The days go by and so our season advances, ultimately developing its unique character as our guests create their own stories which in turn become the history of our beautiful water…the Água Boa!
The water level has lowered every day of the week just passed, and the fishing was a little better every day. The river did not yet quite reach the ideal level of water, but the fishing experience stands at a very good level, both in terms of numbers and size of fish encountered and landed.
We speak of true quality fish that provide epic battles and real challenges to the fishermen who visit us.
Again a good number of our gorgeous peacock bass, weighing-in at between 10 lbs and 16 lbs, came to the fly, to the delight and satisfaction of our guests, even stopping to pose graciously with their human conquerors for memorable victory photos..!
Again, our resident Jaguars showed themselves with some frequency this week. Three were sighted and 2 photographed. It seems that our local population of Amazonian Jaguars has decided this season to make themselves more visible and present to us their extraordinary majesty!
We continue to recommend to the fishermen who will visit us in the coming weeks, to bring sinking lines, and intermediate lines. Of course, this does not mean you can’t also bring floating lines, as popper fishing and other ‘topwater action’ can be amazingly exciting at times…
40 or 50 pounds leader is recommended too…. and there is no need to get too imaginative with the leader format. Straight, single strength leaders work perfectly!!
We expect the water levels to improve even further so that our clients can continue to experience all the nuances of fishing in the Água Boa.
A couple of weeks ago we mentioned that we have a theory about just why we are now experiencing so many more numbers of Giant Arapaima (of all sizes) in our beautiful water!
Five years ago, in 2014, the usual June/July/August rainy season failed to materialize in the region. This left our river level in October 2014 alarmingly low for the time of year. Furthermore, the rains didn’t appear later, so we invested in jet motors for our boats and ‘saved’ the fishing season as the river levels went further and further down.
The following year (2015/16) the average sizes of peacocks on the river were well below their usual dimensions and we dug-in for a tough season. However, also that same season of 2015, immediately after the drought, an extraordinary thing occurred, witnessed by your writer (and many others).
Our (then) small number of resident Pirarucu, the legendary Giant Arapaima, gave birth to baby Pirarucu ‘hatchlings’ in huge numbers throughout our river system. We believe that these baby pirarucu thrived and grew during that year in a rare environment where, for the time being, there were no large predatory peacocks to gorge on them (as we believe they had largely died off in the extremely low waters of the previous drought-stricken year).
In 2019/20 our waters are again populated by plenty of large peacocks to entertain you with their acrobatic fights and muscly runs…
AND our ‘baby’ Pirarucu are already 70/80 lbs and growing fast.
We can proudly declare that our beautiful Agua Boa is now producing Pirarucu hook-ups nearly every week in sufficient numbers to warrant some of our guests to go out hunting specifically for arapaima… in the fair expectation of hooking-up with these prehistoric leviathans.
…however, landing them is a completely different matter!!!
Watch out for next week’s installment of The Jungle Diaries!
Until very soon!
