Fishing Dreams in Living Color

While I have had great fun catching many fish that were objectively ugly—giant Alaskan halibut, Potomac River catfish and Brazilian wolf fish immediately come to mind—there is something particularly gratifying about catching a species that’s all lit up with vibrant colors, the type that no camera can fully capture.

For example, when you see your first big mahi mahi go skyward and the bright green pierces your eyes it’s amazing, but when you get him in the boat and see the specks of various yellows and blues dotting his torso it becomes a different, more meaningful catch. On the same trips to Guatemala where we’ve enjoyed their light show, we’ve also landed 81 sailfish over six days on the water. They too are a sight to behold when they tail walk across the surface, sometimes so close that you could reach out and touch them, but when you’re actually holding the subdued fish and you see the iridescent blues and purples each fish becomes a work of art.

It’s the same catching peacock bass in Brazil. No two are alike, whether it’s due to coloration, shape, or distinct markings. If you see a painting or a photo of a peacock before you actually catch one, you’ll assume that no fish could be so beautiful, and you’ll be wrong. But you don’t have to travel on a costly fishing trip to Guatemala or Brazil to know the beauty of colorfully-distinctive fish. You can catch bluegills or redears or pumpkinseeds close to home and if you take the time to inspect them you may be surprised at just how amazing each one can be.

Below are four distinctly-colored gamefish that are high on my constantly-growing list of future efforts:

Napoleon Wrasse

I first learned about the Napoleon Wrasse (also known as the Humphead Wrasse) when I took a deep dive into researching the rabbit hole of flats fishing in the Indian Ocean and South Pacific. Giant Trevally were the species that initially caught my attention, and I’m bordering on desperate to catch one or more of those, but there are so many more amazing species on the reefs of those regions and this is the one that’s by far the most distinctive looking. Per the “humphead” name, they have a giant bulge on the forehead, as well as bloated lips that give them a cartoonish look. Looks aside, they can grow up to several hundred pounds and they’re known for eating hard-shelled prey, some of it poisonous so there’s no doubt they are badasses who will put even hard core popping tackle to the test. I thought I knew a lot about geography, but I’d never even heard of one of the best places to catch them—New Caledonia, an archipelago about 750 miles off the coast of Australia. Fun fact: these fish, like many wrasses, can change from one sex to the other.

Tree River Char

Ever since I first heard about the Plummer’s Lodge outpost at the Tree River in the Northwest Territories from Dave Mercer, it has been at or near the top of my lifetime goal destinations. While I know that Hanna prefers warm climates (and is occasionally cold even in those), the idea of catching a bucket list fish and then taking a celebratory dip in the Arctic Ocean seems to me to be something that few of even my more adventurous traveling friends will ever accomplish. Then, of course, there’s the fishing. Hanna and I caught a bunch of smaller char in Alaska, and they put up a hell of a fight in the current of the remote fly-in streams we fished. I cannot imagine what a larger fish would do, especially in the heavy flow of the Tree River. The season is so short and the conditions are so harsh, that everything that lives up there has to be extra-tough…and it doesn’t hurt the experience that the bright red fish are beyond gorgeous.

China Rockfish

When Keith Combs and I fished with Captain Chris Hanna out of Seward, Alaska in the summer of 2019, our primary target was halibut, and we easily limited out with quality specimens, enough that we easily sent home 50 pounds apiece while throwing dozens of fish back. At times during the overnight trip we also caught various kinds of rockfish, both inadvertently and purposefully. A few of them got turned into some righteous tacos. I liked catching and photographing the black rockfish because they looked like oversized largemouths, although they were fairly drab. We also caught the more colorful yelloweye and canary rockfish. It was almost difficult to believe that something so bright could exist in such a tough environment. The halibut, for example, clearly evolved in terms of both color and anatomy to be camouflaged, but these fish stood out in a way that I would have more likely expected among African or South American cichlids. One species of rockfish that we didn’t catch was the China Rockfish, which features a dark body with contrasting yellow highlights. These common non-pelagic bottom dwellers don’t necessarily grow huge, only up to about 17 or 18 inches, but I think they’re really cool-looking. If we decide not to eat them, we can use a deep water release mechanism to ensure their long-term survival.

Blue Peacock Bass

We’ve caught butterfly peacocks in both Miami and Brazil (two different zones—the Rio Negro Basin and the more southerly Rio Juruena), and both “three bar” (acu) and Paca species in Brazil. As noted above all of them are distinctive and most of them are gorgeous beyond belief. One my favorite fish that either of us have ever landed was the first of Hanna’s two 19-pound three-bars, both caught on topwater. Not only did it have the big hump of a spawning male on top of its head, but it also had three distinct stripes and an incredible patchwork of markings on its cheeks. Brazil is a big country, though, and peacocks are more diverse than what’s offered in Amazonas and Mato Grosso. Through the writing of Larry Larsen and by interviewing Brazilian journalist Alex Koike, I learned about the “blue peacock bass.” Alex recommended fishing for them at Pousada Angical. They’re not as big as some of the others, but this is where to go for record-class specimens. While they’re not a bright robin’s egg blue or royal blue, their coloring is nonetheless vivid. If I’m being greedy, I just hope that they strike topwaters like their northern brethren.

Replica Plans?

Of course, if and when we make these trips happen, if we’re lucky enough to catch one of these amazing fish we’ll have to consider clearing some wall space for a replica. Of the ones that we already have up on the wall, the two Brazilian peacocks are brightly colored, and my Montana cutthroat trout is also striking, My largemouth may be the one that my basshead friends gravitate toward, but it is a relatively drab fish. The other three—the payara from Brazil, musky from St. Clair and tigerfish from Zambia—may be noticeable, but probably for their teeth, not necessarily for their coloration.

I’ve never seen a fiberglass mount of a Napoleon Wrasse. I’m guessing that it’s a mold not many taxidermists keep in stock, and if they do they probably don’t have many sizes. That may make getting a replica difficult. We’ll cross that colorful bridge when we get to it.