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.