Brazil Checkout Trips — Learning From Other Operators’ Bad Service

Brazil and Amazon Map[Editor: this article first appeared on www.ronsfishingblog and may only be used by permission of Ron Speed]

Last week I told you about my ill-fated checkout trip to the Trombetus River in Brazil for peacock bass. This week I will tell you about two more checkout trips searching for that special river to catch the big peacock bass. The peacocks over in Lake Guri in Venezuela just were not the big trophy fish we wanted our clients to catch.

I had talked to my friend Ray Sasser who is the outdoor editor for the Dallas Morning News about looking into the rivers of Brazil for the big peacocks. Maybe a month passed when Ray told me about a new guy who was trying to start up a fishing operation in Brazil. The guy called me and we met in Ennis, Texas to get to know one another.

After the meeting, I decided to do a checkout trip with this fellow to the Madereina River out of Manaus Brazil. I really didn’t like the guy very much so I decided to let Ron Jr. take his group of fishermen on this trip. I didn’t know the guy so I wouldn’t pay 100% of the money for the trip in advance. I sent him 50% of the money and agreed to wire the balance when Ron Jr. called me and verified that this guy had a boat and was for real.

The guides were green as grass and the first morning one boat ran into the back of a boat that had stopped. Thousand wonders some one didn’t get hurt. The only real damage was John Billy’s Scotch bottle got broken in the accident and that was pretty serious stuff for John Billy.

The owner of the boat had a very nice room on the very top of the houseboat. The client rooms were fresh-painted and the odor of the paint didn’t allow the clients to sleep inside so they had to sleep out on the deck of a barge. This was very uncomfortable for them and if the fishing had been good maybe they could have overlooked this inconvenience. After several days of bad fishing the owner left in his private boat as the clients were getting pretty upset with him. While he was gone, Rusty Pool from Chicago went into the owner’s good room and he got the guy’s mattress off his bed and Rusty threw it overboard into the river.

Needless to say Rusty was pretty upset with the guy and said if the guy gave him any lip service he would whip his a—. Rusty played football for Texas A&M and was a pretty tough guy so no one doubted he would do it.

Upon returning to Manaus, the clients were taken to the Buffalo Restaurant and the owner of the boat brought all the clients prostitutes from Manaus. This made the situation even worse as these guys came to catch fish and that was a terrible failure and now this guy was trying to make it up to them by offering them prostitutes. Everyone turned down the offer and told the guy they just wanted to go back to the USA.

Needless to say, this was the last group we ever took to this promoter and we were still looking for the right boat owner and that special river that held the monster peacocks.

About one year later Ron Jr. took another group of his friends on a boat called the Amazon Clipper. Well his group hit the MOTHER LOAD. I followed Ronnie with another group and met his group at the airport when he was leaving. Next week I will tell the results of those next two checkout trips, which I’m sure you will enjoy.

GOOD LUCK WITH YOUR FISHING & REMEMBER TO WEAR THAT LIFE JACKET!



Brazil Checkout Trips–The Early Days

Brazil and Amazon Map[Editor: this article first appeared on www.ronsfishingblog and may only be used by permission of Ron Speed]

This week we are going to talk about peacock bass in Brazil. This past week our group had a great trip with 60 fish over 10lbs; last week the group had 110 fish over 10lbs; this week they had 23 fish over 10 lbs and they had 10 fish over 20lbs with a 26lb monster as the biggest. It was a very good week.

We started taking groups to South America almost 20 years ago and it has been a great adventure for our clients. We started on Guri Lake in Venezuela and I found out right away that the peacock was one of the toughest, meanest, most aerobatic fish I had ever caught. I fell in love with the peacock fishing and began to look around for places where we could catch bigger fish. On Guri, you could catch pretty good numbers but the 15 to 20lb fish were hard to find. My biggest in 3 years was an 18lb fish that I caught on a 3/4 oz jig fished 20 ft deep.

The operation at Puepa Fishing Club left a lot to be desired so I made contact with Scotties’ sport fishing over in Brazil. The organizer was an older guy with tons of experience named Morgan McDonald and his son Ian McDonald. Morgan leased an old houseboat that had no rooms. We had to sleep on the floor or in a hammock. I chose to sleep on an old cot outside the covered top, which was a mistake as the next morning I would be soaking wet from the heavy dew.

We flew to Belem, where the Amazon empties into the ocean. We spent the night and flew out the next day to Santarem, which is half way from Belem to Manaus. Morgan met us and we boarded the worst houseboat in South America. Our destination was to fish a little-known river called the Trombetus. This was truly a checkout trip as Morgan had only heard stories about big peacock. We fished 2 days without a bite and heard all kinds of excuses as to why the fish were not biting.

The second night we stopped at a government check station about 11 pm and everyone was asleep. I woke up but didn’t get up, just listened to a lot of Portuguese and some loud talking. Next thing I know 2-55 gallon drums of gasoline were unloaded from our houseboat. After the gasoline was unloaded, the houseboat began to move on up river. I found out later that Morgan had bribed the government guys to let us fish in a sanctuary but we were not to get out of the boat and set foot on the sandy beaches. It seems that the ridley turtles were laying eggs in the sand. As they were on the endangered list, there was no walking on the beaches.

About midmorning we found a stream of water pouring into the main river. Three boats chose to follow the stream and yes, they had to get out and push the small boats into a big lagoon. I chose to go on the other side of the river and pull the boat into another big lagoon. It wasn’t long before I realized that this lagoon had been hit hard by poachers as drying racks were all over the banks. No peacocks but I did foul hook a huge Pirarcu that pulled our small boat all over the lagoon for about 10 minutes before it broke my mono line.

We finally pulled our boat back out to the main river just before dark and met our buddies coming back from the secret lagoon. They had hit the MOTHER LOAD as they had caught scores of big peacock. They said it was a fish every cast for almost 2 hours and they were exhausted. Since this was our last day, we had to turn the houseboat around and head back to the Amazon River.

Other than those two great hours of peacock fishing, the 7-day trip was a total failure, which is what happens on most of the checkout trips all over the world. It’s gold mine or famine and mostly famine.

Next time we will talk about two more checkout trips to different rivers in another part of Brazil.

Good luck with your fishing and remember to wear that lifejacket!



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