“No, it’s true,” Jack assures me, his eyes brimming with honesty and true belief.
“The dolphin will steal your woman.”
I turn my gaze from the long neck of a beer bottle sized rod gripped in my hands to the cadaver gray colored porpoises breaching the burnt colored waters of the Rio Negros around me to repeat my Brazilian guide’s promise aloud.
“The dolphins will steal your woman.”
Jack promises me in broken Portuguese laden English that such a thing happens. He tells me how the dolphins take human form at night to come ashore to seduce young maidens. Unable to disguise their blowhole, the dolphins in human form must wear a hat. “Never trust a man in a hat,” He exclaims. My thoughts on dolphins are broken by the tip of my rod which suddenly jumps with a violent rhythm I have become all too familiar with in my past few days fishing the Amazon. I reel in the line to find the saltwater hook striped clean of bait, the wire leader attached to it an EKG line of crumpled aluminum foil.
“Piranha,” Jack mumbles.
I echo, “Piranha.”
Jack threads the hook into another fist-sized slab of dogfish and points to where I should cast. I hurl the bait forward and hope again that I will get what I came for – a monster catfish. My rod tip suddenly dances a different tune; instead of a jackhammer I get a tug. Jack screams to set the hook. I yank back hard and frantically reel. The line comes in too easily. Something’s not right. Jack grabs the leader and thrusts up with a hearty laugh. He frees the six-inch baby catfish and announces that we now have more bait. At half a foot and maybe four ounces, this cat isn’t quite the Amazonian man-eater I was hoping to capture but my first South American catfish nonetheless. I had been in the Amazon two days and in that time I had caught more fish than I ever had on any fishing excursion I'd taken previously. Truth be told, I’d probably caught more fish than on all my previous fishing trips combined. I’d caught all four species of peacock bass – butterfly, smaller butterfly,...
three bar, and speckled – dozens of times over, countless piranha, several speckled and royal paca, and numerous dogfish. I’d seen both gray and pink dolphins, two species of caiman (crocodile), and more colorful bird species than I could count. And despite this being in Amazonia, one of the last great unspoiled areas on earth, I had done all of the aforementioned while hanging my DSC hat (No, I’m not a dolphin) every night aboard a 125-foot luxury yacht.
I was invited to this mix of wild adventure on the Amazon meets five star floating accommodations by DSC Professional Member and retired Texas Rangers pitcher Jim Kern. Jim has been fishing the Amazon for seventeen years and has been the US booking agent for Captain Peacock for more than three. “Having fished down here for almost two decades, I know the best places and Leonardo Leal’s (Captain Peacock president and owner) is the best of them all,” Jim told me over drinks and cigars on the uppermost deck of the yacht one fine evening. “And I think that you being the only person on this trip that isn’t a repeat customer says something about just how special Capt. Peacock is.”
Jim was correct. I was the only newbie on a guest list of sixteen anglers (the yacht holds fourteen staterooms and can accommodate up to twenty two anglers) and of those all had fished with Captain Peacock at least two years previously. This was a group that talked in terms of their fish though, not of their visits. They casually said things such as “My 20 pounder.” or “That 23 pounder I got.” Heavy weights for sure but nowhere near record-size for Amazonia. “In 2008, one of our anglers caught a 28 pound peacock,” Jim tells me. “A few months later a Brazilian angler landed one that weighed 29 pounds. I’ve never seen a 30 pounder in person though. I’ve seen pictures of fish people claimed weighed 30 or 32 pounders. The peacock when he gets big doesn’t get long. No longer than 36-40 inches. He just gets thick through the shoulders, behind the head. He just gets beefy. I don’t think the idea of a 32 to 35 pound fish is unreasonable.”
...
If there are some that big, I can’t imagine how hard they fight as over the next few days I personally landed 10 pounder after 10 pounder - “Babies,” Jack tells me. - Which fought like sharks. Because of the tenacity of the peacock and the numerous underwater hazards of the Rio Negros, Captain Peacock provides guests with specially designed TFO ultra-light spinning rods rigged with 65 – 80 pound test braided Kevlar line. The six and a half to seven foot rods are not only engineered to throw an ounce and a half woodchopper type lure but to withstand the muscle needed to pull a potential 30 pound fish from the submerged debris they love to run to. Getting to prime fishing areas is done via one of the yacht’s twelve 2013 Bass Tracker boats that are towed behind “the hotel” nightly.
At night the staff of Captain Peacock truly shines. After a hard day on the water, guests are treated to the best wines, beers (Brahma Chop is my favorite), and spirits Brazil and Argentina has to offer, hors d'oeuvre consisting of Amazon Jungle fresh nuts and fruits, and chef prepared meals. Meals are served by candle light in the spacious air-conditioned dining room or outside on one of river’s thousands of virgin white sand beaches. The latter were some of the most beautiful nights afield I’d ever experienced.
And who knew island beaches in the Amazon were almost bug free?
On my second to last day my dream of catching an Amazonian catfish came through big time. Jack put us onto a hole that held both piraiba (Giant Catfish) and pirarara (red tail catfish). My two personal best came one after the other. First up was a 15 pound piraiba that held to the bottom like a man possessed. I had no sooner landed him and gotten Thumbs Up from Jack before I hooked into a 35 pound...
pirarara. It took me almost twenty minutes to land that 37 inch long tank of a whisker fish and after doing so I wanted nothing more than to rest my arms with a cold beer. As I watched the chef prepare my catch for dinner Jim was nice enough to tell me that piraiba can weigh in excess of 400 pounds and pirarara in the 200 pound class are not rare.
“But I was after nice eating-sized fish,” I joked.
Jim laughed at my blatant cover up and insisted that I could always catch some real monsters “next time.”
Rest assured there will be a next time for me. Fishing the Amazon is something too special to only experience once.
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