Longtime followers of this blog have seen how inadvertent aquarium ownership devolved into an obsession with Austin creeks and finally left me with my current enthusiasm: fishing. I’ve had some fishing failures, but there have been triumphant fishing successes.
The most recent success, I caught a beautiful example of the only North American cichlid. The territory of the Rio Grande Cichlid doesn’t stretch much farther than Austin, but I caught one on Tuesday.
I’m going to call this a bull male. A beautiful trophy.
Let’s say this was eight inches, just an inch and a half beneath the lake record.
I was going to hold the cichlid by the lower jaw to remove the hook, like they say you’re supposed to, but then I noticed that it had some serious teeth, so I decided to leave the hook in there.
A fish like this would cost you twenty bucks at an aquarium shop.
Needless to say, it was quite delicious. The meat was not unlike a sunfish, but it was particularly dense and oily. The hump above the head had some of the tenderest and most flavorful fish flesh I’ve had to date.
