Rio Marié 2019 Season Fishing Report Opening Week!

Opening Week!

The 2019 season marks the sixth season at Rio Marié, and we have some exciting news to share with you.

We just ended the scouting week with our guide team, and the first week of the season officially launched on August 22. This is the earliest we’ve started a season at Rio Marié since the beginning of the project. For many years the Rio Marié native guides, who are very experienced local fishermen and hunters, have described very good water and fishing conditions at the headwaters of the river from mid-August on.

Since the 2016 season, we have made several scouting trips during August, and after three years, we agree with our friends in the Amazon, which is why we decided to open our 2019 season in mid-August instead of early September.

Why start in August?

As you may know, planning an early and late season fishing trip at any destination in the Amazon can be risky. Water levels in the Amazon, especially in the Rio Negro Basin, normally aren’t predictable, and we at Untamed Angling always avoid extending the season at any of our jungle destinations if we are not certain we will have the conditions needed to operate with good chances of success. For that reason, we studied the fishing conditions in August for three consecutive seasons with several scouting trips in conjunction with the Brazilian Environmental Agency (IBAMA) and Indigenous Institution (FUNAI) as well as by our guide staff and biologist. The results drove us to launch our 2019 season earlier than previous years.

The water levels we experienced at the headwaters during the early season were very good, and even with some fluctuation, the fish were very active, which is the most important thing. The peacock bass spend lot of time in the flooded jungle during the high water part of the season (April to July), and when the water starts to drop and get back into the river channel for the first time at the headwaters, the fish come in and get really hungry.

This year we fished this scouting week prior to guests arriving, and the fishing was an absolute blast.

With just a couple of days of scouting and training, we had some amazing action on lower sections of the Rio Marié, which normally aren’t the best stretches for that time of the season. In August and September, the headwaters are normally the best areas, since they get drier sooner and the water gets lower there first. Imagine we are in a system of more than 700 miles of water, so there’s generally a lot of water to cover.

And among the many highlights from the trip, on our last day of the scouting trip, just two skiffs landed nice fish over 15 pounds! We also landed a monster of 22.5 pounds. This fish was 86 centimeters with a 65 centimeter girth!Simply incredible.

This year also marks our first year of an official tagging program for the Temensis species on the Rio Marié. The Temensis Project is the very first long-term tagging program for the giant speckled peacock bass (Chicla Temensis) in a fully protected river in the Amazon. We will tag 1,000 Temensis this season, and the goal is to have 8,000 to 10,000 fish tagged in five years.

We invite all of you to follow our season and tagging program news on social media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter). We are thrilled to have another sold out season.

For those who are dreaming about catching the peacock bass of a lifetime, we are booking the Rio Marié 2020 season now.

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