The difference between one fish and no fish! February 27,2020

If you're a real fishermen, any trip to a fishy location, for any reason, is going to be accompanied by at least trying to carve out some time in your schedule to fish.  In this case, I was invited by the New Orleans Fly Fishers to come down and share my Amazon peacock bass presentation, and I used that as an opportunity to book two days with Captain Brandon Keck, of Southern Fly Expeditions .  Brandon guides out of Hopedale Louisiana, and while the primary goal was redfish, hopefully there would also be shots at other species, black drum, alligator gar, sheepshead....and the list goes on.

In the months prior to the trip, I did what most of us would do.  I watched the tantilizing videos on the website, of wave after wave of redfish attacking poppers.  I tied flies.  I day dreamed.  I even talked my buddy James into traveling with me.  I did everything right, I think, except a consultation with whoever is in charge of Louisiana weather.

I know later winter/early spring weather can be unpredictable.  And sure enough, as it got closer, troubling conditions crept into the forecast.  Wedensday the 26th, our first day on the water, called for 30 mph winds, and high temps in the fifties.  Thursday, the 27th, the winds were to drop, but lows were barely going to be 40, with a high of 50.  I talked to Captain Brandon the eve of the trip.  I told him, I would be more than glad to still fish, but I only wanted to fish if it would be merely difficult, but not impossible.  We made arrangements to talk very early the next morning.  Unfortunately, at 5:50 a.m. I received a text that simply said, "Conditions have worsened.  I recommend we not fish today.  It would just be a really expensive boat ride."  I hated to hear it, but appreciated the honesty.  So, Wednesday was spent on our own, a bit of exploring in New Orleans, and a bit of exploring road side canals, trying to find clean water, and looking for the odd seatrout or redfish.  It was cold, the wind was ripping, and it would have been a miserable day in the boat.

The next morning, I received a text, that said, "It's going to be really difficult, but not impossible."  Good enough for me.  No way I was going home without at least trying.  And honestly, if there is anything predictable about me, it's that I'm optimistic.  We headed off, and one of the great things about traveling and fishing is just how foreign everything is.  The birds are different, the trees are different, and for sure, the homes built on platforms twenty feet in the sky are different.


 The further we drove, the more optomistic I became!  By the time we reached Hopedale, I was sure we were going to whack em.

We arrived at the marina, met Brandon, and loaded five additional fly rods and a couple of big fly boxes on the boat.  Soon we were off and running, and it was COLD!  40 degrees and running in the boat are WAY different from 40 degrees and sitting still.  We ran a good ways to a place Brandon hoped to find clean water, and by the time we arrived, I couldn't feel my face.  There were two issues.  The gusty winds of the previous day had the water very turbid.  Secondly, the water was 51 degrees, which generally means fish sulking deep in the channels, not actively hunting for food.  We hoped that as the sun got on the water (it was mostly sunny), it would eventually move the fish up in to the shallows.

I had James start off in the bow, and my strategy was to have James fish most of the time.  I felt like our shots would be very limited today, and while I've caught some redfish, James had not.  Captain Brandon started poling and James (a very good caster) started firing off blind casts, covering water all around the boat as we moved.  I guess I'm going to sum it this way.  We covered water for six hours, threw hundreds of times, moved five times to new areas, and never saw a single fish by mid afternoon.  It was looking bleak.  Then James stepped down from the bow, and said, "I'm going to get something to eat, fish for awhile." 

Five minutes later, Brandon pointed, and said, "Black drum, Twelve o'clock" and there he was.  This gigantic fish, head down, tail up.  The first black drum I had ever seen in the flesh.  I cast, but not close enough, the fish moved, I couldn't see it, but thought I could, and cast to a mud cloud, instead of the fish.  It was a comedy of errors, but I finally got the fly in front of the fish, which immediately ate.  The fish lumbered off, and that is exactly the right word.  Black drum are never speedsters, and this fish was cold.  But also huge!  He would take twenty feet of line, I'd gain it back, and then he would put his pectoral fins out, and dig down for the bottom.  I would pinch the fly line and lean.  It was stalemate.  And then the fish would run a little, I'd gain it back, and we would do it all over again.  No way to make it a  Hemingway, Old Man and the Sea, exciting battle.  But eventually persistance paid off, and a really cool, amazing fish was in the net.  Black drum, and species number 140 on fly.

Black drum are interestingly shaped fish, their profile is so high, and so different from anything I'm used to catching, I had no idea what it really weighed.  I wondered if it was 50 pounds, my guide, who actually occasionally weighs these things didn't think so.  His judgement was at least 45 pounds, probably high forties, but not quite fifty.  I'll take it!   A quick photo session, and off he went.

And that was it for the day, and the fishing portion of trip.  The wind picked up even more, James gave it another half hour, and then we bagged it.  Then we sped back to New Orleans for my presentation, with the black drum slime still drying.  A wonderful group of guys at the meeting, and it looks like a few of them will be heading to the Amazon with me next year.

I read, and I don't remember where, that in fishing, the difference between one and zero fish caught, is greater than the difference between one and any other number.  Let me witness, so true.  Because I've already forgotten the cold, and the muddy water, and the somewhat poor casting once the fish was spotted.  In my mind, it's not the trip of one fish, it's the trip of the giant black drum! 

Saving the best for last! Amazon Day 7 (last day of trip)

I'm just going to get this out of the way, I don't think this day was the best day of the trip.  But it was pretty spectacular.  Without a doubt in the top three.  And I'm sure my fishing partner, Chris, will remember this one as being as the best.  It's fascinating to me how often the last day of the trip does turn out being the best of it.  Last year, the last day was poling over the white sand flats in my favorite part of the river, landing the two biggest peacocks of my life, up to that point, and also landing my first arowana on what was literally my last cast of the trip. 

This year, our guide for the last day was Irmau.  He is a quiet dude.  His English isn't quite as good as a few of the other guides, making it a bit more difficult to have conversations with him.  He may also may naturally just be a little more reticent.  But if you work at it a bit, there is a lot of depth with Irmau and he is a pretty interesting guy.  He will always have a special place for me, because last year, he put my wife and I on a bunch of payaras, a lifetime fish for me.

I teased Irmau at the beginning of the day, telling him I was hoping for something special.  It turns out that is what we got.  We went on a long run up river, and several twists and turns later, entered a narrow creek, and soon enough a hidden lagoon.  The first cast was greeted by an old adversary that has been largely absent this week, the wolffish or triara as they are probably more properly called.  The wolffish looks a lot like a fish from home called the bowfin.  At Agua Boa they typically run two to four pounds, whack flies hard, will catch some air, and are generally a fine gamefish.  At this point, I'm usually happy not to catch them though.  One, they are the slimiest fish in the world, and two, they are really rough on flies, because of their dental-work.  It would have been a shame to go the whole week and not catch one though, so there you go.

It's what happened next that stood out. At the entrance to the lagoon, our casts were greeted by swarms of butterfly peacocks in the two to four pound range.  Every cast, you would immediately hook a fish, and as you played it, there was a swirling, kaleidoscope of color behind it, as dozens of butterflies followed it.  Chris and I caught them two at a time for about fifteen minutes.  It's not that there weren't larger fish out there.  We could see them.  They just simply, for the most part, couldn't get to the fly before they were beaten out by their smaller cousins. 

Chris with his 11, me with the fish that lured it

On this last day, Chris had a goal, and that was to catch a peacock of over ten pounds.  So far, many, many things had went wrong to thwart this quest.  They were there.  I personally had landed 13 fish like this, my best week ever.  Chris had probably had close to that many eat the fly.  Today, would hopefully be the day when it would come together.  And just a few minutes in, it did.  I had a larger fish, maybe five pounds hooked up, and when it was wallowing at the side of the boat, a larger fish swirled up beneath it.  I told Chris to get his fly in there, he flipped out a few feet of leader, took one strip, and the big fish ate.  He struck it perfectly, and soon enough we had a fish at the boat that I was sure was double figures, and sure enough, the boga revealed it to be 11 pounds.  Pressure off.  We continued to land fish hand over fist in this lagoon, as we were nearing the end, a BIG arapaima rolled in front of the boat, and then another off to the side.  These were person sized arapaima, six footers.  I dropped the fly in the water and slowly crawled it back to the boat.  Just as I gave up, and started to lift to cast again, something down there in the depths grabbed it, but my line was hinged at a weird angle, and my hook set was less than ideal.  I just pricked the fish.  Just so we had no doubts about its identity, it boiled and left an enormous mud cloud in the water.  Heart breaking.  We fished our way back to the entry point of the lagoon, I'm sure we landed fifty fish here.  Before we left, I tied on a large popper that was just too big for the butterflies to handle, but a dozen would slam it as I popped it back to the boat, I was laughing the whole time.

I almost hated to leave this lagoon, but another treat was in store.  The next lagoon was larger, and just as good.   Again, one butterfly peacock after another, the difference was that in this lagoon, there seemed to be more big fish, although once again we had struggles with them not being able to get to the fly before a smaller one would.  We did take several midsize fish, and two experiences stand out.  Irmau pointed out a fish, I made the cast, and the fish ate right in a patch of sunlight where the colors it flashed on the take were brilliant and it was also simply enormous.  I got a good hookset, and the fish kind of plowed back and forth in the lagoon for awhile.  It was the point in the fight where you know you are going to land it, and you are just wondering how big it is going to be.  And then the hook just simply fell out.  I asked Irmau how big, he thought 15, which corresponded to what I was thinking.  Bummer.

A little later, Chris had a good fish hooked up, I seem to remember nine pounds or so, but I really don't remember that fish clearly because of what happened next.  As the fish was at the side of the boat, and I was getting ready to grab it (I was the designated fish grabber)  a huge form loomed up from the bottom.  A monstrous red tail catfish came out of nowhere, hovered in the water column, and basically put it's face on the big peacock.  Like it was taste-testing it, trying to decide if it was worth the trouble.  And then after ten or fifteen seconds, it just slowly sank back in the water column.  My  heart was racing, and it wasn't even hooked.  We landed another 35 fish in this lagoon.  I counted this time, just because I was curious.

A quick lunch under the trees, this took two tries, because the first try, we got covered up by wasps that appeared very interested in our lunch.  After lunch, we didn't even move, we just pulled the boat out and started pounding the bank of the river, where surprisingly we immediately were hot and heavy into the fish again.  We landed another 30 or so, and then headed back down river to look in some of Irmaus payara spots.  This turned out to be kind of a bust.  They just simply weren't there.  But one more memorable occurrence was still in our future.

We started working a narrow stretch of river with the striking white sand flats that you see occasionally here.  We saw a few peacocks.  But what we saw far more were the unusual surimbim catfish, resplendent in their black tiger stripes.  This is my last bucket list fish here, and on this flat they are everywhere.  Singles, doubles, even groups of eight or ten.  But like catfish everywhere, you need to get the fly down to their level, and I couldn't get the fly to sink to them before the boat spooked them.  I don't know why I didn't think of it, but next year, we will be pulling the boat up on the sand and I will be wading if we ever find that situation again. 

All to soon the day was over.  Without a doubt, we have landed over 100 fish today.  Back at the dock, talking with the other boats, everyone had enjoyed a good day.  Mark hand landed a 15 pound fish with Preto.  Ron and Bill each hooked large arapaimas, and got them on the reel, Bill even got a jump out of his hundred pounder.  Too many stories to share around the dock, so some of them got saved for dinner that night.

Did I mention I love this place?  Maybe this was actually the best day. 

100 degrees and humid? DIdn't notice! Amazon-Day 6

So, here is an observation, something I've noticed over thousands of hours of fishing in all types of weather.  Discomfort is fairly proportional to how well the fish are biting!  I spend a lot of time swinging flies for steelhead in really cold weather, the kind of weather where chipping ice out of the guides is a thing.  On the days when fish are few, or none, it can be kind of miserable.  Attention wanes, and once the only thing you can think about is how cold you are, a trip to the car is in your near future.  A few pulls from bright, chrome steelhead, big fish racing around the pool, some whooping and hollering, and when the day is over you don't even remember that it was cold.  Why, yes, your waders did freeze solid with ice, walking back to the car in the twenty mile per hour wind and twenty degree temps, but did you see stripe on that buck! 

I'm honestly almost impervious to heat anyway.  I generally take my vacation in Florida in the summer, and honestly, am so grateful to be somewhere without snow on the ground, that basically, the hotter the better.  And it did get pretty hot today!  I heard back at the lodge that it was right at 100 degrees.  But with fishing like it was today, didnt notice!

I fished with Preto again today, which isn't the usual program, but because I switched fishing partners on Tuesday, and then switched back, I have the same guide twice.  Don't mind this at all, love fishing with Preto, and wouldn't mind a repeat of Tuesdays action at all.  Which is pretty much what I got, the day was remarkably similiar, partially because we fished most of the same water.

We started in the lagoon, fishing the west bank where Stephen and  I hit multiple big fish, and it was once again on fire.  Preto, from the platform would pick out fishing cruising, or lurking near log jams, and they were once again on a search and destroy mission.  Landed a couple of nice fish, 12 and 10 pounds, the colors on the ten pound fish were so gorgeous, the camera may have picked out some of it.

Brushpile miracle fish

I never get tired of these guys....

In the next lagoon, I had another experience that convinced me that this is just definitely my week when it comes to big fish.  I hooked up on a big fish inside a brush pile, the kind of spot where even as you cast,  you think, "how can this end well, even if I hook up?"  The fish immediately ran through the logs and then powered parallel to the bank through the sunken bushes.  I couldn't feel a thing, and as we approached the logs, Preto said, simply, "Gone"  I untangled my fly line from the first jam, reeled up another fifteen feet, and with the line pointing straight in to a tunnel of brush, I felt a tug.  Looked at Preto, and said "Still on!"  I got up on the bow of the boat and peered into the brush, and about twenty feet in, I could see my fish wallowing around.  I put my rod down, grabbed the flyline, and gently pulled on the fish, and amazingly enough, it began to swim my way, going over, under, and around the sticks in such a way that it actually untangled my line, with some helpful tugs in the right direction by me.  Once it emerged, it ran out  into the lagoon, and I just picked up the rod and basically cranked it in.  Another 12 pounder!

We took a lunch break, and while Preto was napping, I fed the fish bread from my lunch.  Sometimes, I then pull out a bread fly and extract a few, but today, there weren't any new or sizable species, so I just watched the show.  Partway through, about a six foot caiman came sliding up the bank and stopped about ten feet from the boat.  I thought he was there to try to catch the fish that were eating the bread, but then he actually began to eat the bread, which yes, I think is really weird.  We tossed a piece literally six inches from the boat, and he still came and got it, I could have patted him on the head, but didn't.

Then it was back to the main river channel, poling slowly, and searching the bank for fish.  When it was my turn, we rounded a corner, and tucked into a pocket was a herd (I know that's the wrong word, but it's fitting) of big fish.  I saw five, and then my mind just kind of shut off, Preto later told me there were probably twenty.  I got a huge, red and white popper in the air, it hit the water, I popped it twice, and a bunch of giant peacocks tried to get it, the winner was a 10.5 lb fish.

Back at the lodge later, someone mentioned how stifling hot it was, and I had to say that it didn't register.  They looked at me like I was crazy.  I really don't mind being thought of as crazy.  That night, we enjoyed a dinner of fresh piranaha, cooked whole.  Tomrrow, somehow is the last day, and I'll be fishing with an old favorite, Irmau.