My apologies for taking so long to post up some pictures from my trip. In summary, it was awesome. To expand a little: it was really awesome. I will start posting up the pics in batches. I have a feeling there will be many more wonderful pictures as soon as Susan and Bruce are able to sort through the almost 20,000 they took on the trip and share the best ones. I expect this to take some months, so don't get too excited yet. In the meantime, let's look at what I do have available. Some of the pictures below were early releases from Bruce and some from my camera.
We didn't really intend for this to be a full up fishing expedition, or at least I didn't. I understood that we would do some fishing for food and perhaps some bow fishing. However, it turns out that they basically get visitors that fall into two categories: sport fisherman and bird watchers. They weren't sure how to keep "adventurers" fully occupied, so we ended up fishing. A lot.
The first thing you should know if you decide to go fishing in Guyana is that you need bigger hooks. No seriously, if you're used to fishing the fresh waters of North America you need bigger gear. Look to the ocean fishing guys. 20# braided line is probably the absolute minimum to have on your reel, 50# is better. You don't need many fancy lures -- you just use those to catch medium fish that you chop up into large chunks and use to fish for the real fish. To catch the real fish, you just put on a giant hook, use it to impale half of your medium fish, and toss in the water. (I'm defining medium fish as between 12-18" in length.) You will also need wire leaders as most have teeth that cut through your line in a heartbeat. Finally, bring chunks of lead. Along with the hooks and wire leaders, you'll lose a fair amount of lead.
First up, let's talk about catfish. The first picture is a tiger catfish -- also referred to by several other names while we were there. I caught the first catfish in the dark the night before this picture was taken of Bruce's. It was a tiger cat as well, but bigger than this one by a skosh. I'm still waiting for the pictures of that one, but my guide estimated it at 25# or so. I know he gaffed it instead of letting me pull it up on the beach. I hauled it up to the hill to the kitchen area and we ended up eating some of it an hour later. Delicious.
You can catch catfish all day long apparently. But one of the reasons for fishing for catfish after dark is the piranhas -- they basically go to sleep as soon as the sun goes down and don't steal your bait or cut your line. The other reason is it is awesome to lay back on the sand and look up at the stars. I'm not sure I've seen that many stars even when camping in the mountains.
We ate fish a lot of ways on this trip. Our guides would sometimes barbeque the fish in a setup like this with sticks that they whacked with machete, making an impromptu grill. With a lower flame the fish could be smoked over night and therefore preserved and taken back to the village. Many of our fish were released, some were eaten that day, and the rest were smoked.
I'm convinced that almost everything in the water was there to eat you. Some things like the catfish only eat the scraps of you that are you left when the toothier varieties of fish are full. And you don't get much toothier than the bayera, also known as the "Vampire Fish." Guess why. The bones in the fish made it a better fish to eat in the daylight than at dinner. They are a bit scary to unhook and release.
There are two fish that really seem to be "the fish" of the area: the arawana and the arapaima. You may have heard of the arapaima: it is the largest fresh water scaled fish in the world. The arawana is it's little brother and a small specimen is held by Andy in the above photo. The arapaima can get up to 8 feet and over 600 lbs. It is protected, but is still pursued as a sportfish in limitted numbers -- always catch and release. The arawana however is much more plentiful and tasty. Both are prehistoric and have no distinct fins but rather look like a modified eel. You fish for them by look at swirls on the surface and casting to them. If you hook one, they fight like crazy. I think I may have hooked an arapaima twice based on my guides' reactions. Both times the line zipped out and I lost the fish. When they fish for them on purpose, they use a #12 fly rod and a fly that looks like a 12 inch fish!
I did catch one arawana myself though, and it's one of my more vivid memories. We were fishing the muddy banks of an old oxbow pond when I hooked one right in front of a black caiman. The caiman came alive as the fish fought. My guide Ken kept yelling, "Reel faster! Get him away from the crudu (makushi for caiman.)" I tried to back up the flat mud bank to pull my fish away but stepped into a mud hole that was deeper than my kneecaps. The fish was out of the water on the mud and the caiman was still following when I stopped listening to Ken. Something about a 9 foot long caiman with an open mouth closing to within 15 feet of me made my fish seem like a suitable sacrifice! Everything came to a stop. The caiman with his mouth still open was inches from my 28" fish that had stopped flopping. Suddenly the caiman turned and went full speed back into the water. Ken came over and unhooked my fish and released him back into the water away from the caiman. I climbed out of my hole with a great story to tell and what I hoped was only mud in my shorts.
Another interesting fish to catch was the haimara, or "wolf fish." These fish were only slighty more evolved from prehistoric times than the arawana. They don't have the biggest teeth, but I think they have the sharpest. I pricked my finger on one and didn't stop bleeding for an hour. Our guides did not want these little monsters in the bottom of the boat unless they were fully dead. And hence I was introduced to fishing with a club. Most of the fish above were caught on a hand line -- no rod or real. If you look close at my left hand you can see duct tape on my fingers to keep the line from cutting me too deep when one of these guys gets hooked. Andy caught the big one, which weighed over 30#. The picture above doesn't do the size of these fish justice. We figured that skewer of fish weighed about 80# when the picture was taken. By the time we got back to camp, it was definitely closer to 120#.
One of my favorite fish to catch was the peacock bass, or Lucanani. Not only did they fight well, but they tasted good, had few bones, and no real teeth. They were a pretty fish, although this one is cosmetically deficient as he missing the back of his head thanks to a piranha that sensed weakness as he was being reeled in. In a pinch we often used peacock bass for bait as they could be caught on a lure as well. Several big ones straightened the treble hooks on my lures. You could also see them splashing and feeding in the shallows under vegetation in the evenings.
Here is Andy hand lining for catfish in a deep spot on the river one evening. In the foreground is Shaun and behind is his cousin Robin. Robin was a master guide, but was working as one of the boat captains on this trip. Shaun was a young guide still in training. Strong and a little crazy, he was fun to have around. Ken was our other official guide. We had two more boat captains, a cook, and helper. I'll write more about our great makushi guides in another post.
A fish that we only ever caught with a fast moving lure on the surface is a sword fish. I'm not sure what the local name was, and I think it's more of a needle fish than a sword fish. It has sweet meat, but is boney as all heck. As a result, it made fantastic bait although we ate some of them as ourselves. I caught the only fish the morning this guy swam too close to me.
Finally, I'd like to note that even the little fish have some nasty teeth. This fox fish is only about 6 inches long but enough to discourage me from dipping my toes! Seriously, swimming in these waters is not for the weak of heart. Even the minnows seemed to nip at you, especially if you had anything resembling a bug bite for them to home in on.
