Words: Sam Lungren
Photos: Jesse Males
The words caught in my throat: “…jaguar…” I wheezed under the outboard thrum.
The rest of our crew and clients were still facing back upstream as we headed down, hollering supportive trash-talk to April Vokey and Jesse Males working and filming the fast water around a mid-river rock formation for the violent yet stubborn payara—vampire fish as they’re appropriately known. I turned my head downstream as we came around the bend to see an oddly symmetrical lump on the sandbar.
Terry Haynes—Rewa Native, head guide, jungle warrior—saw it too. As we both pointed and gasped the lump rose into a 100-pound wildcat, turning and trotting back into the abysmal Amazon Rainforest, rosette flank undulating over cables of muscle. It was gone before anyone could so much as unsheathe their cellphone. I reached up to notice my eyes were wet.
Such splendor lurks around riverbends down here. From points north to Miami to Georgetown, Guyana’s capital, to Lethem on the Brazilian border by prop plane, then by van four hours to the village, before another five by boat to basecamp. We were descending back to base from the spike camp and the Corona Waterfall another three and six hours respectively upriver, to within 3 degrees of latitude from the Equator.
Payara and pacu, piranha and peacock. Petroglyphs guard the base of the falls, speaking of the wildcats and wild men residing there. We hear the uncontacted tribe sometimes, those “shadow people” the Amerindian guides speak of, whistling like birds from back in the rainforest. Exciting though the angling, few are not ready to leave the cascades after the day’s session. It’s spooky knowing that wild men might be watching.
Everyone is ready to return to the big arena, to go one more round with the pugilist we came to test our strength and gear against: Arapaima gigas.
Jesse had one break 100-pound-test fluorocarbon. The guides called that fish a 400-pounder easy. April nearly lost a rod on the take of another 8-foot monstrosity. The laconic power exploding into surface walks on those red-flecked dragon tails, the armor-plated skull, the impenetrable serpent eyes—a fish that breathes air should be singular in more ways than one.
After too-numerous thrown hooks—even in reach of the guide swimming to capture—I was finally able to hoist a large one before the cinema camera and Jesse Males’ skilled eye behind it. It took three of us to lift the fish, a feat on its own given that April had just stubbed her toes full of large thorns.
My twelfth leadered or landed member of the largest freshwater fish species on Earth that possesses conventional fish scales. Some sturgeons and rays grow larger, but that certainly doesn’t make arapaima any less astonishing. Terry estimated that one around 360 pounds—shockingly large yet strangely well short of its full growth potential. A fly angler may break the 500-pound mark here someday. I don’t exactly envy that task.
Hours after the jaguar as we twitched Wiggle Minnows before cruising arowana, I asked Dimas how many such cats he’d seen in his lifetime in the rainforest.
“Six, now,” he replied. I turned to Terry.
“That was seventeen,” he said.
No one loses count of their number of jaguars spotted—or arapaima brought to hand.
Make sure to watch the film Jesse created, “Shadow People at the Falls,” in the Fly Fishing Film Tour (F3T) this winter—caught and brought to you by Winston and Bauer Fly Reels.
Recommended Gear for Guyana Arapaima:
