Black Trigger Fish

Black Trigger Fish

I hooked into this beautiful Triggerfish on an 8-weight rod using a small shrimp fly. For a black trigger fish, it is large fish as they run small compared to some of their larger cousins.

The fish appears to be completely black, but it has a mixed coloration of dark blue/black and with white/orange towards the mouth. Beautiful.

Very fun to catch on a fly rod. As you can see from the background, the weather was blue skies, calm water, and lots of sun.

There are more than 40 species of Triggerfish (family Balistidae) which inhabit tropical and subtropical oceans around the world. They are hard to catch unless they come up from the reefs.

When they are up, they are fun to site fish/stalk and take pretty much the same flies as a permit or bonefish. An aggressive but finicky fish.

They have a strong mouth for crushing shells/crustaceans, so the strip set must be good.