I’ve been fighting something the last few days. It’s been a mild sore throat and now a ton of crap in my lungs. A bit of advice; when you travel somewhere remote be sure to have some drugs for at least the simple things. I have no doubt that had I not had a dose of NyQuil before bed last night I may not have slept a wink. Instead, though I felt like crap, I was able to get up early and get on the water with Joe and our guide, Ezequiel.
I was moving slow however. I mentioned yesterday that there’s always a few eager payara waiting for those first few casts. Well I wasn’t ready. I usually touch up my leader every night before bed. Last night I didn’t and had to change my wire when we got there. Joe hooked up immediately.
Joe landed the payara. We took some photos and then on his next cast he got another. It was punishment for not being ready. Sometimes when you feel like crap things happen.
Eventually I got my act together. Usually the next group of fish are the “nippers”, meaning they have a way of grabbing your fly and spitting it out before you can set the hook. Both Joe and I were concentrating hard but it was tough for the next hour.
After a couple hours we nearly gave up to go chase something different but a school of payara must have come through. Joe landed two more and I finally got one. A decent one at least!
I really want the Amazon corvina that supposedly isn’t that hard to catch. Ezequiel asked our Kayapo boat guys if they knew a spot we could catch some. They were a bit surprised anyone would specifically ask to catch one but they had a spot. Nada. We tried another spot. Nada. After an hour of chasing what is starting to seem like a ghost, we gave up and floated a channel for pacu and matrinxa.
Tossing big dries was a refreshing change from a full morning of dredging streamers. Joe and I had a lot of action. While we didn’t get any pacu, which we would have liked, we hammered the small matrinxas.
After lunch I rotated back to fishing with Rodrigo. Rod was perplexed that even with the help of the Kayapo we couldn’t get me a corvina in the morning. Rodrigo is on board with me adding species and said we could try some more this afternoon but he suggested we go first for a deep dwelling pacu, the Xringa pacu, which would be a new one for me. I in fact tried for this species in Kendjam back in 2016 without success. Rodrigo dug out some nut flies and I went to work.
As and experienced angler, sometimes you just know when you’re not going to catch a fish. It’s the same as when you know you’re about to catch a fish. After over an hour of working the sunken nut fly, nymphs and more, I could see everyone getting bored. I gave up on the Xringa pacu and Rod suggested we go to where Ross caught the corvina’s yesterday and give it a try. First we had to wait out a rapidly incoming storm.
The storm turned out to be a beauty. There was enough lightening we took cover. We beached the boat and hiked a trail through the jungle for about ten minutes and found a grove of mango trees. Mango trees are not native but Rodrigo showed us the remains of an old house. The trees were planted by missionaries about 50 years ago. The missionaries are long gone.
After the storm we had about 30 minutes to hunt the corvina. The nice part about this place is that when Ross and I were here yesterday there were some nice payara as well. Well, the corvina continued to be elusive and so were the payara. We called it just before dark and it was the end of a slow afternoon.
Tomorrow we are going on an adventure upstream. We probably won’t get tons of fishing time because the boat ride will take three hours one way. The way I’m feeling right now, limiting my activity tomorrow might be a good thing to slow down this attack of the jungle crud. The scenery and the adventure should be incredible anyhow.
If this is a trip you want to do (and you are crazy if you don’t!) you can Contact me, Yellow Dog Flyfishing Adventures or Untamed Angling.
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Hang in there Buddy. Hope you finally get that Corvina and feel better. Freeze up is happening.