Into every life, a little rain must fall…but sometimes not enough. Our Bahamian brown anoles are delicate little flowers. Too cold and rainy, and they don’t come out. But too hot and dry, they also hunker down. Too windy–nap time. Like the three bears (or was it the little blonde girl?), it has to be just right.
And that put us in a bind. As our trip to the Bahamas wound down, we were running out of time, and as we got to our boat launch site, the weather didn’t look good.
Storm a-comin'
Waiting for the storm? Or Godot?
All we could do is wait for the storm to arrive. No point going out–it was too cold for the lizards to be active. And finally, the storm arrived, and we took cover in the only shelter available.
The cooler, incidentally, is full of the previous day's lizard catch, measured and ready to be returned to their homes.
The good news is that the lizards like moisture–it’s often very windy and dry, and they can get dehydrated. So, right after a storm is often a great time to go lizard catching. The little guys are happy and carefree, out in numbers and ready to be caught.
And sure enough, the storm passed through and the weather improved. We headed out in the boat and conditions were great for lizarding…for about three minutes.
From cloudy and cold to cloudless, blazing hot and windy in record time. The lizards woke up, stuck their head outside, and said “forget this.” The result: for most of the day, we failed to catch a single new lizard (admittedly, we had caught most of the lizards on the islands already, and so bypassed the repeats). That’s right, we were facing a shutout, something that had never previously happened in 15 years of Abaco Anole History. Fortunately, late in the day, on our second to last island, we did manage to capture a single new lizard, avoiding the ignominy of coming back with an empty cooler.
Of course, this wasn’t the only problematic day in the field. As the photo below shows, just a day before I performed the rarely accomplished feat of breaking two poles in one day. The first one snapped as I was trying to maneuver the pole through some dense vegetation in a bush to snag a wily lizard at the bottom. Too much lateral pressure by my finger on the last segment and snap, there it went. The second one broke as I was actually catching the lizard. I got the noose around the lizard’s neck and swiped the pole sideways–unfortunately, straight into another branch, breaking off the pole. Fortunately, we quickly went to the bullpen and the ever unflappable Jason Kolbe reeled in the lizard.
So that's why Cabela's panfish poles are so hard to come by.
Yep. Tough times in the Bahamas.
Michael Logan
Funny you mention it, because I’m in Eleuthera right now and am having the exact same problems! I have five more days to catch as many lizards as possible, and fortunately the weather today has been beautiful so I’ve caught my quota. Good luck with whatever time you have left!