August 10, 2016

2016 Peru (Day 12)

We've been trying for Catfish species so much and so hard and the reward had been few and far between. We decided to start early and fish the main stem Amazon River for much of the day.

A beautiful sunrise greeted us.

Close to our intended fishing location, we saw some Amazon river dolphins (Inia geoffrensis), aka pink river dolphins. They didn't jump so the best we got were photographs of their backs as they came up to breathe.

Michael joined me in the boat again today. Instead of the aluminum canoes, we were in a wooden canoe that was very low to the water. It was raining lightly but we were not bothered.

It took us a while to find an area with active Catfish, but we started catching new species of them.

Brachyplatystoma vaillantii - Species #608

A Flatwhiskered Catfish came to play as well.

Then we caught some of these Catfish that looked like the Flatwhiskered Catfish, but they had spots. It turned out the spotted ones were a distinct species!

Zamurito (Calophysus macropterus) - Species #609

It started to rain heavier and finally the wind picked up. Anthony was rounding everyone up as the waves were getting bigger and it was beginning to be dangerous to fish.

We returned to the boat for breafast and waited out the rain and particularly the wind and waves. The tucuxi dolphins (Sotalia fluviatilis), however, didn't seem to mind.

When the storm passed over, we got back to fishing. Instead of fishing from boats, I decided to fish from shore instead. I fished a heavier rod with a larger bait hoping for larger catfish species and freshwater stringray species, plus a salmon rod with smaller hook and smaller bait to pick up some of the smaller catfish species. Unfortunately, although I did catch quite a few catfish, most of them were not new species except this one.

Laulao Catfish (Brachyplatystoma vaillantii) - Species #610

George really cleaned up this day with three freshwater stingray, one of them was pretty big. Michael got the big fish of the trip on this day with a huge freshwater stingray!

We returned to the lodge for dinner and were treated to more breaded Arapaima. Oh so good!!!

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