Part 2: Christmas gators
Christmas day was executed in perfect bumbling, tumbleweeding fashion.
As the sun rose, Elijah struck first with a fascinating burfish and I retaliated with a tiny, but mysterious blenny. My fish had a fitting colour scheme…
It’s tough to call between puffcheek and downy blenny. After some ID work and consultation, it is most likely a downy blenny.
Downy blenny 
Elijah proceeded to put on quite the spectacle, landing angelfish after angelfish. I tried my best to replicate his success, but I just couldn’t nail the angels. My deficit would be further highlighted in the coming day.
Instead, I caught a santa-sized porkfish. You might say he was a porker of a porkfish…
I also found my new life list shot for redtailed parrotfish.
In search of somewhere to buy worms and eat lunch on a holiday when everything is closed, we stumbled upon an unlikely bird sanctuary.
After a classy Christmas lunch at Hooters we off to the Everglades!
The tumbleweeding continued, and we eventually found somewhere to buy the worms we needed to pillage the Everglades.
Mayan cichlid
African jewelfish
Florida gar
Bartek’s Florida gar
The gar were holding at the far corner of this canal edge. I practiced some steelhead-style spinner pitching and got some hits.
As the sun fell it was time to move on to a spot for brown hoplo catfish. Along the way, Elijah noticed we probably weren’t going to have enough gas to make it all the way there. Our tumbleweeding for a gas station led us to Everglades City.
Eventually we made it to the brown hoplo spot. We weren’t alone…
As a group of gators slithered closer and closer to the dock we were standing on, we gave up on the fishing. I had a lot of rotting bait in the cooler so I decided to give the gators a few Christmas presents.
