I can’t begin to explain how fortunate I’ve been to travel and fish the planet. Believe me, I am grateful for it. It’s all because of generous friends from home and around the world and I thank them for this life. This week finds me with Amazon fly fishing guru and friend, Rodrigo Salles of Untamed Angling, visiting their fishing operation on the Marié River in the northwest corner of Brazil.
The Marié River is about as remote in the Amazon as you can be. Rodrigo and his Untamed Angling partner Marcelo Perez have other similar Amazon operations. Putting together fisheries in the middle of nowhere requires a lot of research and there’s only one way to make such endeavors work – create a program where the local’s benefit. This means negotiate an agreement with Indian Chiefs in each area. What Rodrigo and Marcelo have done in each location is reward the locals more so for protecting their land by allowing high paying tourist fly fishers to visit rather than by allowing the outside world to rape and pillage their lands like in so many other places around the world.
At the Marié our target fish is the peacock bass. There are many types of peacock bass in the Amazon but we’ll be after the largest species, the speckled peacock bass (Chicla temensis). While in most of the Amazon these fish rarely exceed 15lbs, on the Marié it’s not uncommon to catch ones of 20lbs or slightly larger. This makes this place perhaps the greatest peacock bass fishery in the entire Amazon.
Today I left the hotel in Manaus at 6 AM to meet Rodrigo. We met at a local airport then chartered a small plane for a 2.5 hour flight to San Gabriel. There we met another plane which carried us 30 minutes to the Marié where we landed on the river and boarded the luxury vessel named, Untamed Amazon.
The Untamed Amazon is a bran new boat specially designed for the Marié. This is the first vessel with 100% solar power generation for all electricity use. The boat has water filtration and its own sewage treatment plant. Untamed has gone out of its way with this new boat considering the environment and the surrounding Indian Territory Communities.
Rodrigo and I arrived before noon. We aren’t the only anglers. The Marié fishing season opened three weeks ago and there is a group here with Mike Michalac of The Fly Shop in California. I met some in the hotel yesterday and it’s a great group of guys.
I mentioned that the season on the Marié opened three weeks ago – this does not mean we’re fishing water that has already been fished this season. In fact, another great thing about Untamed Angling is that they go out of their way to keep their waters fresh. The Untamed Amazon vessel moves around so that no section of river is fished more than once every six weeks! I don’t know of any operation in the world that does this or let alone, has the ability to do this.
Today wasn’t a fishing day. It’s the one day a week where the guides are off the water for some rest. As a group we sat around and gorged on snacks and beer then had a huge late afternoon lunch. We followed that with naps then set up our gear. The guides supervised this part.
Naturally I couldn’t sleep so after a 20 minute rest I was up while everyone else slept. I have a sliding door to the bow of the ship from my room. I had to look into the river. Sure enough there were fish. I brought my 6-weight Winston Air for this exact scenario and tied on a red and white Clouser. I ended up catching one tiny peacock and several jacunda. One of the jacunda was a big one for the species. They are remarkably beautiful fish.
Before we knew it the sun set and we were getting ready for dinner. I brought my sharpies as I do on most trips and it didn’t take long to have one of the guides ask if I could decorate something. This is his computer with a peacock bass. When he asked me what he owed I told him put me on a 20lber this week!
Its off to bed now. I’m sleeping in number 8 and lucked into my own cabin. Its really nice and I spread my gear out everywhere. Now I’m exhausted and expect to sleep. Breakfast is at 7 AM tomorrow and fishing starts at 8!
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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