Peacock Bass Fishing on the Amazon River – the Real Story – Day 4

On the morning of Day 4 I noticed that my left hand was just a little puffed up, my elbow a little stiff, my ears sunburned.  I took heart in the fact I wasn’t creaking and popped two aspirins with breakfast, which included eggs, ham, cheese and green peppers on a sesame seed bread.  Quite tasty. 

We’re off and headed down river.  It’s a great morning which turns into a great day.  We had four doubles, which means two fish on at the same time, four different times.  That’s like 8 fish if you think about it.

Mark and I posing witih one of our four doubles.
Mark and I posing with one of our four doubles.

Then it got even better.  Check out Mark’s 8-pound spotted peacock.

Mark with his spotted peacock bass.
Mark with his spotted peacock bass.

But note that I got a spotted peacock that was 10.5-pounds. 

My spotted peacock which is a wee bigger than Mark's.
My spotted peacock which is a wee bigger than Mark’s.

This is my fish up close.  Quite the mouth huh?

Another view of my bigger fish.
Another view of my bigger fish.

We spent most of the day ripping surface baits across the water.   We also caught a few more smaller peacocks, a dogfish and a black piranha.  I like that the word piranha ends with a “ha” as if the joke is on us.

Prato with our black piranha.
Prato with our black piranha.

What’s important here is that we ended up with 22 peacock bass which was a new record for us.  We also were thrilled to have some fish over 8 pounds to finally report.

While fishing we were occassionally interupted by birds, including some parrots making a ruckous in the trees.  This is one of the rowdy fellas.

Orange-winged parrot.
Orange-winged parrot.

 While taking our bathroom break on a sandbar, Prato found an irregularity in the sand and dug down to explose a nest of turtle eggs.  We took a photo and Prato covered the eggs back up again.  Mark asked Prato if he ate turtles and he said yes.   No wonder he could find them so easily.

Turtle eggs.
Turtle eggs.

 We also saw two types of terns I later identify as large-billed terns and the smaller yellow-billed terns

Large-billed tern.
Large-billed tern.

We also saw the Amazon kingfisher, which looks similar to the poorly named green kingfisher only bigger.

Amazon kingfisher.
Amazon kingfisher.

I also took this shot of a jabiru stork flying by.

Jabiru stork flying by.
Jabiru stork flying by.

And we saw a little blue heron.

Little blue heron.
Little blue heron.

I got absolutely baked in the sun and by late afternoon the area above my thumbs was fried on both hands.  Just as I was pondering whether to whine, the rain began to fall.  It came down hard and long enough for me to feel rain fall between my legs, which is a nifty feeling indeed.  Thankfully, our pants and shirts dried by the time we got home.  It was having only one pair of shoes that was a bummer because they did not dry.

Mark enjoying the rain.
Mark enjoying the rain.

When we returned to camp we discovered another really cool thing about this trip:  the camp staff do laundry every day.  All you have to do as guests is put your dirty clothes in a plastic basket provided inyour room, and when you get home after fishing, there, on your bed, is a neat little pile of your clean clothes.  And yes, that includes your underwear and bras if you wear such things.  Oh my.

After dinner, we found that the camp staff sometimes amuse themselves–and guests–by attracting the camp caiman.  Sometimes they do this by simply putting fish guts in the river.

Camp caiman coming to check things out at camp.
Camp caiman coming to check things out at camp.

Today I witnessed the caiman snapping up a fish and taking it downstream to eat.  

Camp caiman munching its dinner.
Camp caiman munching its dinner.

 After we had dinner dinner, I tried to to get a decent photo of the nightly nightjars that flew overhead but that seemed like an enormous challenge after baking myself in an oven all day.   Shortly afterwards, we wobbled into bed, assisted escorted once again by one of the flashlight-bearing Texans.

 

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