Fellow Fly Rodders,
I recently returned from a trip to Agua Boa Lodge in Brazil. It was my second trip down there, the first was back in 2008. Agua Boa Lodge is fly fishing only and located on a tributary of the Amazon River, deep in the rainforest. The primary quarry is Peacock Bass, but you can also catch a variety of other exotic fish. The recommended routing is to fly to Miami, then to Manuas, Brazil, from there you pick up a charter plane that goes directly to the lodge, which is about 80 miles from the nearest town. The lodge is beautiful, with 6 double occupany caban's, a pool, and a nice lodge with plenty of beers and freshly made Caipirinhas. The guides are also generally excellent, but are not fluent in english. They know a few fishing words and some can have a conversation with you, but it is limited. They are very good at putting you on fish and they pole as well as any guide I have fished with in the keys. They have an interesting system where each guide fishes one beat and the guests rotate guides each day. So, you fish with a new guide everyday who knows their stretch of water extremely well.
Back in 2008, my Dad and I had the best fishing of our lives at Agua Boa. I grew up in south florida, so I have been fishing for Peacock Bass my whole life and the biggest one I had ever caught was 7 pounds, which is about as large as they get in Miami. Over the 7 days of fishing we had several days where we each caught over 100 fish, while catching at least 50 or so each on the slower days. The fish averaged between 5 and 10 pounds with some smaller and a few each day weighing in the teens. My dad and I each got one 17 pounds. There were hours were we would get a fish to hit on every cast if not multiple fish. We mostly threw floating lines and huge streamers, but when targeting big fish we would switch to sink tips. For the most part Peacocks do not like poppers in Brazil or Miami. What makes Agua Boa unique is the river has very clear water and is all sand bottom, so you can sight fish, which we did and had success that way as well.
Unfortuntely, our most reccent trip was much tougher. The key to fishing the amazon basin for peacocks is the water level. When we were there in 2008 we hit it perfectly. This year (though we went the same week both times), it was about a foot and a half too low, which meant many parts of the river system were cut off or just too low to hold fsh, and they were generally very skittish. Peacocks are known for being aggressive, but these fish acted more like a bonefish at times, well, maybe not that tough, but still very spooky. We spent a lot of time sight casting to fish in very shallow water that just refused to eat. Our only real success was throwing heavy sinking lines in deep water (I used 420 grain sink tip) or fishing super tight to the bank in the trees for fish in the 2-4 pound range.
While the conditions were disappointing and the fish difficult, we still managed to get a lot of great fish ot the boat. I set a perosnal best with a 20 pound monster. That same day I boated a 14, 12, 10, 8, and 5 pound fish, but those were the only fish I caught that day and I had to throw that massive sink tip to do it. Well worth it, but a lot of work. Everyone at the lodge that week caught fish, it just took a lot of work. Here is a link to the Lodge's weekly fishing report frome the week I was there: http://aguaboaamazonlodge.com/fishing-report-february-28-march-6-2015/
If anyone is thinking about heading down to Brazil for Peacocks or to Agua Boa Lodge specificly I am happy to share more details and answer any questions.
http://www.tpfr.org
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Tidal Potomac Fly Rodders" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to tidal-potomac-fly-rodders+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to tidal-potomac-fly-rodders@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tidal-potomac-fly-rodders/2b487e7e-4071-452f-93ad-943b27561fef%40googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
0 comments:
Post a Comment