Piranhas

So y'all may have noticed I left out a particularly infamous species of fish in my last post. Well, that's because I felt piranhas deserved their own spotlight. Like most children in North America, I grew up believing that the rivers of the Amazon basin were swarming with these little fish with sharp teeth. If you dared to set foot into their waters you'd be eaten alive in minutes.

Naturally, the first fish we went fishing for was the dreaded piranha. We had a "down day" at Rewa village between when we arrived and when we were to head out on our expedition. So that morning we motored upriver a little ways to a beach where a couple of caiman patrolled offshore to try our luck at snagging a few piranha. I believe I caught one of the first little buggers on hand line. Hand lining can be frustrating to do, and hilarious to watch, btw. It turned out that was the smallest fish of the day. Before long we were all hooking black piranha. The first thing I noticed was that they were bigger than I imagined:

The picture below was proof that I also caught the biggest fish of the day, although by then I had switched to a rod and reel. That black piranha was approximately 5-6 lbs. Our guides told us that on the upper stretches of the Rewa river, they occasionally catch them as big as 10 lbs. Damn!

   

Well, I think it's worth noting the teeth on this particular fish. While no one wanted to stick their fingers in its mouth to pull its lips down, a stick sufficed. Note the size of my finger down in the left hand corner of the picture for relative size. (There are just as many teeth on the top, but we only had one stick.)

 

That first morning catching piranha was cool. We brought them back to the village where the big one was grilled/smoked for our lunch and the rest went to the village. The meat reminded me of shark meat in texture and flavor. The bones were straight from hell. The entire fish is full of these little "Y" bones. Picking them out made for a slow meal and some colorful language.

As the trip went on, our feelings about the piranha went from "Cool!" to "Son of a *&%!$!" Those little (and big) suckers were everywhere. If they didn't steal your bait directly, they were taking chunks out of the fish you were reeling in or more often than not cutting your line. Yep -- even though we used steel leaders to keep the teeth of the fish we hooked from cutting the line, they were not long enough to be effective against the piranha who would inevitably attack our hooked fish and often cut our line in the process. (Which reminds me, I still need to mail our guides some replacement fishing gear.) One morning I decided to throw a lure off the beach while we were waiting for the second boat to join us. In 10 minutes, I had hooked six piranha. But unfortunately the rapala lure I had borrowed from Bruce just wasn't up to the task:

 

I believe that Bruce hooked yet another fish with that lure and ended up with only the head of the lure to show for it. Both hooks and most of the wooden body had been bitten off.

 And just for emphasis, I'd like to show the head of my peacock bass again from another angle. I hooked this fish and had it up on the beach in about 90 seconds. Look at the size of the chunk missing from his head. I recommend that if you fall into the water on the Rewa river, you don't thrash around and show signs of weakness.