I Love Florida!

So, as most of you know, I am a fairly recent transplant to the Sunshine State, but I love it more and more everyday. The never-ending surprises in the world of animals down here keeps me endlessly entertained.

About two blocks from the tattoo shop is a shopping center with a small pond with a bunch of turtles and a few koi, etc etc. On either end of the pond are two small ditches that obviously serve as drainage for the parking lots. The two ditches have been bone-dry for the last two months at least, but today when I walked by there was about four inches of water in them.

Me being me, I had to look, just to see what might be in there. Lo and behold, many, many tiny fishies!!

Now, this puddle has probably been there for no more 48 hours. Perhaps the fish were estivating in the mud? Do we have any annual type killis down here? Some one, please explain and possibly identify(which I know will be near impossible without pictures or even a decent description).

If I had a tank set up, I would go scoop some, but alas I do not. Oh well.

Anyhoo, it's thing like this that make me love Florida because it sure isn't the hour-long 4 mile drive to work. Gotta love Spring Breakers and snowbirds;)

There are all kinds of killies in the area. Leastest (? spelling) is very common killie around here but they are live bearers.

Yes there are loads of annual killis, the rainy season makes it a good place for them here!

I think most of us have had a ditch tank at one point in time I know I did!!!!

When you get tanks set up I know what you will be doing lol. Have to have at least one dedicated to ditch, canal, and lake fish

Yeah, there are all kinds of killis around. I have one that is about 2 inches that I caught in fron of my house. My ditch is dry for 360 days a year but the one week it stays flooded we get all kinds of fish in it From catfish to cichlids, we never know what is coming each year.

Does anybody know of a good ID guide to Florida bait and nongame fish?

That's pretty much everything that is not a regular catfish, bass, bream, crappie, or gar.

The list would be huge since so much stuff has been dumped into the estuaries and lakes.

Very true. I did stumble upon this thoughhttp://www.aka.org/sks/sks/pages/fcg.html while looking at the Suncoast Killi Association website. Dropped the guy an e-mail, so we will see. All the reviews I've seen are pretty positive.

http://myfwc.com/wildlifehabitats/profiles/fish/freshwater-fish/
I usually start with fwc, they have lots of links to university's and stuff that you can follow to hopefully find what you are looking for.