Fishing for peacock bass heating up with July mating season around the corner

Capt. Alan Zaremba had just lifted a gorgeous peacock bass into his boat when we heard an admiring “honk-honk” from an 18-wheeler cruising south on Florida’s Turnpike adjacent to the canal we were fishing.

The colorful fish that are native to the Amazon River and its unspoiled jungle tributaries are equally at home in the bustling urban canals of South Florida.

Zaremba, of Hollywood, has specialized in guiding customers from throughout the United States and numerous other countries to peacock bass in local canals and lakes, as well as in South America (visit www.worldwidesportsfishing.com).

In Brazil and Colombia, his customers have caught peacocks as big as 29 pounds. Zaremba said a “solid” South Florida peacock is 4-6 pounds, although they do get bigger. The state record peacock is just over 9 pounds.

COVID-19 put a hurting on his guide business and forced him to postpone his international trips. The good news is he has plenty of open dates for local anglers to fish for peacocks and other non-native species such as snakeheads and clown knifefish in local waters.

Even better for those wanting to catch peacock bass: The summer mating season is almost at hand. Zaremba’s first fish of the day, which he caught on a Baby Torpedo from under a bridge, indicated that some of the peacocks are getting ready to mingle.

“Never underestimate the power of a Baby Torpedo,” Zaremba said as he fought a male peacock that had slammed the topwater lure. “I’ve been using these things forever.”

Zaremba could tell it was a male because the fish had a pronounced bump on the top of its head, which Zaremba said will get bigger as the July mating season gets closer.

“These fish mate twice a year, if not three times if the conditions are right,” he said, noting that some years, peacocks can first spawn as early as February in southern Miami-Dade County if the water is warm enough. The fish in northern Miami-Dade and Broward counties usually mate in March. Palm Beach County peacocks typically spawn in late March and early April.

Zaremba followed up that fish with another pretty peacock, its green-and-orange body with three vertical black stripes glowing in the bright morning sun. He’d played the fish carefully, allowing the aggressive peacock to zig, zag and jump before it finally calmed down enough for him to reel it alongside the boat. Trying to crank in a peacock before it tires usually results in the peacock shaking free of the lure.

A Bagley Minnow B jerkbait is Zaremba’s other favorite peacock lure, and like the Baby Torpedo, it also will catch largemouth bass and exotics. He fishes the jerkbait by casting it to the edge of the vegetation lining a canal and taking up slack until his braided fishing line is fairly tight.

“I don’t like to reel it right away. I let it sit there. I try to make it make a little noise to get their attention. Then I’ll get it coming,” said Zaremba, who repeatedly twitches the lure so it lives up it to its name with a jerky motion that peacocks find hard to resist. “Peacocks are funny. They’re curious fish.”

Zaremba grew up fishing for largemouth bass in lakes in what is now Miami Gardens. He continued fishing local waters when his family moved to Pembroke Pines while he was in high school.

Peacocks were stocked in several canals in Miami-Dade and Broward counties in the mid-1980s by Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission fisheries biologist Paul Shafland. His goal was to have the peacocks, which feed primarily on fish, control the expanding populations of illegally introduced exotic species such as tilapia while also providing recreational fishing opportunities.

Shafland’s plan has been a huge success and peacocks, which happily co-exist with native largemouths, can be caught from Homestead to West Palm Beach to the Everglades.

Zaremba, who worked in the bakery business, fished largemouth bass tournaments on weekends. In 1987, he read an article about the peacock stocking program in Florida Sportsman magazine.

“I didn’t know anything about it and I was fascinated with it,” he said. “I took my boat down by the [Miami International] airport, put it in, and I caught my first peacocks, and got about a 3-pounder on a Torpedo. I was hooked on it at that point. I kept going down there and playing around when I had some off time.”

In 1989, Zaremba was working for a bakery supply distributor when Pat Fitzsimmons of Everglades Pro Bass in Davie asked him if he could take the tackle store’s customers fishing for peacocks on weekends. Zaremba enjoyed it so much, he quit his job the following year to become a full-time guide.

Thirty years later, the thrill of having people catch hard-fighting peacock bass is still putting a smile on his face.