Nothing Like The Tropicals

   Every year we get a lot of cool tropical fish that show up with the gulf stream.  Storms will push in even more strange fish.  This year we have seen more triple tails than ever before.  A few Cottonmouth jacks were caught off structure.   

These butterflies are common to catch this time of year.  This one was caught in a pin fish trap by Mike Hinton.  Our estuaries are full of all kinds of tropical fish like these.  I know people who make a living off seine netting tropical fish for the aquarium industry.  Especially in the Virginia beach area the amount of marshes down there supports a huge amount of these fish to hide and feed. 

These tropical fish will die once the water changes to winter temperatures.  They do not have a biological clock telling them it is time to go back to the gulf area.  They will feed and move to warmer water areas until they can no longer find warm water.  This has been going on forever, and in the last decade we have seen a much larger variety of tropical fish species in Delaware.  

Fish On!

Rich King