The author with a big Rio Alegria peacock bass

Tributaries of the Rio Negro

Within the hour some thirty fish between 3 and 5 pounds are boated.  Unfortunately, they are all an assortment of the Amazon's smaller gamefish.  Most of them are the barboleta tucunare -  a small species of peacock bass that seldom grows larger than 8 pounds.  A few traida are also caught and released.  Sidenei calls them "sabonete com dentes" - fanged bars of soap.
    By 5 or so in the afternoon I've landed well over 100 barboleta tucunare, but still no sign of the larger paca or azul variety.  By now the monsoon clouds have formed not far to the south of us, swirling and rising.  Soon the rains will arrive, descending like a tidal wave, and ending all fishing until next year's dry season.

The business end of a white piranha

    We paddle out to the mouth of the lagoon, within casting distance of a cluster of small boulders.  A school of white piranha is cruising nearby.  On the first cast my fly is taken by one of the piranha.  After a brief struggle, the fish grudgingly comes to the boat with a dozen more of its companions greedily nipping at the protruding bucktail.  Sidenei reaches down and carefully grasps the four pound fish behind the gills, heedlessly singing an off-tune rendition of "besame muito" to the fish.  He looks away for only a split second while attempting to remove the streamer fly, and the hook pops loose.
    The piranha snaps its jaws closed, neatly removing the tip of Sidenei's pinkie and a sizable piece of fingernail.  The teeth are so sharp that Sidenei feels no pain whatsoever, but the white bone and spurting blood make him wince in disgust.  The piranha's jaws make a sick popping sound every time they snap shut on the remains of the finger.  Sidenei buries the blade of the screwdriver between the startled piranha's eyes.  "We'll eat that one," he says in Portuguese, plucking the mangled fingertip from the fish's twitching jaws.  Sidenei inspects the finger meat and then tosses it into the water like some useless piece of trash.  It is eaten before it can settle out of sight.
    We take the piranha incident as an omen, and decide to end the day's fishing.  Camp is set on a sweeping white beach void of caiman and jaguar tracks.  Sidenei dresses his wound while I clean and cook the piranha over a small fire.  The fish seems to be staring at me with a hellish cooked-in grin.
    Dinner consists solely of fish and farinha, and somehow that seems enough.  There is something ironic about eating the finger eater, but at this point we are both so hungry it really doesn't matter.  We sit without speaking, watching the river and the thunderheads that still loom on the southern horizon.

Sidenei and his shortened pinkie

 
    After dinner, we pitch our hammocks and tarp, then settle in for the night.  The river's high acidity prevents mosquitoes from hatching, so we need no netting.  A small band of howler monkeys moves into the nearby trees to get a close look at us.  The alpha male begins his horrid territorial roaring - a clamor somewhere between King Kong and a 500-pound German shepherd - which is audible as far as 10 miles away.  The roaring suddenly stops, and from somewhere far back in the blackness a jaguar moans its deep guttural call, like a demonic cello player sawing the same notes over and over.  Sidenei builds up the fire and restlessly settles back into his hammock, cradling a single-barrel 12-guage shot-gun he calls boca quente - "hot mouth."
    At dawn the howlers again commence their roaring.  The jaguar has decided not to dine on gringo and all is well.  Sidenei brews a stout pot of jungle coffee.  We share a stale crust of bread, then head downriver toward the pickup location.  By noon we reach the confluence of the east and west branches of the Preto River.  On the far shore a small campfire smolders next to a primitive structure of several stacked palm fronds stacked atop a skeletal foundation of thin sticks.
    We boat over to the campsite and wade ashore to see if anyone is about, stopping to inspect an assortment of charred animal parts atop a crudely built grill made of green sticks.  A few are recognizable: the shell and a single clenched claw of an armadillo; the torso, head still intact, of an unlucky woolly monkey.  Sidenei looks about warily.
    From well inside the jungle a male voice calls out in an indiscernible language.  It is soon answered by another man and then several more people join in until the surrounding trees are full of clamoring voices.  One by one they appear from the forest - tiny, stoutly built people, the largest no taller than 5 feet.  Most have little or no clothing, though they all wear intricate necklaces strung with black and red seeds of the tento tree, bones, feathers, and jaguar, peccary, and freshwater dolphin teeth.  Sidenei says they are Pan-ra (pronounced pan-ha) Indians, a nomadic hunter-gatherer tribe who still lead the exact lives of their ancient ancestors.
    Bows in hand, the men of the group timidly approach the river bank, bellowing at each other in their rapid dialect.  The women and children remain close to the jungle's edge, nervously chattering like a clutch of scared chickens.  It is my clothing, and especially my sunglasses, that scare them the most.  I must appear like some giant white-skinned apparition from another planet.  I take off my hat and glasses and try to look as friendly as possible.  Soon their curiosity gets the better of them, and before long the whole boat is surrounded.  Just as they're starting to calm down, the float plane comes roaring around the bend in the river, only 5 feet of the water, flying full throttle.  When Bennie spots us he instantly cuts power and puts down, throwing up a great rooster tail.  The Pan-ra bolt for the jungle in terror.
    We quickly load our gear while Luis interrogates me about the river.  I explain that there are plenty of piranha, but very few giant tucunare as we pile into the scorching cockpit.  Bennie taxis us into position and we roar up over the tree line toward our next stop, the Rio Alegria, the "river of happiness."  Luis has heard rumors of that rivers giant tucunare, but its all speculative and sketchy at best.  Bennie gains as much altitude as possible, to give him "....more time to pray if the engine quits."
 
At 3,000 feet the jungle looks like an endless green ocean.  There is not a single landmark as far as the eye can see.  Luis pulls out his hand held GPS and takes a reading:  63 degrees 50 minutes west,  00 degrees 07 minutes north.  We're right on the equator.  To the west is the setting sun and to the south the massive cloudbank, as thick and imposing as ever, gold and salmon in the fading light.  Bennie is becoming increasingly edgy, nervously glancing down at several Operational Navigation Charts (ONC's), the GPS and finally out the window.  The river is nowhere in sight.
    After several panicky minutes, the outline of a river appears barely discernible on the darkening horizon.  We head straight for the nearest bend in the river where, by sheer luck, a small boat sits moored along the bank.  The chances of running into people are wildly unlikely, but somehow we've managed to blunder right on top of them.  Bennie idles back and we float down onto the river's surface.  Another 5 minutes and it would have been too dark to land.
    An old man suddenly comes madly paddling out of a nearby lagoon in his tiny dugout.  He heads straight for his little boat; surely he's seen a float plane before.  Luis scrambles out on the float and explains that we're sport fishermen from Manaus, looking for tucunare.  The man stops his crazed paddling and looks back at the float plane as if he's just seen a ghost.  he waves us over without saying a word, quickly docking his canoe alongside his little junk.  Several worried faces peer out of the boat's open windows.
    Luis rows the plane over to the boat and we exchange formal greetings.  The man's name is Euodio Pizzerra de Araujo.  he and his small family have boated two straight weeks from Manaus to collect pisaba - a type of palm frond used as bristles in industrial brushes.  He tells us he plans to return to Manaus and sell his harvest when the rains make the lower part of the river more navigable.
    Bennie hands Euodio a picture of himself with a 9-kilo tucunare, asking him if he's seen any such fish in the Alegria.  Euodio laughs, telling us that he speared and ate a tucunare last night that was much larger than the one pictured.  He says the river is full of big fish, but wants to know why we've come so far from Manaus to fish for them when they sell them in the city market.  Luis explains that we want to catch them for fun and release them unharmed.  A slow smile spreads across Euodio's face.  "Sport Fishing" in the Amazon is an oxymoron - you catch a fish and you kill it, no exceptions.  Our explanations are useless.  Euodio looks at me in a pitying manner and offers me a bowl of macaw stew.  I've never eaten macaw, so I ask him how they taste.
 

Bennie, the pilot, with a beautiful "tucunare"

    He grins his wide, toothless smile.  "My son, much like parrot, but there's more meat."  Euodio takes out an ancient aluminum bowl and pile various macaw parts atop a mound of cassava flour.  A drumstick, with clenched claw still attached, rolls off the top of the heap.  To refuse the meal would be an unforgivable insult, so with a forced smile, I accept it.  The macaw is delicious.
    At sunrise, Euodio and his eldest son are ready to fish.  Their little dugouts are only large enough for two people, so I go with Euodio while Euodio's son takes Bennie.  Together we paddle upriver into a huge lagoon rimmed with towering kapok trees.  Large schools of tilapia, silver dollar and discus fish skitter nervously along the shoreline.  From somewhere out of sight comes the terrific splash of a feeding peacock bass.  Euodio laughs hysterically when I pull out my fly rod and begin casting.  He wants to know what on earth I plan to accomplish with the xicote da agua - water whip - I' using.  I do my best to make him understand but he can't see why I won't just use live bait.  The tucunare always ".....swallow the bait deep in their stomachs; they never escape."
    From the center of the lagoon comes a great commotion.  It looks like children thrashing in a pool on a hot summer day.  The giant tucunare have surfaced to feed.  Panicked baitfish, some 20 inches long, desperately skip across the water's surface.  Three tremendous wakes follow in hot pursuit.  The stampede heads straight for Bennie's boat.  He flips his fly into the chaos and the water explodes where it lands.  One of the peacocks engulfs the streamer, then races away, dragging the canoe along like a toy boat.  Euodio paddles us over so we can get a good look at the fish.  The tucunare surfaces like a green crocodile with the 4/0 bucktail looking insignificant in its huge mouth.  The fish doesn't even know its hooked.
    Suddenly two others appear out of nowhere and attack the hooked fish, trying to get at the protruding fly.  Water shoots 10 feet in all directions.  I quickly cast my fly toward the shock wave, while Euodio struggles to steady us.  A tucunare pounces on the fly and races toward a fallen tree.  Line peels off my reel and the fish instantly snaps my 50-pound tippet under a submerged log.  Bennie's fish stays out in open water, making several deep, powerful runs before coming to the boat.  It surfaces as if to get a good look at its antagonist and then boils off again, easily towing the boat another 100 yards or so before stopping.  After 15 minutes of struggle, the fish finally comes up on its side.  Bennie carefully tails the giant tucunare and gently lays it on the gunwale of the dugout.
      The fish is one of the largest tucunare I've ever seen.  I lay my tape measure across it.  Thirty seven inches.  My scale says 24 pounds exactly.  Bennie carefully lifts it up, places it in the water, and rocks it back and forth.  Euodio shrieks in protest.  With a powerful sweep of its tail the fish disappears into the depths.
    Bennie glances up and his smile suddenly disappears.  A curtain of rain is bearing down on us like a biblical catastrophe.  We must return to the plane immediately or there will be no way out.  We race back to the plane.  The wind has already started to pick up.  Luis hastily pays Euodio with an assortment of flies, lures, hooks, and fishing line, which has more value to him than money.
    Bennie taxis us out into the main river, full power, flaps down.  He crosses himself and we roar up over the canopy, circling around once to wave goodbye to Euodio and his family.  The river slips from sight behind the first layer of clouds.  Rain blasting the windshield, we are enshrouded in a nightmarish wall of water.  With any luck we'll be back in Manaus before nightfall.  I sit back, close my eyes, and think about Bennie's monstrous tucunare.  The psychedelic fish has captured my soul.