The black piranha were huge and a pest at times.
Check out the very efficient set of choppers.
.
the corner and hit the same rock. They pulled up alongside
our stricken craft and as their outboard leg was tilted up for inspection
one of the occupants muttered "there's something wrong with our prop."
Peering over at the shaft I said "that's because you haven't got a bloody
prop" and then cracked up with laughter. The rock had cleaned knocked the
prop off never to be seen again and despite our precarious situation and
all of the adversities we had faced there was a lighter side to it all.
We ended up giving them our prop so at least
they could continue. We were left to float down river and await some form
of help. We knew that there would be dugouts coming with the entire dismantled
camp, stores and spare motors on board. Surely it would only take
a couple of hours? In the meantime we cut |
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down a sapling to assist the guide (it's easier saying
guide than boat driver) to manoeuvre the dinghy through a number of testing
rapids and help better position the boat for casting.
One hour led to two then four then six. No one came. Where on earth
was the camp? It would be dark in a few hours and three dinghy's were scattered
along a sizeable stretch of river in some of the most inhospitable country
the Amazon can dish up. Thoughts of a Horror Travel Column in lieu of an
article started to dominate my thoughts.
With plenty of time on our hands David Gaffy
and myself worked snag piles for peacocks and when payara could be seen
baitfish in the larger pools we cast to them. The peacocks were totally
different to others that I have caught - being more solid for their length |
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| and dominated by a stunning yellow colour with blue fins.
There is every chance that these are a new species of peacocks and Reiss
is currently undertaking DNA testing as part of a Ph D study into them
(see separate box by Reiss.) Indeed, Reiss asked us to keep some of the
smaller fish to assist in his studies. It was pretty cool to be involved
in the process of determining a possible |
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new species.
Despite the disabled motor David and myself
had a pretty good day. Using a Rapala X Rap I managed to pull a striking
10 pound peacock from the snags (plus a number of smaller ones,) while
in the open water we scored 7 sabre toothed payara plus large numbers of
piranha. The most effective method to catch payara was to await swirls
and bust-ups on the surface |
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