Most northern range of oscars in Florida?

Oscars are one of my favorite aquarium fish. I also understand that they taste excellent. I am going to soon look into the legality of transporting them live. If I can do it, I’d like to bring several large adults from south Florida next spring to release in one of my deep ponds that is closed to other water sources. I’m curious to see if they can overwinter this far north in deep water. This winter I’m going to measure my water temperatures at various depths. I’d like an alternative to tilapia.

Last night I was looking at a map in Georgia that suggested there are populations of oscars established there.

You might could get that "special" permit.

You're right, I reread it. I skipped over the part of where spotted tilapia are  erroneously called Oscars.

Let’s roll Bullfrog, I’ll take the hit if FWC gets nosey. Plus Josh has our back.

There are a bunch of cichlids in the ditches of Clair Mel in Tampa. We use to catch them all the time behind the house when I was growing up. Last time I drove through there you could still access the ditches.

We catch and release a ton of oscars locally while fly fishing or using light spinning gear with small minnow plugs for peacock bass locally- some of them get pretty big (up to well over a pound) - and they do put up a good fight. Locally, I've been told that the Mayan cichlid is the preferred table fare and that oscars don't cook up very well at all, even though they certainly seem to have much more meat on them than the Mayans - but haven't tried either specie myself. All of our canal fishing is west of Ft. Lauderdale so we're talking south Florida - but we rarely find them at all in any areas where they've been spraying herbicides for weed control. The difference between the canals west of US 27 and urban canals that have been sprayed is dramatic... Here's a pic or two of each specie locally...


double header - oscar on the left - peacock on the right, when the conditions are right every cast gets bit in these canals on the edge of the Everglades...


this medium sized oscar ate a popping bug



one more exotic - believe this is a "jaguar guapote"

Funny thing -now that we're solidly in the wet season - canal fishing isn't anything to write home about - way too much water in the canals scatter the fish. Once we're back in the dry season - as water levels fall things get really good (if we can avoid a hurricane this year..). That business of folks catching and transporting fish (whether legal or not) is probably why we now have peacocks over near Naples in places where they were never stocked at all. The peacock bass is the only exotic that was sanctioned by the state for stocking in the early eighties - and that was only in the Miami area - they's expanded their range since then...