Alright guys & gals, I've been at it trying to catch one of these guys (5 inches or smaller) and no real good luck. I've tried trapping with a minnow trap, but mainly dip-netting/SCUBA/snorkeling at night in the San Marcos River. I rarely find sleepers, because they are jammed up in the weeds in stronger current and getting a net in there without damaging the protected plants is near impossible. I have what I suspect to be 6 babies (~.75 inches) that came with some golden top-minnows and glass shrimp from Coleto Creek while searching for wild sailfin mollies...but i'm not sure if they are in fact my fish:


I also found this gal the other night while shoreline dip-netting, but she's chopped in half by a monster and died within 24 hours (meds didn't help):


Any better ideas? I have thought about SCUBA-fishing...with a shortie pole or just the reel itself, and swimming ahead of some and letting bait down the stream till i get a nice snag.....the problem is there's like 100 sunfish to every 1 TX Cichlid! Any Central Texans wanna take me for a fishing trip?

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i live in south austin and have 30 of these fish that you can have males and females

Wowzah! Yessir I'd love to see these! I've seen some in shops being sold as "flowerhorns" and other names, for $15+, and it's been quite a disparaging project.

What size/age are your Texas Cichlids? Are they line-bred/inbred or wild caught/diverse genetics? Where are they from? Can you shoot me a pic or two, if it's not too much trouble? I've seen them in Lake Travis at Windy Point (SCUBA), but havent really spent much time fishing/underwater in Austin. It's great to meet a fellow Austinite! We should meet up sometime, maybe we have other interesting stuff to share!

If you are interested, I have some wild-caught and baby sailfin mollies (parents of babies from 'Ma and Pa' fish store). I believe they will make excellent feeder-breeders (wild caught should be hardy), and the parents of the LFS group are ginormous, beautiful, and natural looking (I have a pic of them in my profile I believe). The male is literally the largest molly I have ever witnessed and I'd bet he measures close to 5.5" long with a sail at least 1.5" inches tall at its highest. I also have a few small breeding groups of Gambusia.
Cheers,
Craig

On Topic of Catching:
Last night I went night diving with a net/pole again, but was only able to get my hands on green sunfish, warmouth, Pumpkinseeds (whatever they're called), a medium spotted gar, and various smaller species...even though I did see some very nice, LARGE Rio's - Didn't take any of these home. I had my wife bring me out a new light (mine was dying) and while I was down, she managed to dip a huge (approx. 14" length) adult Blue Tilapia from the shore-line! It kinda made me mad...;-)

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Interested in selling some of your wild-caught Molly babies or adults?

Are you from MD? I've never shipped fish and probably wouldn't want to mess with it unless it was "worth" it, but I'll do some reading and see how easy/hard it is to package them to stay alive for the trip! I bet shipping is expensive though for overnight...I see these websites selling stuff like black worms with $30 shipping costs!!! I will investigate a little though.
regards,
craig

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I apologize in advance if double posting is against our forum rules.

Sorry about the formatting, let me know your screen dimensions if it's too stretched in full screen mode, and I'll mess with the tag codes to fix it, each of my computers shows it differently, and I'm not sure what the standard should be!

I just wanted to close this thread up with this video - I finally caught one and, other than her overt aggressiveness towards all the other (much larger) fish, she's adapted very well to the tank. YES, that tilapia will be dinner soon and most likely the Texas Cichlid will be moved to his own 55 gallon as soon as I rebuild it. Its dorsal fin is pretty bad-off, I'd blame myself and the net (had to drag it a good 100 feet to the shore)...but it actually looks like it could be genetic. I say this because it doesn't look like there's a real wound of torn flesh, infection, healing, or anything. Anyways, I hope you guys enjoy the video, my drunken family (wife, brother, sister-in-law) was nice enough to come out and hold the camera for me for this dive, and I'm glad they did!

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Awesome video! Glad you got the fish

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Fish are living creatures...treat them that way

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8 gallon with 3 young, adorable bettas and a bumblebee platy or 2 soon to come!

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