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Ron’s Fishing Tips and Stories: Peacock Bass Fishing in Brazil – The Early Days

Posted on February 6, 2009 by by ronspeed Posted in Fishing Stories

The Beginning of Our Brazil Peacock Fishing Trips

This week we are going to talk about fishing for peacock bass in Brazil. Most fishermen look at our company as a Mexico bass fishing outfitter. However, we have been doing the peacock bass fishing for almost 20 years. We first started in Venezuela on lake Guri with our long-time friend Steve Shoulders. Steve was working out of Puepa Fishing Club which was owned by a former President of Venezuela. We operated for 3 years on Guri with the first 2 years being very good. However, something happened the last year and the fishing really took a downturn.

The next year we started exploring tributaries off the Amazon River over in Brazil. I took an exploratory group of friends to the city of Santorem. There we boarded a houseboat and traveled up a river named the Trombetus. We covered over 500 miles in a week with very poor fishing for 4 days. The last day we had great peacock fishing, catching many, many large peacocks. However, the area was just too small to run a full-time outfitting business for American fishermen.

The very next week Ron Jr. took an exploratory group to the city of Manaus, Brazil. He booked the group on a boat that was just getting ready to start in the tourist business. It was the Amazon Queen and the boat was not totally ready for business. They had to sleep outside the first night as the fresh paint fumes in the rooms were totally stifling. Ron Jr. group fished 5 days and caught some peacocks but really didn’t satisfy our test group. About 1 month later I took another test group on a checkout trip to the Uatama river, flying out of Manaus in a charter plane.

This checkout trip was arranged by a company called Solacao and run by a fellow named Silvio Barros. Silvio had been a consultant to Jacques Cousteau when he came to study the waters in Brazil. Silvio had rented a boat named the Amazon Clipper and the outfitter was Carlos Probst. The fishing boats were very long wooden boats that leaked badly and the guides had to paddle to move the boats. That turned out to be just fine as the fishing was fantastic and it was just what we had spent months and gone hundreds of miles to find. We had found a GOLD MINE — lots of peacocks and lots of trophy peacocks. To me it was the very best peacock fishing in the world and my test group loved every minute of it.

It was on this trip where I personally lost a world record peacock and didn’t realize it at the time. I had made a cast out away from the river bank to a lone bush out in the river. I cast past the small bush maybe 2 feet band and started working the woodchopper up to the bush when a loud SMACK! hit the bait. I could tell it was maybe a 10 pound fish or smaller and it got off the hook right away. I reeled in and made another cast to the same spot and another explosion except this one was a BIG EXPLOSION. I reared back on my sj2 All Star rod as hard as I could and the monster fish jumped totally out of the water. My old friend Carl Daniel was my boat mate and he screamed “It’s as big as a 50 pound sack of flour!” It was so huge that I couldn’t even think as I was so busy fighting this HUGE fish. It first made a run to the middle of the river and I thought BIG BOY, I GOT YOU NOW but he finally turned and started all that jumping and leaping and twisting with gills flared and mad as hell. It was scary the way this monster fish was acting. It jumped about 5 times and the last jump it was so tired it couldn’t clear the water any more than half its body. I really thought we had the fish whipped when as fast as a 22 bullet it made a surge toward the bush and hung up the hooks and it was gone. DEAD SILENCE!!!! I sat there with my head down, drenched in perspiration, mentally whipped, drained, spent, raged out, exhausted, sick, and all the adjectives you can think to describe a man who has just got his butt whipped by a world record peacock bass.

Carl and I looked at each other and shook our heads, Carl said the first word stating that the fish had to be over 40 pounds and I agreed. I had already caught a 23 pound peacock before and this fish looked to be maybe 20 pounds bigger. Truly a world record but NO CIGAR THIS TIME.

We all had a fantastic trip with loads of fun and our company had found a new home. I will come back from time to time and tell you all how we grew and developed new water, new fishing patterns, and better equipment, better boats etc. This is just one exciting story of many, many more to come. Stay tuned!!!!!!!!!

More Pictures From Our Brazil Fishing Page

View more Brazil images. Read more about Peacock Bass Fishing.

Good luck with your fishing and wear that life jacket.

Ron’s Fishing Tips and Stories: Winter Bass Fishing in the USA

Posted on January 30, 2009 by by ronspeed Posted in Fishing Tips

Opening Comments

This week let’s talk about winter bass fishing here in the USA. Our peak business at Lake El Salto and Lake Comedero Mexico is in the wintertime–January to April. Mexico bass fishing is at its peak and bass bite like crazy this time of the year in Mexico.

However, the opposite is true here in the States as the weather is mostly cold and windy. It’s usually really hard to get black bass to bite when the water temp is below 60 degrees. Bass in cold water have really slow metabolisms and they don’t move very much and they don’t eat very often as they are not using very much energy. They stay suspended off the bottom in schools and they just hibernate in a lethargic trance.

I really don’t recommend trying to bass fish in these cold conditions but if you must I will give you one method I have had some success with in past winters. I recommend that you pick one of the most popular creeks to fish during the warm months. Hopefully it will be a mid-lake creek that has good spawning areas later in the spring. I recommend that you put your boat over in the creek bed at a point where the creek runs into the lake. Start up the creek going toward the back of the creek with your electronics going full blast. You need to have the intensity set so you can read shad and bass and hopefully be able to determine which is which. You really are looking for schools of shad as the bass won’t be far off the shad. Both shad and bass will be suspended in the bed of the creek in water that fits their comfort zone.

Also you want to try to locate a creek bed depth of maybe 20 to 30 ft deep and the outside bank depth of the creek is 10 to 12 feet deep or less. Now that you have found the shad, bass and the right depth of the creek bank you now are ready to start fishing. I recommend a black & blue # 97 Stanley jig in a 3/8ths weight. I recommend a large pork trailer to make the jig fall very slowly. I also like to put a shaker or noise maker on the jig.

This type of fishing MUST BE DONE VERY SLOWLY and try to bump every stump on the bank of the creek. On every good looking lay down you probably need to pitch into them several times. Move your boat very slowly with your troller on a low setting. Your mind set should be to try and see if you can get just one bite all day. If you do catch one then your next goal is to try and catch one more etc.

There may be 100 bass suspended over the deep water in the creek but there may be only one or two in a 12-hour day that moves up on the bank to eat a crawfish or a shad. That means you must be in the right place at the right time.

One day Ron Jr. & I were fishing a tournament on Richland Chambers Lake. On practice day we heard that a fellow from Normangee Texas had located some really big bass suspended in Richland Creek. The creek bed was 35 feet deep and the bass were suspended in 20 ft of water. This guy tied up to a dead tree out near the creek. He stayed there the whole 2 days of the tournament throwing a Texas rigged 6 in. purple Creme worm. The first day he only got 5 bites all day but those 5 bites produced 5 bass that weighed 34lbs. The next day he caught 6 bass and the 5 fish weighed in at 35 lbs and he won the tournament. This was not a wintertime tournament, but I wanted to give you all an idea of how slow your wintertime fishing could be.

One note of caution: remember to locate the shad & bass with your electronics first. Don’t start fishing until you locate them as you are just wasting time.

“Big Bass of the Month” winners get return trip totally free!