far out fishing
the travel blog for faroutfishingtrips.com (and other spiffy fishing stories)
Archive for August, 2009
August 31, 2009 at 7:02 am · Filed under Bolivia Fishing
guys,
i’m headed back to the Bolivian jungle for 5 weeks to host a couple groups of anglers in the new exciting destination, Tsimane Lodge. if you want to book a trip during prime time for 2010, please EMAIL ME asap!! (link is in the upper left corner)
here is part 3 of our scouting trip in June. i’ve got lots of more interesting photos that i will share with you at a later date, but i know people were wanting to see some big fish, so here are a couple of them. we caught countless fish in the 10-20 pound range, lots in the 20-30 pound range and a few in the 30+. pictured here is Felipe Morales with a nice fish in the 34 pound range (??), Mike Nelson with an average fish (not his biggest), but you can see the beautiful clear small stream from which it came (and many much bigger)…also, here is a monster fish of mine that is pictured above and below in a different view.
this was my last fish of the trip, a view from above, courtesy of Mike Nelson. this fish was very close to 40 pounds, but i will call it 38 just to be on the safe side. look at the girth across his back (and his belly in the photo set above), i could barely lift him out of the water. an absolute monster.
ok, i’m off to bed, going to Bolivia tomorrow. cheers. (photos © Joey Lin and Mike Nelson, 2009)
August 25, 2009 at 6:10 am · Filed under Bolivia Fishing
here are some photos from one of the ‘undiscovered’ rivers in the region. a few of the Tsimane’s had been up this river before, but we think we were the first outsiders to fly fish this stream ever. we spent only 2 nights here. it was a bit difficult to get the canoes up the river as it was quite small in places, so we decided to leave our gear at a base camp and go up with lighter loads.
what we ended up seeing was quite amazing. the river ran probably no more than about 80 cfs at the most, but the clear pools (3-5 feet in most places, but some very deep) were absolutely loaded with fish. every curve in the river and every pool we entered contained many yatorana’s, a few schools of dorado in the 10-20+ pounds, schools of big pacu in the 10-20+ pound range, huge striped catfish (called surubi’s) in the 20-30 pound range, thousands of sabalos everywhere.
every beach had at least 1 if not 2 sets of jaguar prints, along with tarpir and jochi footprints. none of us could believe what we were seeing, the place was absolutely full of wildlife, and totally virgin, not a single footprint or evidence of man. Noel had commented that this was one of the best fishing experiences of his life. we all imagined that it must have been exactly like this a thousand years ago.
we spent 2 days going up and down this river, exploring about 8 miles, sustaining ourselves with plenty of beef jerky that Mike Nelson brought from Montana. there were several of us, too many really for this size and clarity of the water, so we took turns catching dorado and sight casting to large pacu. pacu are a permit-like fish that eat fruit and are challenging to catch on a fly, but fight super hard when hooked and are absolutely delicious to eat. both Felipe and Stahl got some pacu in the 14 pound range. one of the biggest dorado landed was a 24 pounder by Rodrigo, but we had seen some fish well over 30 pounds in some of the deeper pools. (photos © Joey Lin, 2009). cheers.
August 17, 2009 at 7:49 am · Filed under Bolivia Fishing
here is part 1 of my 2-week trip in June to the Isiboro Secure National Park and Indigenous Territory. this trip was first and foremost a scouting mission to see what these rivers fished like at that time of year and explore a couple “new” rivers . we were also there to check on the progress of the construction of the new lodges for the new fishing program called Tsimane, named after the indigenous people who live in this area.
i was accompanied by my long-time friends Noel Pollak, Felipe Morales and new friend Rodrigo Salles of Untamed Angling who are deeply involved in the launching of this amazing new program. Joining me was my good friend Stahl Urban from Austin, Texas and Mike Nelson of Bozeman, Montana who came to do some video work.
we hopped in a couple of Cessna planes that took us to the community of Asunta, a small village right in the heart of the Yungas, the forested eastern slope of the Andes. the scenery was quite breathtaking on the approach to the small landing strip cut in the lush jungle. upon arrival, we were immediately greeted by the friendly natives (referred to as Tsimane) who took us and all of our gear past their huts down to the river where we loaded up into dug-out canoes. the Tsimanes have few visitors and are really isolated from more modern civilization, but were quite happy and curious to see us.
after a brief visit and dropping off of supplies we brought for them, we proceeded up the Rio Secure to the location of the first lodge with some hired hands (local men of the village) in their dug-out canoes.
the next couple of days found us dilly-dallying around as Noel, Felipe and Rodrigo were monitoring the construction. we found time to venture upstream into the mountains and fished the clear waters of this freestone stream which normally hold huge quantities of dorados later in the year. we caught a few dorado and saw a few in the 20 pound range, but we determined that the fish hadn’t arrived in full numbers from their seasonal migration upstream. also, a recent cold front and rain had shut down the activity, so we decided to head downstream and not waste any more time, as we had plenty of water to cover down below.
the rest of the journey had us covering many more miles and several other pieces of water. the further we went, the more dorados (and bigger) we encountered. here is Felipe with a fish about 28 pounds and Stahl with one around 15. more to come later!!…(photos © Joey Lin, 2009)
