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.