![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.itinerantangler.com\/podcasts\/articles\/xinguopener.jpg\")
\n“PIRANHA”<\/span><\/p>\n
THE GUIDE SPAT, indicating that I should cast elsewhere. I had no regard for such misgivings: if the piranha were the only fish biting, then I was just thankful for something\u2014anything\u2014tugging at the end of my line.<\/h2>\n
My companion, Cale, and I shared long-suffering looks, and then went back to the anything-but-elegant rhythm of chucking lead shooting heads on ten weights. It was mindless work, and my thoughts returned to events of the past few days. \u00a0The fishing party had rendezvoused in Miami the previous Tuesday. After a long wait for the redeye to Manaus, Brazil, we were faced with an inauspicious omen so early in our trip: Our flight had been cancelled, due to vulture strike. \u201cWhat kind of pterodactyl does it take to knock out a 737?\u201d I asked. \u201cThese aren\u2019t your ordinary turkey buzzards,\u201d our guide, Mark, shot back. I laughed and caught the others on the way to the bar. Nothing like getting the bad stuff out of the way early, we figured. \u00a0Our second flight made it out the gate, and soon enough we found ourselves in Bel\u00e9m, Brazil, at the mouth of the Amazon. The rubber barons had made Bel\u00e9m one of the jewels of their industrial empire, but those days are long gone. Now the spirit of industry, never quenched, lives on in the form of streetside vendors willing to sell anything from monkey skulls to anaconda skins to themselves to the few gringos who pass through.<\/p>\n
Our time there being short, we ran around doing the tourist thing, until the next morning, when we found ourselves a man down shortly before takeoff for the bush. Our guide, on the verge of apoplexy, began a room-to-room search, while I stepped outside to catch a glimpse of the World Cup on a street vendor\u2019s portable TV. When I looked up, there in mid-traffic was our missing soldier stumbling back to the hotel. The vendor, noticing his look, winked at me: \u201cHe have good time in Bel\u00e9m, yes?\u201d I just winked back.
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\n![](\"http:\/\/www.itinerantangler.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/07\/20060626194030_rockcasting3.jpg\")
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Welcome to the Jungle<\/h3>\n
Three hours into an all-dirt bus ramble down the Pan-Amazon highway, we tumbled out of our cramped vehicle onto the palmed, manicured lawn of our lodge. \u00a0We\u2019d made a short hop by turboprop over the central Amazon jungle, putting down in Altamira, near the Xingu Indian reservation (the site of last year\u2019s grisly airline crash). Our destination was the Xingu (pronounced Shing-goo) River, one of the major forks of the Amazon and also one of the last remaining pieces of water in the world where the major sportfish have yet to receive scientific classification. Cale was the first man to the lodge veranda, so he was the first to cough out a shocked expletive. As far as the eye could see, all was river. The Xingu was a torrent; a moving, swirling sea. \u00a0Peacock bass, the head guide, Marco, sadly told us, were out of the question. \u201cThe peacock, eh, he is under the trees.\u201d At home, that statement would mean a moderately difficult day of bushwhacking through rhododendrons. In the Amazon? \u201cWe stay out of the trees today, yes? The anaconda, he like the trees.\u201d No one disagreed with him.<\/p>\n
Now the thing you\u2019ve got to understand about Brazil is, it\u2019s a bit of a dicey place to go fishing. From the get-go you\u2019ve got to consider things such as contracting malaria\u2014the “Yellow Jack”\u2014necessitating a trip to the county health department to fill a shot card. They won\u2019t even let you in the country unless you show the little yellow slip proving you\u2019re not going to up and die on them. Once the microscopic bugs are covered, you\u2019ve got the macro beasts to worry about: the Brazilian jungle has excellent populations of jaguar, anaconda, tarantula, and sundry other critters. By day two, you\u2019ll eyeballing your morning coffee with the sang-froid of a veteran, dismissing anything less than a cockroach floating in its film as not worth the effort. On top of the ordinary daily indignities of living in a jungle\u2014nothing we weren\u2019t prepared for\u2014you\u2019ve also got one other problem: it rains a lot in Brazil. Brazil has a wet and a dry season, and as I understand it those seasons flip depending on the side of the Equator you\u2019re trying to fish. We were about three degrees north of the line, so although we\u2019d heard that the southern lodges had all cancelled bookings because of blown out conditions, we were hoping to get lucky. \u00a0June on the Xingu is the end of the wet season, and in a good year there\u2019d be two weeks of fishing before our scheduled arrival. This was not a good year.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.itinerantangler.com\/podcasts\/articles\/xingu2.jpg\")
\nGuides and anglers prepare to load at the overflowing dockhouse.<\/span><\/div>\n
Down in the Flood<\/h3>\n
Most of my fishing back home is done by wading; I don\u2019t come from a part of the country where people own drift boats. So you\u2019ll understand my ignorance when we first hopped into the long aluminum jon boats that were to take us into the maw of the Xingu. \u201cYou know anything about PFDs?\u201d Cale shot over his shoulder. \u201cLife vests?\u201d I replied. \u201cNot really.\u201d \u201cThese are like, point oh fives,\u201d he said, gesturing to the faded, compressed, most likely child\u2019s model vest he was buckling up to his chin. \u00a0\u201cIs that bad?\u201d I asked, knowing the answer. \u00a0\u201cThese wouldn\u2019t float a sled dog!\u201d Cale laughed back. \u201cJust don\u2019t hit your head.\u201d I heard a chuckle and looked behind me; the native guide didn\u2019t speak English but he\u2019d been following the conversation. \u00a0He said a few phrases in Portuguese, pointing at the water. Don\u2019t worry, he seemed to say, the piranhas will get you first anyway.<\/p>\n
In fishing, there\u2019s hard going, and then there\u2019s that next level. We\u2019ve all seen hard going. Hell, half my season is spent marking time from meager hatch to meager hatch, counting the unknown days until I once again hit the golden moment, when the fish just won\u2019t stay off my line. You know what I\u2019m talking about: fishing so easy it gets boring. The Xingu in flood was the exact opposite of that; it was fishing\u2019s dark side of the moon. Cale and I couldn\u2019t buy a strike, and it was all our guide could do to keep us from being washed out to the Atlantic. I threw every fly in every box, sometimes just to complete a row. \u00a0At one point, we found ourselves tethered to a submerged tree, our guide acting as anchor up in the prow. I\u2019d already gotten tired and so, when I made a half-assed cast into a cluster of boulders usually found a quarter mile from the waterline, I was unprepared for the twin streaks of silver that shot out at my fly. \u00a0\u201cPayara!\u201d the guide shouted.<\/p>\n
Now, a word about payara. Everyone who\u2019s been around fishing for a few years has heard of peacock bass, the main sport fish in the Amazon, but few North American anglers would be able to pick a payara out of a lineup. The fish resembles nothing so much as a baby tarpon, right down to the silver-mailed sides and the underbite, except that this monster has two enormous saber teeth jutting up from its lower jaw. The payara is a strong, acrobatic fighter\u2014like practically everything in the Amazon, it jumps when hooked. Its closest analogue in North American fishing would probably be the pike or the muskellunge, and like those fish, the payara is a bit of a loner. Whereas a decent angler might catch twenty or thirty nice peacock bass during the height of season on the Xingu, he\u2019d never manage more than five or six payara.<\/p>\n
I moved exactly three payara in the Xingu, and every one of them nearly stopped my heart. These are the wolves of the river; they\u2019ll track your fly down and slash back and forth at it until they subdue it or you retrieve it right into your tip top. Conditions made landing these fish extremely difficult, but I did bring the first to the boat before he snapped off, victim of our tenuous anchor situation. Amazonian fish live hard lives, it seems: while my payara was being subdued, his companion\u2014that second streak of silver\u2014took slashes out of his tail.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.itinerantangler.com\/podcasts\/articles\/xingu1.jpg\")
\nAt the end of a long day, Cale gets in one last cast.<\/span><\/div>\n
A Taste of What’s Possible<\/h3>\n
By the last day of the trip, our party was basically running on empty. The water had been dropping about five feet a day, but it still had more than a hundred to go to get to dead low. We\u2019d been slinging heavy line on billfish rigs for hour after hour, only occasionally being rewarded when a pod of swarming piranha or the lone payara managed to find our flies in all that water. At one lunch break, another fisherman, Jim, an ex-guide, was smiling. He\u2019d caught a few bicuda\u2014a sort of long nosed gar dressed in redfish drag, complete with beauty spot\u2014and a few piranha. His eyes looked wild, however, and he heaved a big sigh of relief as the boat touched the dock ramp. \u201cDo any good?\u201d Cale yelled over. \u201cYeah,\u201d said Jim, \u201cbut we\u2019ve just been down the West Branch of the River of Death!\u201d Jim\u2019s partner Tom silently cracked a beer. I found out later he had caught what is probably the new world record piranha (which we later dined on), but right then he just looked glad to be on dry land. After lunch, I grabbed the head guide, Marco, and explained that I wanted him to fish with me. He agreed, but first he glanced out the back door at the river and looked back at me with a different glint in his eye. Marco knew that for the first time, the water had dropped enough to form pools in the rocks. \u201cWe try for the peacock bass, eh?\u201d he said. Somewhat skeptically, I agreed. <\/p>\n
If You Go<\/h3>\n
Seasons:<\/strong> The most important factor in targeting peacock bass is timing. To avoid many of the dangers and difficulties of out-of-season angling, you want to be on the water in the dry period of the year. Due to the size of the Amazon Basin, that time varies from region to region. If you decide to take a crack at peacock bass from June through December, pick a location in the eastern Amazon region, such as the Xingu. If you want to go from October to March, head to western Brazil, for instance to Rio Negro. The height of spring is also the height of flood, so April and May are effectively unfishable. Plan your trip during one of the two low-water seasons.<\/p>\n Travel: <\/strong>Traveling to the Amazon jungle is not something you want to plan on your own. There are daily flights from Miami to Belem, with connecting flights to Altimara. Aside from plane tickets and ground transport, you\u2019ll also need evidence of vaccinations, a visa, and a passport. You\u2019re better off letting one of these outfitters take care of all the details.<\/p>\n High Hook Fishing Tours<\/strong>\u2014(212) 535-2336; www.fishinginamazon.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n