Fishing adventure of a lifetime

barf fish

this is the vampire fish

Today we woke up at 7:00 am to go to the Amazon rainforest for a one night stay, for what will soon be the fishing adventure of a lifetime. We started off our day packing any final clothing or supplies that we would need. I didn’t have any breakfast so I was low on energy but otherwise fine. We walked down to the riverbank pretty easily since our hotel was next to the river which is called Madre De Dios (Mother of God in english). We had two guides (one of the guides profile picture was of him holding a catfish taller than him and probably 350 pounds) so I was pumped to board the boat that we were going on this adventure in. It was an aluminum boat about 24 feet long with a 60 horsepower motor. 

The drive to our first fishing spot was pretty quick (only about 1 hour). We used bait like giant earthworms that you could only get by asking a local tribe a day before and they would get you a bucket full of them. The tour guides had a bunch of nice rods for us to use that were specifically for catfish, I thought that was nice of them. I caught my first catfish ever at that spot! It put up a good fight but I fought better. The catfish was about 12 pounds and 34 inches which is a pretty solid catfish. It is called a Granulated Catfish because it has lateral thorns and it also has spikes on the fins. The guides say the spikes hurt a lot if it punctures you. The local people here call it trash fish since it's common but I thought it was really cool. The second spot is where my brother and my dad both caught the same fish (which is confusing) but the fish ate both their baits but broke off my brother’s line because it got stuck on a structure. Afterwards, my dad hooked on to it and was able to land it, turns out it was also a Granulated catfish. When the fish stopped biting. 

We went to a tributary to try to catch some Piranha and Pacu. If you don’t know what a Pacu is, it’s basically a bigger type of Piranha with a similar body shape. For catching the Piranha, we used a traditional fishing technique which involves a bamboo pole with a line attached and a small weight, hook, and leader (which is essential for these fish since they have lots of small sharp teeth). We also used worms as bait. The guide told us before we put our line in the water, we would make noise or splash the top of the water with the bait to attract them and then drop our bait down. After, when we feel a bite, just yank your line up or set the hook and you will have a Piranha! Occasionally you will catch a Gizzard Shad or Lisa which I also caught.

  Our next location is a river connected to a lake where we baited up and set out our rods and soon enough we caught a Granulated Catfish (which has spikes too) but it’s face is more like a carp's face, everything else though is similar to a Granulated Catfish. My Ripsaw Catfish was 18 pounds and 3 feet long! It also put up a really good fight. Continuing on our journey, we caught Pacu’s and Piranha’s until it became late (it would only be 20 minutes before sunset). Sunset is when the really scary animals would come out especially mosquitos and these little bug like gnats that would be everywhere. In just one night I would say I got 23 bug bites on one foot alone! As the sun was setting, I casted a catfish rod but there was no luck, although my brother and I saw a massive Arapaima which can get up to 15 feet long and over 400 pounds with scales that an arrow couldn't even penetrate, an absolute beast! My brother casted where it surfaced and ended up catching a vampire fish which is rare during this season (since it's the rainy season) and usually they are not likely to be hunting fish. It was still cool that my brother caught one. We had to set up our tents right away because the sun was down in 10 minutes so we rushed and got the tents set up quickly. I was very sweaty after that and I smelled like onions and expired oranges but who knew that mosquitoes did not like that scent and I naturally repelled them. 

For dinner, we ate the fish that we caught earlier that day but we also had steak. The steak was amazing because it came directly from Brazil, there were also sausages from Brazil. My brother was so scared of mosquitos he had me deliver food to him, inside his tent! My favorite food I had that night was probably the steak because it was one of the first meals of the day for me and I ended up staying in my tent for the rest of night as my dad and the guides went swimming in the snake and cayman infested waters.While I was in my tent, the guide made us lemonade by just getting a big chunk of ice from one of our coolers and squeezing lemon juice so it was ice cold lemonade which was very refreshing. Since I was so hot and sweaty and couldn't fall asleep, I came out of my tent for some lemonade and if you know me (one cup is never enough) I got three more cups of lemonade. I didn’t bring my phone so I was just laying down in my tent as my brother was watching Netflix. I fell asleep eventually after like two hours. At about 4 am my brother and dad said they saw heat lightning but I didn’t see it because I was sleeping.

 For breakfast the next morning, we ate more fish which still tasted amazing. After breakfast, around 6:00 am we left to go fishing with lures and then we went piranha fishing. We caught many different species that are not recognized by some websites, I would be curious to know a little more about them. We ended up coming back to camp to pack up all our stuff and materials to go back but we fished along the way. We caught this really ugly catfish also known as trash fish. For example, when you try to release it, it throws up all over you and spews blood and if you’re lucky an organ or two falls out. This gross fish was all we really caught for our last day. 

We eventually stopped for lunch and had multiple fried fish like the vampire fish which I thought was good but not as good as the Pacu. It was difficult to enjoy the fish because I was constantly getting bitten. The entire time I was dreaming of taking a nice shower. When we arrived back at our lodge, we unpacked our bags at the river bank, which was a challenge because it was so muddy. It was time to say goodbye to our 2 guides and that's how I had the fishing adventure of a lifetime!