Walter Harvey nominated his grandson Brixton for Fish of the Week for catching an impressive peacock bass in Florida, well, three peacocks.
“My son [Phil] and his family were down in Pompano Beach at our condo and you can see they went out fishing and his oldest son, who is 6, caught this giant peacock bass,” emailed Harvey. “He caught two other peacocks that day, but this was the biggest.”
Peacock bass are striking fish.
“Peacock bass are unique among freshwater fish as the only non-native species to be legally established in Florida,” according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission. “The FWC stocked peacock bass in coastal southeast Florida canals in 1984 to help reduce the number of undesirable exotic fishes, especially spotted tilapia.
“A side benefit of the stocking has been a new fishery for Florida. Limited low temperature tolerance normally restricts butterfly peacocks to Broward and Miami-Dade counties but recent mild winters have allowed anglers as far north as Palm Beach County to enjoy catching this species.”
FOTW, the celebration of big fish and their stories (the stories matter, as this one shows) around Chicago fishing, runs Wednesdays in the paper Sun-Times.
To make submissions, email (BowmanOutside@gmail.com ) or contact me on Facebook ( Dale Bowman ), X ( @BowmanOutside ), Instagram ( @BowmanOutside ) or Bluesky ( @BowmanOutside.bsky.social ).
