2000fish's Blog – Steve Wozniak's hunt for fish species

DATELINE: FEBRUARY 9, 2022 – ORLANDO, FLORIDA

It was a quiet winter evening at home, a few days after Christmas. I wasn’t feeling all that great, but the few Covid tests we could find had been negative, so I crossed my fingers and hoped I had the flu.

Marta and I were settled on the couch, warmed by a roaring fire and enjoying some holiday television. I had eaten three hot dogs and a can of beans for lunch, and we can all do that math. I thought I would be sneaky and try to handle things quietly, hoping Marta might not notice. So I pointed the other way and turned up the TV volume.

For a moment, I thought I had pulled it off, and I felt faintly clever as men do in these circumstances. But then Marta spun around, smacked me on the forehead, and said “Fuchi capesta! What the hell did you eat?” I smelled nothing. I feigned innocence. She informed me we needed to repaint and that I should probably check my pants. I still smelled absolutely nothing. And that’s how I discovered I had Covid.

This put a damper on my January fishing plans. Yeah, I lived, and I suppose it was a lighter-than-average case for an old person, but I was pretty miserable for a few days. The saving grace – Marta never got Covid. And even though her nursing history is not a proud one (“Get the Theraflu yourself, Typhoid Mary”) she was somehow amazing during this episode. Food and medication appeared from nowhere, and she let me watch “Last Man Standing” all day long. I never wanted it to end. But it did, and somewhere toward February, I started making plans. Florida came to mind. 

I had been looking at a Florida trip for months. In May of 2021, I caught my 2000th species there, and then headed off on a Florida/Alabama adventure with Dom Porcelli. But I failed on the gulf flounder, and a few other gulf coast beasts, so a rematch was inevitable. I had also planned some time on the east coast of Florida, to pillage the estuaries and surf in Ben Cantrell’s new neighborhood. There were 17 target fish, and strongly believed I could get at least 11 of them.

This is when Mother Nature decided to remind me of who is really in charge.

The weather was perfect the day I flew into Tampa, but even as we landed, the barometer was falling like the Tigers batting average in August. Ryan tried to warn me, but the ticket was bought and I was going to tough it out. It’s Florida. I just needed one gulf flounder. One gulf toadfish. One finetooth shark. How bad could it be?

The answer – BAD. Stuff stops eating when the thermometer goes down 20 degrees. But Ryan was still game to get after the fish early the next morning, when he had hopefully escaped work for the weekend. He’s an IT executive – executive – so people, stop asking him to fix your printer. 

We pounded it on Saturday. Pounded it. Dawn til dusk. We tossed lived shrimp, dead shrimp, mostly dead shrimp, squid, cut baits, and artificials. We used moving presentations, still presentations, jigheads, assorted leaders and hooks, etc. – and we didn’t take a break. We were rewarded with – pinfish.

And one teensy snapper. Good Lord it was bad. Ryan’s the good-looking one on the left. 

Sure, there were a few grunts and even a sheephead, but mostly it was pinfish.

Always fun to sight-fish these.

I also got a lovely leopard searobin, which, as you all know, was species 2000.

Despite Ryan’s gentle reminders that it was not ideal out there, we kept at it, stopping only for occasional bathroom runs, because people my age can’t take a message when nature calls. 

Oh, I did catch an Atlantic stingray, which Ryan didn’t have at the time. I felt briefly awful.

Even the birds looked cold and miserable.

Ryan was a trooper the whole time, but he had evening responsibilities at home – a wife, children, cats, and a printer. Before he left, he kindly showed me a spot by my hotel where I might get a gulf toadfish. I had an excellent dinner, then, about 9pm, I donned the Goretex and walked a few hundred yards down to a rock wall. It was just starting to rain, but I dutifully worked shrimp baits through obvious holes. And I caught – pinfish. It started raining more. It got colder. I caught more pinfish. Somewhere after 11pm, I got one good bite that tried to bury me in the rocks, and with my patience worn thin by 16 hours of bad fishing, I just leaned on it and hoped. Seconds later, a small Gulf Toadfish lost its grip, came shooting out of the water, and hit me in the shin. 

Species 2047. I remember the day as a success.

The next morning was a repeat with Ryan. We gave it another honest effort, and the pinfish gave us another honest swarming. We quit midafternoon, and I jumped in the car to drive across the state to Sebastian inlet. I can’t thank Ryan enough for spending the time with me – he ordinarily wouldn’t venture out in conditions like this. Even to fix my printer.

Florida is surprisingly wide. I had one target I wanted to hit near Ben’s house, but it was a solid three hours across the state, not counting Red Bull stops. I raced to Vero Beach, checked into my hotel, and then drove up to Sebastian inlet. The target area was a rock jetty, which would clearly require wading, so I went to grab my wading shoes, and discovered I had left them in Vero Beach. So, I got my sneakers wet. 

Sunset at Sebastian Inlet.

There were supposed to be two targets here, both blennies. The main one was the Masquerader Hairy Blenny, a fish described by 1000Fish friend Dr. Alfredo Carvalho. This species is apparently found in northern Brazil and Florida, unlike the regular hairy blenny, which is found everywhere else on earth and possibly on Mars. The other target was a blenny called a “molly miller.” 

I squished around the rocks, flipping small pieces of shrimp in likely crevices, and it didn’t take long. I caught several masqueraders, both males and females. I could not find a molly miller, so that night, Hairy did not meet Molly.

But I still had species 2048.

One of Ben’s excellent underwater blenny photos.

I spent the next day on a fruitless quest for a mountain mullet. These evil fish, which must be closely related to the creek chubsucker, make themselves painfully obvious and yet will not bite any offering even if it’s on their nose. It was horrible. 

I had two more full days to plan. Looking at the weather, it was clear that some of my surf fishing ideas, especially for finetooth shark, were not going to work. So I got on the phone with a shark charter that Ben recommended – Jamie of Fin and Fly Charters in Cocoa Beach. Jamie felt fairly confident that we could find a finetooth in protected waters – going into the open ocean would be miserable.

We got going at 7am and motored out into Canaveral Sound. Despite this being Florida, it was cold and windy – hoodie weather. Jamie certainly knew the area well and had excellent knowledge of the fish species – I’ll definitely head out with him on future, less weather-cursed trips. We set up a spread of shark baits and waited.

Steve and the crew, deckhand Bud at center and Captain Jamie on the right. Note that hoods are up. This is not how people should be dressing in Florida.

We didn’t wait long. Something took off with one of the mackerel, and the fight was on. It took a few minutes to get it to the boat, but it was a shark and it seemed to have the right color pattern – I believed at the moment I had a finetooth.

But I hadn’t read the ID book thoroughly enough, because as soon as I got back to my hotel and got into the text, it was clear I had a very pale Atlantic sharpnose.

Ahhhh, crap. 

We had plenty of action – including a wayward gulf toadfish of all things, but the shark was not meant to be.

Do NOT put this in your pants.

I spent the rest of the afternoon down at Juno pier, and got one bite. It was a threadfin, a species I don’t have, and it fell off an arm’s length from the railing. It’s safe to say that was the low point of the trip, as long as we don’t count dinner at Waffle House.

The next morning was somehow even colder. I spoke to Steve Ramsey, and it was actually warmer in Indianapolis, which tells me I was not in Mother Nature’s good graces. I met up with Ben Cantrell, who was kind enough to brave the drizzle and take me out and try for some of his local micros. But before we hit the water, there was something far more important to look at over at his house – KITTENS.

You see, Ben, who is notably kind to animals, had taken in a pregnant stray a month or so before, over the strident objections of Daisy, a tabby he had adopted earlier in 2021.

Daisy, enjoying her favorite spot by the aquarium.

The stray, who he named Carmel, gave birth to six beautiful kittens, and we spent part of the morning playing with them. (Note that all six kittens were moved, in pairs, to permanent homes, and Carmel was spayed and eventually reunited with her original owner. Daisy returned to her quiet existence with Ben, for a few months at least, but that’s a story for another time.)

A pile of kittens.

Ben allows himself to be clambered upon.

This one is Carmelita, the spitting image of her Mom. Carmelita and one of the white kittens went to an especially good home.

Little RJ – Rascal Junior – who shall carry on the indomitable spirit of the original Rascal, God rest his feline soul. 

Ben was willing to take me anywhere to fish, but the lousy weather gave us limited options. We headed over to a local pond that was supposed to have golden silverside and an outside chance at a swamp darter.

Ben and Steve head to the water, despite the odds being against them.

The silversides were a no-go – it’s sight fishing and the breeze made it unworkable. We walked to a small pier that provided a wind break and started looking at the bottom around the pilings. It took a moment, but Ben spotted a few darters, mixed in with a group of juvenile bluegill. It seemed like a fool’s errand, as juvenile bluegill are quick and vicious, but we had nothing better to do.

Who knows what was crawling out of that dock into my underwear, but a species is a species.

It took a bit of awkward maneuvering on our bellies, which was a splinter risk on the loose wood, but once we got settled, we could drop micro-baits straight down, which made it easier to pull it away from the enthusiastic sunfish and get it in front of the darters.

I have edited out a spectacular plumber shot.

Surprisingly, the darters hit, and within minutes, I had added a species. 

My 38th darter.

Ben and I parted ways after another round of playing with the kittens, and I decided to give Sebastian inlet one more try for a Molly Miller. (At least I had my water shoes this time – the sneakers took three days to dry, and I regretted that my sense of smell had returned.) It was a chilly day for wet wading, but the Fish Gods grudgingly rewarded me with the target creature after half a dozen masquerader hairy blennies.

So Hairy had finally met Molly, and I was off to lunch, even though I didn’t have what she was having.

The next day, I had an early afternoon flight home, but this left me the morning to chase an old nemesis – the Jack Dempsey. Dom had given me a spot that he thought was a slam dunk – he had gotten something like 25 of them there last year – with the caveat that the current arctic weather might shut things down. It was a nondescript pond behind a medical office, and it looked just like a lot of other places that awful little cichlid had ignored me. I had 90 minutes to fish and still get to the airport with time to spare.

110 biteless minutes later, I wasn’t ready to give up but I also wasn’t ready to reschedule my flight. I decided to try a small concrete culvert and then hit the road. I had ignored the structure so far because everyone I know had caught their Dempseys in more open water, but I try to leave no stone unturned.

The culvert.

As soon as I moved the bait into the shadow of the pipe, there was a flash in the water and a quick bite, which I missed. I took a deep breath and tried again, fully aware that if I missed it I would be vile and inconsolable for weeks. The fish bit and stayed on, and it was – FINALLY – a Jack Dempsey. A nicely colored one.

Chris Moore would stop making fun of me, and life felt good. I called and reminded him he hasn’t caught a barred pargo.

I made my flight, and while doing battle with the chicken and rice option, I counted up five new species, opening up my 2022 and taking me to 2051 lifetime. The trip hadn’t been what I expected, but it still felt like a win – when things are hardest is when we have to be at our best. I had gotten to see some good friends, play with a swarm of kittens, and I knew that the gulf flounder was still out there somewhere. 

Steve

Special Bonus Section – “Shameless Plug for Doug”

One of the great inspirations for this blog and a great mentor over the years, Doug Olander, former editor-in-chief of Sport Fishing Magazine, has just completed his first novel, Catagion. It’s a great read, and you can find it HERE on Amazon.