Trip Report: Brazilian Amazon
Place: Agua Boa Lodge
Time: First week of November 2024, 7 days fishing, missed the election
Conditions: Dry season, low water, clear but slightly tannic, some lagoons very clear, some dark.
Weather: Hot - near the equator, what do you expect.
Fishing: Lodge is fly only, barbless, this is a good thing, trust me.
Species: Peacocks (spotted (paca), butterfly(?), three bar (temenis, tucanare)), Arapaima, Arowana, piranha, pacu, surubi catfish, red tail catfish, jacunda, oscars, bicuda, metricia, aracu, and a bunch of other stuff I forget the names of now.
Geolocation: M65F+VQ Água Boa, Boa Vista - State of Roraima, Brazil
GPS = 0°48’00.58"N, 61°39’35.06"W
0°48’00.6"N 61°39’35.1"W · 0.800167, -61.659750
Note: Use the locations above because Google Maps has a different place if you just search the name.
Trip Report from the Lodge: Week 2nd to 9 November 2024 – Agua Boa
Other: Giant caimans, lots of birds, giant river otters, stingrays, river dolphins.
Flights: FLL redeye to Manaus, jungle plane to the lodge, arrive around 10:00 AM. Return was a harder route due to Azul changing the departure time of the direct from MAO to FLL. This section I would rework next time.
The Crew: Eight people. Me, Scott Hamilton, Butch Constable, Kyle from Southern Drifters Outfitters, Clint, Cris, Dave, Mark and one other guest was at the lodge on his own, Phil and this was his 17th year, amazing at almost 80 years old.
I was fortunate enough to visit Agua Boa Lodge last week. All I can say is that it surpassed all my hopes for the trip. Rewind to 2023. I had one of those milestone birthdays and a friend of mine, Captain Scott Hamilton, was organizing his fourth trip to Agua Boa. Scott raved about the experience and how you owe it to yourself to do it once if you can swing it. I grew up fishing Florida freshwater and vividly remember reading about giant Peacock bass in BASS Magazine and then watching Larry Dahlberg fish for them on ESPN.
Let’s get to the fishing. Other info is below.
First let me set up the fishing. We are in semi-v jon boats with 30hp stroke Mercurys on them as the season moves along they switch to jet drives. 17 feet and the captain is poling with a heavy ass aluminum push pole with a wood point. It has to be 20 lbs. We sightfished 90% of the time but if you wanted to blind cast no doubt would have added more fish and possibly bigger. The top water bite for big fish was not great across the groups. No problem with 5lb or under fish though.
Day 1 - Captain Lucas - Downriver shortish runs 30 minutes or less.
Arrival at the lodge. Eat Breakfast and go fishing. Scott and I were paired up all week but if so desired you could move around but you run the risk of fishing the same beat more than once. We left around 11:30 for a ride down river to walk to a lagoon. BOOM right into the jungle. Guide Lucas hands me a machete and chuckles and says this is for the anacondas and jaguars, LFG! Scott and I heard something really odd and we asked Lucas if that was a jaguar? He chuckled and said no. But it was not a confident chuckle… Realistically the machete was for chopping a path if needed. We were the third week for the season and some lagoons still have not been fished since last year and we may need to chainsaw or hack into them. Highlight was an 11lb threebar that quickly took the skin off my thumb. Why? Because I stupidly lipped that fish. I was prepared to wrap my fingers so quickly added that and my Ace Hardware silicon tarpon gloves to my pocket. Lesson learned quickly. If you tried to bare hand everything all week you will get scraped up. I used the tape that only sticks to itself that is silicon based, used for sprains usually.
Day 2: Captain Prieto - second longest run upriver ~ 1 hour.
The rumor at the lodge is that “big fish” live upriver. We capitalized and I got my second biggest three bar of the trip at 11lbs. We also got a few spotted peacocks that were close to 10lb and these fish are brutes. Personally I think the spotted are the hardest fighting ones. We go into probably the prettiest lagoon of the trip. We are idling up a creek and it looks like we come to a big tree downed completely across the creek. I am thinking that sucks. Then Prieto turns to the left and there is a creek only barely wider than the boat and about 3 inches deep. Away we go. We enter a clearish water lagoon and have a great morning. I capped it off with a 10 lb arowana. The picture sucks unfortunately but it was awesome after pulling the hook on one earlier in the day and blowing a cast on two big ones in the river.
Day 3: Captain Caboclo - closest run upriver
At this point everyone is waking up early. Sunrise is like 5:45AM. We are up getting coffee and ready to roll. You know you have a big fish on when the guides come down off the poling platform. Scott got an 11lb spotted and I got a 14lb three bar. The guides weigh these on Bogas. I received a compliment from Caboclo that I was a good fisherman.
Day 4 Captain Daniel - short run up river - Big fish, no problem, let him run
Roll out to an early start. We immediately park the boat and start walking to a lagoon. We load up the boat and push away and immediately like three groups of 6 otters start barking at us AND Arapaima are rolling. I get a big black Lemay Tarpon Snake tied on and ready. As fast as I can do that Captain Danial says get ready. I strip off and get ready and a big fish rolls in shallow water and I can see him, classic tarpon shot, couple of false casts get the fly in there, fish surges, long strip and come tight. HERE WE GO. Big arapaima on the line, takes off and we get him on the reel. 11 minutes later we have a 140-150 pound arapaima in hand. It is 7:45AM and we can go in. I mean we can go back to FLL!
Day 5 Joseph up river, longest run ~ 2 hours
Joseph likes to fish for big fish. And Scott got a nice 15-16 lb threebar that day. Personal highlight for me was a surubi catfish, 30-35 inches long and it is a very fast fish. They are long and sleek with a fantastic paint job. I got line burns through my finger wraps on this one. The interesting thing is we say quite a few of these and they mostly ignore our flies completely. This one saw the fly and chased it down like a predator. I saw the biggest peacock of the trip for me up here. It was a 20lb beast of a fish that was holding in a creek between lagoons with two other upper teens fish. It looked like a big grouper. No way to get a cast as we were in a tunnel. It rained around 2:00 which felt great bad news as it moved south and we caught up to it and got soaked with about a 20 minute run in the rain.
Day 6 - Bacaba - down river, relatively close 30 minutes
Hacked our way up a creek to a lagoon and caught some nice fish. We could not get the red-tails to eat the fly. Great day of sight fishing the lagoons and the sand bar flats in the river. Scott used his 1wt most of the day and landed several peacocks over 5 lbs on the 1wt. We sight-fished the bars extensively and had good fishing. This required good casts, do not line the fish they will still run. I made a great presentation to two mid-teens fish that were cruising the bar, led them by a long way and got a hard refusal. Keeps you humble.
Day 7 - Buiu down river close-ish
We walked to a lagoon first thing. We lost a couple of big fish and then caught around 60-75 fish, a majority were butterfly peacocks and with some spotted and a few three bars. This was mostly blind casting as the cloud cover moved in and this lagoon was cloudy. Scott said this lagoon was crystal clear last year and he thinks there were 20,000 fish in that lagoon. I threw some half hearted casts at arapaima but blind casting and dredging is not my idea of fun. We got rained on and the lightning chased us off. The storm passed and we decided we had enough and chilled out. The rest of the day. Scott and I caught 10lb fish from the dock and bluff and Butch caught a monster 15 lb threebar from the bluff that required assistance from the dock.
Pre-trip prep. Tying flies, realistically you need 3 dozen flies. I had more but actually only used 10-20 flies. I tied a lot of flies from EP Fibers and Peacocks teeth are really hard on those flies. In retrospect I should have tied more of Capt Scott’s Eat Me Fly. I traveled with three rods, 7wt floating line, 8wt sink tip - this was my primary rod, 9wt for big poppers. I had my Tibors but you could absolutely use a decent freshwater reel. Scott used his Behemoths. I also followed the lodge list of items exactly and it was spot on. I would buy a Yeti backpack or similar waterproof backpack in hindsight as we did get rained on twice.
