 The
strike of a peacock bass in the Orinoco River in
Venezuela's rain forest is something you have to see to
believe. Having someone tell you about it doesn't do it
justice. Experiencing it for yourself, you don't believe
your own eyes and ears. I
first experienced it one winter while managing Manaka
Fishing Lodge in the relatively newly created state of
Amazonia, bordering Brazil. I saw the fish coming, but I
had no previous experience to let me believe that a fresh
water fish could move that fast. A peacock bass can cover
30 feet of water in less than a half second. I swear. I
saw it happen.
Fortunately, the first peacock I saw wasn't
after my fly; he was after my Indian guide's lure. Most
fishing for peacocks is done with bait casting gear, for
reasons of distance, accuracy and, sometimes, depth.
The peacock chasing my guide's lure exploded
on the bait. There was a thunderous splash, a hole in the
water about the size of a bathroom sink and a sound
roughly equivalent to what you'd get if you dropped a
bowling ball into a swimming pool....from the three meter
board.
I wasn't exactly speechless, but I stammered a
lot, and the first words out of my mouth were expletives.
The guide, who had seen all this many times before, said
pretty much the same thing, but in Spanish.
That strike, that explosive rush to the lure
or fly, is what entices people to Manaka Jungle Lodge
from December to March each year. In the Amazon Jungle,
that's the dry season. The rest of the year is the wet
season, and rivers rise 20 feet or more, flooding miles
of countryside and dispersing all 1,000 species of the
Orinoco's fish so widely that even natives (indigenous
Americans) can't catch enough fish to feed their
families.
 
Photo above by Lefty
Kreh
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