Red Herrings up the Marmellos

The Amazon system is so vast that its difficult to comprehend. So I suppose its logical to expect that one could easily end up in some fruitless backwater, miles away from where the action is. In our case we passed through Manaus without knowing that what we were looking for was right under our noses!

Having got our big Arampima, we set off in search of big Red Tail Catfish and Jau, and we'd been told that the upper Marmellos was the place. Dropping down onto the river in a seaplane, it looked nice enough, flocks of Red Macaws, and dense jungle verging fairly clear river water. On disembarking we were met by a blanket of humidity and a barrage of sand flies, no-see-ums, wasps, bees and other jungle bugs that need their own flight plan.

What transpired was a bit of a nighmare. The nice fishing camp that we were to stay at had a double booking, so we were ejected into the jungle for four days, catching our own food and sleeping on the edge of the river. Needless to say, the scars from the insect bites as I write this are still itching. We did spend a few nights with baitlines out for big Catfish, but with no luck. If the lines went in too early, the Piranah would attack the bait, and waiting until 8pm was a safe bet to get your bait to the bottom of the river. This was fruitless, we caught one Tiger Catfish of about 8 pounds, hardly a megafish!