The Pull: Rumble in the jungle- Day Two (Attack of the killer peacocks)

Ready to start the day!

Jacunda

Big caimen, but not the one I hooked

So, yesterday was slow...we deserved a great day right? Well, we sure got one. I'll make this part brief. We caught lots of peacocks. We caught big peacocks. We caught peacocks until our muscles were puddles of goo. I'm guessing we probably caught around 100 fish, and Terri didn't fish the whole day. Terri got a beautiful 13 pound fish, her biggest ever, (last years big fish for her was 11), and then followed it up with a 12lb pound fish. My biggest of the day was 11, but the incredible part was the number of large, what I'll call mid-size fish, six to nine pounds that we caught. A six to nine pound peacock will try to pull your arm off. I probably caught at least 40 this size, and had one stretch where I made six casts, and landed five seven to nine pound fish. We landed many, many doubles, Terri had always wanted a picture with us with a big double, by the end of the day we weren't bothering with pictures. It was surreal, one of the most action packed days of my life.

There were a few moments that stood out. At lunch, when the guide pulls the boat up on the bank, I pulled out the tiny flies, and caught an aracu, a fish I have been wanting to catch since last year. It probably weighed half a pound. It still pulled hard. Everything here does. Also gorgeous, check out the pic at the bottom of the page!

At the first spot we stopped at, I had been landing fish steadily, when a large caimen set up about 10 feet from the boat. I wasn't too concerned. They're not that fast. I hooked a decent fish, and it took off, and somehow wrapped the leader around the caimen. So it couldn't get away. I was trying to free the fish, the caimen was turning in circles trying to get it, and eventually it did. But after it swallowed it, I was still hooked to the fish. Ever tried to break 40lb line? I was pulling for all I was worth trying to break off, a 400 pound caimen was thrashing it's head, finally I hit a tooth or something and the line broke. Good times.

On the way home, we made two stops. Preto, our guide for the day spotted a turtle nest, and stopped the boat so we could see it, even briefly digging with his hands to uncover the eggs and show us. Then, it started to pour. But even though it was pouring, and even though we were already going to be late, Preto stopped at a sandbar where we got out of the boat and were able to fish and wade. We hooked a fish each on our first cast, and our second cast, and our third cast, as soon as the fly hit the water it was eaten. An amazing finish to an amazing day. On the way back downriver, we got dumped on, in the way only the rainforest can. Despite the photographic evidence, it didn't wipe the smile off my face for very long! Looking back, I'm guessing we landed somewhere around a quarter of a ton of peacock bass today!