By Sue Cocking for the Miami Herald
[dropcap]W[/dropcap]ith season seven of Animal Planet’s popular series River Monsters set to debut Sunday, April 5 host Jeremy Wade took a busman’s holiday in Miami a week ago — and made an unexpected discovery.
Wade — a biologist, angler and outdoors journalist — wasn’t on a hunt for new monsters to catch and release; he intended to spend the day sight-fishing for bedding peacock bass in the network of freshwater lakes and canals adjacent to Miami International Airport. So what happened next was surprising.
Guided by Drew Gregg of Davie, Wade and a companion succeeded in their peacock quest, catching and releasing seven of the colorful transplanted Amazonians to about 2 pounds using artificial lures. But they were startled by what else they found among the peacocks: another invader from the Amazon — a two-foot aruana swimming freely near the surface of a residential canal. The fish had a long, ribbon-like body and relatively large scales. Unlike the peacocks, which were intentionally stocked in the local canal system by fisheries biologists in the 1980s, this exotic clearly didn’t belong.
![Golden Arowana. By User:Qwertzy2 (Taken by User:Qwertzy2) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons](https://flylifemagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Screen-Shot-2015-04-03-at-1.02.33-PM.png)
Golden aruana. By User:Qwertzy2 (Taken by User:Qwertzy2) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons
Wade identified the aruana right away, having previously caught and released the species in Brazil.
“The biggest one I’ve caught was 8 or 9 pounds, about three feet long,” Wade said. “If you are fishing for them, they can be shy or they can be really bold at times.”
Once, Wade said, he was casting along a river bank and his lure got caught in an overhanging tree branch.
“You just shake it and they’ll jump up out of the water to get it,” he said.
But this aruana was on the shy side, swimming away from Gregg’s boat. The guide said he was confident it would remain in the general area because he had seen it there the week before his trip with Wade. Wade’s companion reported the sighting by email to Kelly Gestring, a non-native fisheries biologist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
Afterward, Wade shook his head, incredulous.
“The fact that you’ve got fish native to the Amazon and catch them right here by Miami Airport…” he said, trailing off.
