Camping and Fishing Adventures

River Monster: A Prehistoric fish story!

We were already camping at one of our favorite parks, so our kayak was on the ground and ready to take out for a morning fishing trip.

Our decision to paddle to the South side of the Caloosahatchee River in search of some Mayan Cichlids or even larger Bluegills was one based on our fishing as much of this beautiful river as we could.

After uncovering our kayak and sliding it down a small slope of grass, we launched, boarded, and started our short paddle.

It only took us a few minutes to get to the other side of the river, so I baited up my hook with a nice fat worm and tossed it near some lily pads.

Almost immediately hooked into a small bluegill, so I released it and tried again without success for anything larger.

We paddled up the shoreline to a small canal entering the river and tossed the anchor.  I had caught some larger Mayan Cichlids here on an earlier trip so was rather anxious about hooking into a large one.

After moving around and fishing almost exclusively near the lily pads, I had decided to toss the wormed hook into some rather open water just under a large overhanging tree.

It only took a minute before by bobber started going under and moving slowly away from us.

I set the hook and immediately started loosing some fishing line as a monster fish was stripping the line from my reel faster than I could reel it in.

The fight lasted a few minutes before I had the strange looking fish next to our kayak.  Naturally it was thrashing about and getting both of us wet in the process.  Since it had some small teeth I didn’t feel like grabbing it by the mouth just to bring it in the kayak.

I finally lifted it over the edge and dropped it right in front of me.  When it wasn’t jumping around I could see it wasn’t the normal fish I usually catch.  Since I have a freshwater fishing book I remember seeing something resembling a Bowfin.

Since it had scales, gills and looked like a regular fish, I decided to keep it for food value, so I hooked the plastic stringer through its mouth and lifted it back into the water.

We were aware that there were many varieties of fish that live in this river, such as Tilapia, Catfish, Grass Carp, Bluegills, Mayan Cichlids, Redfish, Tarpon, Snook, but nothing prepared us for what I actually caught.

We fished a short while longer then paddled back to our trailer.  I cleaned the Bowfin and cut some nice, boneless fillets and placed them in a zip lock bag so I could put them in the refrigerator for now.

Since I was rather curious as to what this kind of fish would eat, I cut open its stomach and found a large gold hook, a plant stem, and a small bluegill.

When we arrived home the next day I did some research on the Bowfin only to find out that this fish is rarely caught and is considered prehistoric.  It also said the meat wasn’t that good to eat.

Not really wanting to pay attention to the information regarding the Bowfin, I did eat the meat only to find that it tasted just fine, but it was a little too soft for me so decided not to eat it again.

Karen and I have since talked about it and have decided we wouldn’t keep any more of this type fish since it is considered prehistoric and we’re all about conservation.

All I can say is that it put up a fantastic fight and that’s always good fun on light tackle.
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