The next 8 days were a blurry of wake up at 4 am, eat breakfast, ride off into the sunrise with Pacho, fish until about 12, eat lunch, crush a beer, sleep for two hours, fish again until sunset, eat dinner, and pass out. I love to fish, but after this trip, I was even tired of fishing at the end of some days.
The stretch of river we were fishing, name to be left unknown for the secrecy of the guides and lodge was about 12 hours by boat from its mouth with the Orinoco. We were nestled in this small section of river that honestly most people just couldn’t reach or didn’t want to reach because it took too long. The entire time we were there, I didn’t see a single piece of trash in the river, a stark contrast with most of the river systems in the United States.
Morgan and I were mainly fly fishing for peacock bass all day long, but we did some spin fishing on occasion when we were just too tired from slinging 12” flies all day in the 100 degree sun. Pacho kept us in line with the banks, and we casted deep into the bank shadows and lagoons of the river. We were averaging about 20-30 fish in the mornings and 20-30 fish in the evenings. I would say all in all, we caught about 600 fish during our trip. The lagoons were the most fascinating part of the river to me. We would motor back in a small inlet, and that would open up to massive lagoon systems you wouldn’t ever know were there. The peacocks loved these areas, and they would explode on topwater flies in the mornings and evenings. We also fished the long river sand bars in the evenings where the peacocks cruised for fish in sometimes less than 6” of water. We did take a couple of side trips to two other rivers to fish for some different species. One was a tight, almost trout stream like river, and the other was the Orinoco, which is bigger than the Mississippi River. We were greeted with an abundance of fish and more stories to tell. Morgan did end up with the second largest fish of the whole group, an 18.5 pound peacock, while Bernard beat us all with a 20 pounder.
I say all this to say, the fishing was phenomenal, and there are stories for days about the fishing excursion. As I have gotten older, and somewhat less “hardcore” as an angler, I have begun to enjoy the other side of fishing. We enjoyed wonderful meals of local fare, conversations with our host family and other anglers, and just took in all the unadulterated scenery. Before, I would fish into the night. Now, I enjoy the boat ride back with Morgan or a nap in the afternoon. I am still catching fish, but I am just enjoying the other things that made this trip so wonderful.
Towards the end of the tip, we said goodbye to the guides, host family, and our friends that we fished with. We made our way back to Puerto Carreno where we spent one more night before flying to Bogota. Victor, who was the host leader was a horse rider and cattle roper, so we all got to see him at the rodeo festival in Puerto Carreno on our last night. The guides got to come and enjoy the rodeo, and all had new slick new haircuts and cowboy boots they got with our tip money. We all watched as Victor and others race down the track doing their thing.
We finished out with fishing on the Orinoco the next morning catching the infamous vampire fish, and then flew back to Bogotá. The other 5 anglers went home, and Morgan and I stayed for another 10 days touring other parts of Colombia. Those adventures will be in the next post.
Until next time,
David and Morgan
Vows To Voyage 