The what ya brought back thread....

[caferacermike]

My stuffs.

http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g48/caferacermike/100_3097.jpg
Bucket o stuff.

http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g48/caferacermike/100_3098.jpg

http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g48/caferacermike/100_3099.jpg
What I believe to be a coastal grey trigger fish. For reference http://www.saltcorner.com/sections/zoo/fish/triggerfishes/balistes/Bcarolinensis.html

http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g48/caferacermike/100_3100.jpg
Another "trigger" tiny and very colorful orange/red in the fins. Thought it was a filefish but it seems different the more I look at it, I see a small spine under the belly as well.

http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g48/caferacermike/100_3104.jpg
http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g48/caferacermike/100_3107.jpg
Sargassum anglers. These are what I came for and found 6. Brought home 4 traded one.

http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g48/caferacermike/100_3110.jpg
Local pipe fish. Caught several. Seems to be 2 different predominate species in the area. Gave all the ones I caught to a soul that really wanted them and ended up trading an angler for one just before I left.

Hundreds of Sargent Majors were caught as well as several young ocean going silver creatures. All were released. Caught thousands of grass shrimp and about 100 sargassum shrimp. Kept about 40 sargassum shrimps but the trigger ate ALL of them. Also caught several sargassum nudis. Way to cool. Using hand landing nets in the surf produced the best results. Saturday morning was excellent but Sunday nothing was to be found.

[kendsley]

those anglers look neat! any chance on selling one to me once my tank is ready? :)

[oceancube]

that trigger is nice, what net and where did you catch it at? looks like a small varient of what i caught while deep sea fishing!!!
http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c349/oceancube/aquariumstuff.jpg

[Richard]

Can you keep us updated on how those coquina clams do in your aquarium?

[Stacy]

We couldn't make this trip, but are planning on doing something similar in Galveston next week. Not sure we'll find anything nearly as interesting, but it should be fun anyways. You caught some awesome stuff!! Thanks for sharing :)

[caferacermike]

Sorry Kends the ones I have are spoken for. I had hoped to catch just one. I was very fortunate with what I did catch, not just anglers but so many filefish, pipefish, and triggers, that I began giving some away already. I'll be down to 2 anglers tonight as some will most likely go to Prof as he was there as we caught a few.

OC that does look exactly like the larger trigger I found. Still no ID on the smaller trigger. Good for you catching that one on a line. Read somewhere else it is nearly impossible to catch them because of the shape of the mouth. Seems they are adept at eating the bait away from the hook and never placing the hook in the mouth. Also read that if you go near the oil rigs they are so thick around the masts that you can barely see in the water. Something to the effect of "nearly impossible to get the bait to drop down past the thick mat of triggers where the snapper are". You also ask where and how. At the end of a beach road (secret now lol) with a hand net, basically a metal version of the trout landing nets and with holes smaller than 22 cal bullets.

Rich it's still early but they've done well in a little less than 24 hours. I added some to a cloudy bucket of fish brought back for another member and the bucket was crystal clear a few hours later. I placed them in every tank and they are all alive and moving around. My main guess was that if they died they'd make excellent food. They are really really colorful, Easter has nothing on em. Thanks for the ID. Any idea how big they get? At 1/2" I don't see how Troy Pham would eat them, from another thread.

Stacy I'll help as much as I can since I was just guessing. Using hand nets, long landing nets just broke in the crashing waves, we waded out about knee deep looking for large clumps of sargassum grass. We'd find a few clumps and scoop them out. Generally 4 or 5 small SM damsels and 1 red crab. Out of about 100 nettings I found 5 anglers, 3 pipes, 2 triggers, 8 filefish. Tons of SM damsels, red crabs, and nudibranches. The nudis are best left there as they survive on a thin film emitted from from the sargassum. This was on the surf side. In the jetties you can scrape up shrimp, rock anemones, snails etc.. Of course Galveston might be completely different. Sunday the water was clear with no sargassum and no fish to catch. We ran a seine net for awhile but caught silvery minnows, a few large random ocean going fish, and more SM Damsels. There is a marsh side where several pipes and thousands of grass shrimps were found. Best bet is to look for large mats of that sargassum caught in slow bays. Remember to frequently change the water in the buckets and to run an air pump be it battery powered (loud and droning) or a power inverter and electric air pump. If possible transport home inside the vehicle due to the rising temp outside. I chanced it and brought 2 buckets home in the back of a truck. It took several hours inside the house for the buckets to acclimate to room temp before I could even acclimate to the tank water they went into.

All are still alive and some are eating pellets right now.

[apedroza]

What part of port A were ya'll in??

[oceancube]

yeah i just got back from port A on saturday and i didn't even bother to try to catch anything like that, next time im taking my net and trying it out, would be nice with a pack of triggers from port a in a 100 gallon tank!!!!! do you think they would be on the jetty side where all the rocks are and the big boats pass by???

[Jeff]

is the pipe fish eating?

[caferacermike]

Not sure really where to catch the triggers. Mine were flukes floating in the surf.

Jeff the pipe is not "eating" yet per say. I don't have any brine shrimp at hand yet. I tried frozen arctic pods and it seemed interested. I really think it will go after live foods. I was given the largest fish from a large collection. It's not a matter of it being to small to eat.

[Stacy]

Thanks for the help Mike. I'll let y'all know if we make it there and find anything fun...

[Richard]

Rich it's still early but they've done well in a little less than 24 hours. I added some to a cloudy bucket of fish brought back for another member and the bucket was crystal clear a few hours later. I placed them in every tank and they are all alive and moving around. My main guess was that if they died they'd make excellent food. They are really really colorful, Easter has nothing on em. Thanks for the ID. Any idea how big they get? At 1/2" I don't see how Troy Pham would eat them, from another thread.


Yeah they are edible, supposed to be tasty but I think a steak would fill you up better. Every thing I have read says they die off in weeks to months so keep an eye on them and your water quality. They would be a great sandbed clam if they lived and great for water quality too. I think either they are starving to death in peoples tanks or they just can't last without a pounding surf to play in. Not too much info on them but I have always wanted to try them in a tank. You might want to feed them some phyto a few times a week. Factoid of the day - on the beach they sense the vibrations of on coming waves and when they "hear" a big wave coming they jump up, that's how they move around on the beach. I think that's about it on size.

[Jeff]

a small skimmerless tank would be great to try the little clams on.

[MKCindy]

Caferacermike is a hard act to follow, but here is what we brought back. We were netting on the Jetties Saturday night. Caught Peppermint Shrimp and a Rock Anemone (awesome dark green and maroon tentacles) and a Sea Cucumber. I'm sure half of Port A heard my 19 year old son yelling, "We found a turd that moves!" Actually, it is called a Donkey Dung... he's not far off. It spent Monday resting under a rock, woke up hungry this morning and has been all over my tank skimming the sand bed. Everything made the trip in great shape.
We are planning another trip down there in two weeks, w/more nets, better lights and more mosquito repellent!

[FireEater]

Can you keep us updated on how those coquina clams do in your aquarium?We have collected them here in Galveston a few times. They are buried everywhere in the sand but do not survive our tanks. Most likely not enough nutrient for them. They usually stick up a snorkle out of the sand to feed from what I can tell.

[thedude]

We brought back 2 small seahorses, three pipefish, a goby of some sort, some other small fish, and about a dozen peppermints. The collecting this year wasn't as easy as last year and I don't know if that is due to all the rain we've had washing silt into the ocean and cooling it (the water was at least 10 degrees cooler than last year at this time).

The seahorses dissapeared after the first night but everything else is doing fine. We collected one large (6") pipefish who still hasn't moved or eaten and the interesting thing is that the two smaller ones (2-3", circumference of a coffee stirrer) are eating cyclops with a gusto. I thought the smaller ones would have a harder time acclimating to tank food and life but they've proved to be readily adaptable. Another thing is that we brought back a couple strands of the red macroalgae found in the area we caught them and they spend all their time buried in it.

[urban79]

I saw that macroagle. But I didnt want to get wet. So I didnt get it.. LOL

[glennr1978]

Wow awesome thread!!! I'm from corpus and had no idea that people came here to catch things to put in their tanks. Would you mind filling me in on the details as to how you go about catching all of these little creatures?

I think I read earlier in your post that you just net sea weed and hope for the best, is that correct? If so, you may want to try the fish pass jetties next time you are in the area, they are absolutely full of life. The middle of the 2 jetties is filled in so that it acts like a trap for drifting sea weed.

[FireEater]

Is pass jetties the ones at the end of beach access number 2?

[glennr1978]

I'm not sure what the # is on the access road (I've been going there since I was a kid, so I've never really paid much attention to the road signs!!). Fish pass jetties is the one that's in the state park (mustang island), the one you have to pay to get into.

[marcus_the_clownfish]

i am curous as well, where did you go and how do you go about catching everything?