Fishing for Peacocks
by Barry Ord Clarke
In the last ten years, Peacock bass have gained a reputation as some of the world’s hardest fighting freshwater fish. I travelled to the tropical rain forest of Brazil to see if the rumours were true.
| 6. pm, and day break in central Brazil, or to be more precise, the banks of the Rio Roosevelt, a tributary river of the mighty Amazon. The river gained its name from its first visiting white fisherman in 1914, President of the United states, Theodore Roosevelt. It’s not quite light yet, and the surrounding jungle is just winding down its multi-million participant chorus of the night before. Where everything from the high pitched, bench saw screech of the leaf cutter insect, to chattering mammals and the deep booming bass drum of amphibians, all take to the stage and sing their very individual songs, at the same time. The temperature at this time of day in the tropical rain forest is a cool 30c with a humidity factor of around 85%. At mid day when the sun was at it’s highest and hottest, our aluminium boat only needed a little olive oil in the bottom to make it a 16 foot frying pan. The sound of the dawn chorus is soon drowned by that of our 90 horse power outboard, that’s pushing our river boat upstream to a peacock bass fishing hot spot. |
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Our first journey on the river is magical, I can’t compare it with anywhere else that I have fished. The river and connecting side streams are like a labyrinth, with high walls of giant hardwood trees and palms. Close to the ground the mixed weave of foliage is so dense that a tree snake would have problems getting through it, and the water is like that of a well-kept aquarium, we can see hundreds of different kinds of tropical fish, fleeing from the path of the boat. Thirty minutes later we arrive at a junction of two rivers, although the rivers are large, but there is no flow in them, and the boat remains in the same place when the motor is cut. Our guide who has only basic fishing English, takes out a short ethnic hardwood paddle and begins to slowly manoeuvre us in towards the bank. The bay looks like a hundred others that we have passed in the last half hour, and we can’t see anything physically why this one should hold fish, and the others not! but we are told that the guides know their fishing. He signals to us and points towards the bay and says “fish please – fish please” |
| Malcolm and I had agreed earlier that we would both fish different methods, One with a streamer and one dry, so I tied on a large saltwater type popper and Malcolm a 20cm saltwater streamer. With fantastic anticipation, we both made our first cast into the waters of the Amazon rain forest and sent flies shooting in under the overhanging branches. In between casts our guide would make one or two strokes with his paddle so that we constantly cover new water. After five or six casts, Malcolm screams “bloody hell” and as I turn, I see the top metre of his 10 wt fly rod disappear into the water, and he hangs onto his rod with both hands. |
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I quickly retrieve my fly and exchange my rod for a camera. We see the fish break the surface twice about 15 metres from the boat, but its difficult to judge the size, but from the way it is punishing the 10 wt rod we are sure that its no small fish. After two turns around the boat, and a quick run towards the centre of the river, Malcolm is in control, and as the fish nears the boat our guide shouts -Peacock bass. After some thrashing in the surface the guide slips his thumb into the mouth of the fish, lip-locks it, and whips it up into the boat. We are surprised with it size, it’s not as big as we thought, about 2 kg, but what a 2 kilos.
Although I am here to fish with fly only, I think it would be correct of me to say that the best fishing in the Amazon is with bait, be it with fish, worms, that by the way can be over a metre long, or even vegetable bait, nuts and plants that are tied to the hook with elastic string, but everything from wobblers to fly are also effective. But remember the powerful jaws and razor sharp teeth of the fish reduce the life expectancy of lures and flies dramatically, it can be as short as just one cast. |
| For me, the jewel in the crown of fly fishing in the Amazon was the Tucunare or better known as the Peacock Bass. This is not a true bass, but a member of the Cichlidae family, which is well known to those who have aquariums and tropical fish, a close relation to the Oscar. But it’s only their body shape and large mouth that remind us of bass. They are much stronger, meaner, grow much larger and don’t have the distinctive fat hanging belly of large mouth bass and hit surface fished lures and poppers like no other fresh water fish.
There are 15 known sub species of peacock bass all of which bare the name sake peacock eye marking at the base of the tail. Adult fish can vary from 30cm to 1 metre long, and the current IGFA world record from the Rio Negro in Brazil is a massive 14 kg . I didn’t manage to catch or see anything nearly this big on my trip but the ones I did encounter averaged around 2-5 kg and where great sport on dry fly. (Continue p 2) |
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