New book on Loaches

Loaches are an always entertaining, often challenging group of fishes to keep. I just picked up the new book published by the folks at the website Loaches Online (Killer site I highly recommend!) titled, Loaches, Natural History and Aquarium Care and will let you know what I think of it as soon as I can finish reading it.

Guide to Discus by Heiko Bleher

In reviving this place for the Spring/Summer (dare I dream even more?) I wanna remember that the name is "Adventures with Fish", not just fishing, and with that in mind here's a great start to a new series on Discus keeping by a man who knows them better than most of us ever will.

With Practical Fishkeeping, Heiko Bleher is presenting a series on Discus that judging by part one, will be a superb in-depth look at one of my favorite fish! Here's a sample:

All three species of Discus can easily be distinguished by their own chemical water parameters and that’s why I recommend never keeping them together.

The habitat of Heckel Discus (S. discus) is always water of a dark tea colour, with visibility up to 1m/3.3’ and rarely more; pH never above 5.0 but averaging 4.5; conductivity from 6-12 µS/cm — but the average is always below 10. They live only in extreme acid water and oxygen concentration is often only 2.8 mg/l.

Heckels are active in daytime in groups of 30-200 or even more, standing in deep water, along rivers, or lake edges at a drop-off, normally at a depth of 1.5-4m/5-13’ among mostly acará-açú bushes (Licania spp.), a plant widespread in the Amazon basin and living partly under water.

In between are fallen trees and logs — and there’s always fine white sand present too.

Check it out, it's a great introduction that has me already looking forward to the rest of the series!

First bass of 2010

Slowly climbing out of the deep freeze...maybe I can revive this blog! :)

Fantastic Fotography

Hey y'all,

AquaMojo is prepping a new set of shots for a major fish food company and has shared some of the preliminary work. It's a series of Lake Malawi cichlid photos and as his stuff usually is, they're gorgeous!

Check 'em out!

I caught a Wiper!

It was a beautiful couple of hours yesterday, the fish were very cooperative and I met a cool fishin' buddy who just moved here from Florida.

PLUS, I fish the Ohio River for Hybrid Striped Bass normally, and get some monsters out of there. I know people have had a love hate relationship with them in Lake Arthur for years. Me, I'd never caught one there for some reason.

Saturday changed all that. Finally, I caught my first, rod-bending, reel-screaming, baitfish bustin' Hybrid Striped Bass in Lake Arthur!!


Awesome eh? :D

My coffeefolia flowered!

So there I was happily watching television, enjoying the evening when I glanced over at my aquarium and thought "that Anubias looks very different tonight. I think I'll take a picture." So that's then I took this:


(The fish are Cardinal Tetras with an Albino Bristlenose catfish beneath)

A little less than 30 minutes later I looked again to see this:


I was excited because though this plant flowers often, for some reason the flowers never bloomed and just rotted at the stem after a couple of weeks at full height. This is the first time that a flower has actually opened on this plant in the 4 years I've had it. Much to my surprise it looked like this only an hour later:


I've never seen a flower open so quickly! 'Course, I can't say as I've ever watched from beginning to end so maybe I'm just last to the part here, but I thought it was really cool. Anubias barteri 'coffeefolia' is a great plant, very hardy and does well under minimal light. I have a single full length fluorescent over the tank (leaning toward Red spectrum 'cause it makes the Cardinal Tetras and the albino Bristlenose cats look really cool) and the substrate is flourite.

The bug is bitin'

Oh man, a month! I can't believe it's been that long since I posted. Thing is, it's been longer than that since I fished because of the gas prices and just business. God's been good to keep the bug from getting to me too much 'cause I really needed to get the stuff done that I've been doing, but I need to hit the water soon!


On the bright side, speaking of Adventures with Fish, I was able to pick up a really neat plecostomus type catfish for my aquarium. Popularly known as a "Peppermint Pleco", the little guy is settling in well. I'll have to get you a picture of it. Hopefully, Lord willing, I'll be putting my fishroom back together in the next few months and that excites me!


Go read about the Peppermint Pleco, and I'll get back soon.

Carp fishing

I'll never get used to it. You talk to almost any group of fisher folk and mention Carp. Somebody invariably insults the Carp as a "trash fish", worthy only of tossing back into the water or worse, thrown alive onto the bank to suffocate. NO fish should be treated that way. If you're going to kill it, then do so. If not, then put it back in the water. It's only humane.

Admittedly Carp do overpopulate many waters due to their incredible propagative ability. Then they need to be thinned out, but still humanely. The thing that irritates me about the complete lack of respect shown these fish is that they are tremendous fun to catch!

Hooking up with a ten pound Carp, which is likely almost anywhere they can be found, is hooking up with a ten pound fish! They fight like your big brother whoopin' on you for taking the last cookie, and pound for pound their stamina is a match for any other freshwater fish.

You can't always just throw bait at them either, especially as they grow older. Carp are totally aware of their environment and that usually includes you. The best Carp anglers in the world, generally speaking, can be found in Great Britain. These folks have honed their skills fishing along some of the world's most crowded banks, refining and refining again their approach to a fish which can pick up and drop a bait without you even knowing they've seen it.

Some anglers call the Carp the "Golden Bonefish" because in their feeding habits, skittishness and near invulnerability to the hook in clear water. The name fits. I am certain that you've seen more wakes suddenly headed away from you than you've seen the actual Carp in the your area, and in clear water, you may not have seen them at all.

My 2 favorite Carp memories both took place on, believe it or not, trout streams! Yup, Carp make a way.

The first one was on one of the best trout streams in the northeast. I was fly fishing at a dam on the stream, drifting a small nymph through the pockets in the dam formed by rocks splitting the overflow as it tumbled over it's 3 foot drop in front of me. It was a comfortable spring day and I'd been catching fish pretty regularly. I was drifting it deep after seeing a few large shadows which I took to be smallmouth, when my line tightened slowly. I set the hook, and within 20 seconds I got that cold feeling in the pit of my stomach that tells you something bad is about to happen.

My line had followed the plunge pool of the waterfall from one side to the other, without slowing in the least. The cold feeling set in. Then, when my line turned East and started downstream toward the rapids area, my gut started to quake a little. I'm gonna be real honest here, more honest than a fisherman should. I had two thoughts making me nervous. Thought number one: "Oh shoot, I'm gonna lose this fish!" Thought number two, the...ugly thought...was: "Oh shoot, I'm gonna lose this fish...and everybody's gonna see it happen!" I hate when that happens. It's not as bad when you lose a fish and are the only one who knows it, but when everybody knows...ugh.

My mind got off that real quick when I looked down and saw that this fish had stripped my fly line off the reel and was down into the backing and still hadn't so much as paused in it's mad dash to be free of that hook. Since I couldn't run across the stream and the near side was bounded by high weeds, I had one choice: follow the fish through the rapids. Scared? You bet. I was running out of line though, and determined to find out what was making me sweat.

It took some serious scrambling on my part and some furious reeling to finally get my fly line back on the reel, and by this point I was down near the fly shop which sits on the bank of the Neshannock Creek. This was a Saturday and there were plenty of other guys fishing. They quickly realized that I was fighting something big, and everybody stopped to look. Bob Shuey, the owner of Neshannock Creek Fly Shop, came out and gave me a little heck. "What's this commotion you're causing out here?" he asked. To be honest, I was so wound up fighting this fish that I don't even remember what I said in response!

I had been fighting this fish for about 20 minutes at this point and all eyes were on me. (Nervous? Bah!) Finally, after all this running, climbing and fighting, the fish showed itself at the surface. It was simply the biggest carp I've ever hooked! I mean when this baby rolled up top it was like a golden side of beef! So when the angler down from me (the fish was still over 20 yards away) offered to net it for me, I quickly accepted.

*Ominous music starts*

Then it all came crashing down. As carp will, this fish reacted badly to the approach of this guy with his net. One huge flip and it threw the hook and took off back upstream.

On the bright side, everybody saw my big fish. On the dark side, I SO wanted a picture with that beast.

Next time I'll tell you about the 4 pound line, Crappie jig, crystal clear water and 6 pound carp. 'Til then...