part and give a man a beer. I think a conservation program like that would have a very high chance of success.

In all seriousness, these guys need alternatives to gill nets. They're out hustling and I respect that. An important task in the lagoon is to find ways for them to hustle a living without impairing populations of fish there.

Little snook in a seine net.

Plumed scorpionfish. This picture was taken from above a glass bottomed aquarium. The camo is spectacular, is it not?

The toxins in the spines of this fish are also spectacular.

Fortunately, I remembered that such dangers were about when we were emptying the net we used to catch it. That little buzzing sound of a fish flapping in the net is pretty benign in Illinois when a bluegill is making it. By pausing to check what I was reaching for in Belize, I probably saved myself a trip to the Dr. or worse.

When we put him in the aquarium to photograph, this little fellow bowed up into this "C" shape, rigormortis stiff. Periodically he would explode into a frenzy, slamming into the sides of the tank with toxic pectoral fins lashing out in all directions.

Yikes.

Same thing, side view.

Silverside. I'll check my records to see which one.

Can you say "Born to be eaten?"

Mutton snapper. This is one of several snapper species in the lagoon. We showed that they have seagrass at the base of the food chain supporting them. Now that big chunks of seagrass are gone from the lagoon, we need to check and see if these populations are declining and if they have found other means to feed themselves.

Porgy. Good to eat, but notorious for hanging around the old style latrines at the ends of piers and waiting for a snack.

Oh yes. They do.

Great barracuda. Juvenile barracuda are thick in the lagoon. This one was less than 12 inches long. Few barracuda in the lagoon are over 24 inches long.

On the reef and cayes they can exceed 6 feet.

We hope to know soon if those juvenile barracuda in the lagoon are migrating offshore and supporting the populations on the Mesoamerican Reef.

Juvenile grunt.

Redfin needlefish (might be a ballyhoo in that crowd as well).

Goliath grouper. There's an article about this fish in one of the old blog posts.

Hardhead catfish...I think. Notice the swollen appendage on the pelvic fin. Apparently, when this species is breeding, the female lays eggs onto this lobe so it's easier for the male of the species to gather the eggs in his mouth...

...where those eggs will stay until they hatch.

That's an impressive commitment to fatherhood.

This species also has venom in the spines, but apparently it's quite mild. I got raked by the pectoral fin on the last trip and it cut me pretty deep. Yes, it stung but no worse than the average yellow bullhead in North America. As far as I can tell, there were no side effects...

...and that's the best straight line you'll get out of me this year.

Networking

Many, many thanks to those of you regularly following The Happy Anachronism. The readership continues to gradually increase and it has been a genuine pleasure corresponding with you.

Keep an eye on the "links" section of the blog. When this blog started, I knew several friends who already had fishing blogs. I posted their links but then started searching for others as well. I'm pretty pleased by the assembled group. These are non-commercial, passionate anglers with interesting approaches or conservation perspectives who just like to talk about their experiences fishing.

Locating this cadre of kindred souls has been a bit of an adventure.

If you click "fishing" on the interests link of the blogger profiles, you'll get a list of people who list fishing as an interest and have recently added to their blogs. There must be a rule that everyone who has a blog must include "fishing" as an interest. I can report with some statistical rigor that when "fishing" is preceeded as an interest by scrapbooking, techno-music or "being a good mom/dad" the chances a blogger will ever actually mention fishing are pretty low. The more likely topics of discussion are: Jesus, survivalism, right wing politics, family, vacations, photography and sex.

The amount of survivalism in the blogosphere was a bit of a surprise to me. Some of you people are seriously paranoid. Maybe you could relax a bit if you fished more often? Oh, and to that guy "Fishman" from South Africa with the "Whites Only" tag at the top of his page and the joke about his neighbor's watchdog killing his black gardner? Burn in hell, dude.

The number of women blogging their fishing experiences was a pleasant find. Check out the recent additions of the Rouge Angels (I think that's Rouge for Rouge River), the Fishing Fiesta and the Lady Gold Coast Anglers. That's some fascinating fishing. Do yourself a favor and check them out.

The international blogs have been a pure pleasure as well. Mizlan in Malaysia and Michael in the UK seem as passionate about fishing as anyone I've ever met here in the US. The hits from abroad are adding up over time. Canada, Belize, Great Britain, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Belgium, France, Isreal, Brunei, Malaysia, Thailand and Japan so far.

I'll keep adding quality links as I can. Please send those my way when you come across them.

It has been a load of fun so far. Keep checking in!

Updated list of more countries appearing on this blog (11-15-08): India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Scotland, Ireland, Fiji, Finland.

Add Portugal, Uruguay and Brasil (11-30-08).

Add Chechoslovakia (??), China, Vietnam, Mexico, Guatemala, Cambodia and South Africa (12-30-08).

Add Cambodia, Laos, Portugal, Germany (1-14-09).

Back on a Midwestern River

Am I "home" yet?

For me, by now, home boils down to a feeling, a resonance and sense of familiarity, even in places I've never been.

One place I rarely fail to get that feeling is on the water. Fishing handlines for lagoon snappers at dusk with the caretaker in Belize feels like home. Working the edges of seagrass beds for redfish in Florida feels like home. Positioning an in-line spinners in any current seam anywhere feels like home. And of course, fishing for smallmouth bass in the local rivers of Illinois feels like home.



I took Tuesday afternoon to go check out one of my favorite "home" spots. The fishing was nothing spectacular. Three total, with only one spotted bass over 14 inches. Still, it was good to get out and push the kayak upstream a mile or two.

I hadn't seen many of the places I fished for over a year. The floods had reshuffled the deadfall. Silt had filled some holes and abandoned others. The sunfish were out in force and I must have missed a couple of dozen hooks sets on pecks and nibbles from what must have been longear sunfish and rock bass. I did lose one other solid fish at the boat, but I never saw it.

I'll have to check with Jeff to see what the secret to his recent success has been. Whatever it is, I definitely didn't have it on Tuesday.

I've got the daughter tomorrow. Maybe we'll go dunk some worms and see if we can do a little better than I did on my own...

...although sometimes I get the impression she's not entirely enthralled by fishing.

The ISA Philosophies Get an Online Home

Check out the link to the right, third from the top.

Many thanks to Eric Schaff for his help posting the Philosophies of the Illinois Smallmouth Alliance on the conservation page of the ISA. I'm genuinely pleased the philosophies have a permanent home at the ISA, and I hope they serve to strengthen and guide that organization for years to come.

I'll also be looking for venues where those 19 points can be of service to other organizations as well. Almost everywhere I've fished, most of those principles would well be heeded.

Anglers have a special place as participants in aquatic ecosystems and the human hunter-gatherer tradition. If our past-time is to survive and make positive contributions to the modern era, we need to do it with our eyes wide open and striving for the best possible outcome of our presence in the systems we love.

Describing the indescribable

What I said before is true. You can't really know what it's like unless you're there. But I can try...

The details.

The weather was rough early.

We almost didn't go and some of our group cancelled.


On the trip to the caye we got drenched in the spray.

The first half of the day was slow. During the early rough weather we settled for drop fishing with handlines. Hindfish. Strawberry grouper. Yellowtail snapper. Dog snapper. Mutton snapper. Lane (silk) snapper. Porgy. Nothing was especially big, and the small stuff we released bloated on the rise to the surface and became food for the frigate birds.

By lunch, the sea was calm enough to troll. The motor had been giving trouble so we ended up switching boats with Junie's brother Ian who had a tourist family out on a snorkeling trip. Two minutes after transfer, Ian's oil alarm came on. This problem was solved easily enough by turning off the alarm.

It probably says something very bad about me that I was OK with that.

We ran a line on either side of the Mexican skiff, trolling shallow-running rapalas (about 8", one red and one green). The novices manned the rods first. Those were Kathy, an intern from Stanford working with citrus growers on an experimental ground cover project, and Mauricio, a WWF staffer and my project supervisor. Neither of them had done this kind of fishing before. Mauricio had done some drop fishing and was sure that was the pinnacle of the fishing experience. What was to follow soon changed his mind.

We were trolling parallel to a shoal, just where the shallow turquoise water turns to deep dark blue. Ten minutes in, both rods simultaneously doubled over and their drags began to scream.

The ensuing orgy of rookie errors made the outcome inevitable. Reeling against a fish taking line, jerking the rod when the hook is already set, letting a fish create slack by running toward the boat...the newbies took their first steps on the learning curve and we lost those first fish forthwith.

Then my biologist buddy Adrian took a turn. More screaming drag and in short order his fish wrapped him around a coral head and got off. We were 0 for 3 and didn't even know what we were hooking.

Then it was my turn. A fish struck immediately and I stood and braced myself to battle a monster from the deep. After a few seconds of waiting for the drag to scream and the rod to double over, it was clear those things were not in the cards. We were towing this fish through the water. Never the less, we landed it, the ice was broken and of course, everyone benefitted from my superb exhibition of fish fighting skills.

Never mind that the fish was smaller than the lure. That's not relevant here.

Back into the water with the rapalas...the rookies were up again.

Mauricio lost another one. Then Kathy hooked something that ran away from the boat, making it easier to keep pressure on the line. When the drag stopped paying out, she began reeling hard until the kingfish finally came into view 20 feet below us.

After one more short run, she pulled the fish to the surface and the mate gaffed and boated it.

Eight pounds!

This was our first substantial fish, and Kathy's first kingfish and first fish caught trolling!

Well done!

Adrian and Mauricio took the rods now. Something demolished Adrian's line and began tearing out drag. He let it run, and then began expertly pumping it back to the boat, waiting for the short bursts to end before raising the rod tip and then reeling in the slack as he let it fall. Suddenly we could see fish in the water...lots of them rocketing back and forth. One was especially large. Barracuda! There was a large flash of silver rolling slowly and oddly upward toward the surface. Then the fight went out of the fish on Adrian's line...

The barracuda had taken king's caudal fin and 8 inches of its' spine. Even with the shredded stump of a tail this was our biggest fish so far. It probably weighed 12 pounds before the attack.

Then I hooked another fish that I gave to Mauricio who immediately lost it...

Then I hooked a six pounder and lost it at the boat. It was too deep to gaff on the first pass. I turned its' head for the 2nd pass it shook off the bait. More mistakes, but we hardly cared. The fish were piling on...

Only Mauricio was left without a fish. It was getting to the point that when the next big fish hit his line and started stripping drag we were just waiting for disaster. But it never came. He let it run. Then started fighting it back to the boat, staying ahead of it when it ran toward him, using the bow of the rod as a shock abosorber to regulate the tension on the line. Mauricio had mastered the learning curve!



9 pounds. Not bad, and the biggest whole fish of the day!



By now, the oil alarm had ressurected itself. We turned the boat back toward shore, some 15 miles away...and as we did, the dolphins came.

Adrian and I were sure one of them was the same one we often observe in the lagoon. It had a distinctive, ragged dorsal fin that cut through the water just beside the boat (see the previous post). The dolphins homed in on us and started following our bow. Leaning over the front of the boat, I got some of the best wildlife pictures I've ever gotten anywhere.


Why dolphins bother with humans is simply beyond me. They're clearly intelligent playful creatures and maybe that's motivation enough, but often don't get warm receptions from Belizean fishermen when they approach the boats. Yet they do it on a regular basis.

Maybe they were laughing at all the fish we lost.

We might have stayed with the dolphins longer but the oil alarm was going non-stop now. The last 2 hours had been so good, we almost didn't care what happened next. It was still a relief to round the point and idle into the slip at Adrian's house.

Back at the dock, Junie cut the kingfish into steaks and we divided the catch. Neighbors and friends got their shares...

...just the way it was in the old days when Placencia was a real fishing village.

Back in Illinois

Ok. I'm finally back.

I was going to try to publish a detailed account of our fishing trip in Belize, but I'm afraid that's almost like discussing sex or religion. Words just don't quite match the experience. You can't quite understand it unless you're there yourself.

So I'm going to leave all that for a bit and start thinking about smallmouth bass here in Illinois.

Jeff says they are on fire and I'm ready and willing to examine the matter for myself.

We'll see what happens!