Baitcasting (Fishing Tackle) - Fly Fishing

 

Like largemouth bass, peacocks often prefer “structure” of some sort. Rocks, fallen logs, points and sand bars are hiding places for baitfish, so this is where the peacocks will usually be lurking. Of course, you should always heed the guide’s recommendations on where to cast.

Peacocks usually roam about in small schools searching for baitfish, often bursting into a feeding frenzy. When this situation is encountered, get your lure of fly in front of the feeding fish as soon as possible. The sooner you can cast to them after they’ve been spotted, the better your chance of a hookup. Peacocks are greedy and highly competitive schooling fish. Always cast a free lure or fly right next to any hooked fish. Another peacock will almost always be close by (attracted by the commotion). If no strikes result, fish the surrounding area thoroughly.

 Novice peacock anglers tend to set the hook too fast when fishing topwater lures or files. Often peacocks will just slap at the lure to stunt it, then come back around and firmly grab it on the second pass. It’s hard to remember at first, but don’t set the hook on the strike. If you can’t see the plug or fly after about three seconds, drop your rod tip and set the hook as hard as you can. Big peacocks have very tough skin around their mouths and tend to grip the plug of fly firmly.

 If the fish doesn’t take the lure on the first strike, keep it moving. If you are patient, the fish will usually come up and hit the lure a second or third time. If he loses interest quickly cast a diving (subsurface) lure or fly. This often elicits another strike.

 Never try and “horse” a big peacock, and don’t underestimate his power. If a big fish is headed for structure, apply side pressure to the rod trying to “steer” the fish in another direction If you crank your drag down too tight, they’ll almost always snap the line, or pull off. If a fish does make it into cover, don’t give up. Always keep a high rod tip and a loose drag to absorb last minute runs.

 Lure or fly color doesn’t seem as important as lure shade. If it is bright out, use a light-colored lure/fly. Dark shades are more productive in low light conditions.

Some basic Lure guidelines to help you catch more fish

It is usually best to start out with a top-water lure. If the water is off color or there is a slight chop, a propeller-type top-water lure (like the 6-3/4" Big Game Wood Chopper) will attract the fish's attention. If the water is completely calm (and/or clear), it may be wise to try a more subtle top-water lure like a 4-1/2", 3/4 oz. Heddon 'Zara Spook'.

If the fish refuse to take top-water, switch to a subsurface lure. If the water is clear, lures WITHOUT a sound chamber (i.e. Cotton Cordell's 7", 1 oz. 'Red Fin') seem to be productive. If the water is off color, use a lure with a sound chamber (Bill Luis 3/4 oz. 'Mag-Trap', or 1-1/2 oz. 'Super-Trap')

In hot/bright light conditions a deep diving lure such as a Bill Luis 'Rattle Trap' (3/4 oz. 'Mag-Trap', or 1-1/2 oz. 'Super-Trap') may be your best choice.

A good supply of 1/2 oz. bucktails (tied on saltwater hooks) will illicit strikes from spawning fish which are not in the feeding mode. Try varying the retrieve until you start getting strikes.

 

Fly Fishing (Fishing Tackle)

In reality, there is not one but several techniques for each fish, according to various factors that are seasons, water levels, fishing places and local food. Also we recommend you to go to chapters devoted to species where each case is considered individually, even though there is constancy in the way to proceed. Flyfishing on this type of waters, is pure provocation fishing. It consists to arouse the agressivity of predators by offering suggestions or imitations of what constitue its habitual or casual menu, and going on to solicit it into his hiding or lurking-place.The fish is rarely marauding, with the exception of course of major species such as tarpon or arapaima, that beyond a certain size, dont know other predators than big Amazonia otters or caimans.

Of course we'll have to consider the multiples parameters that are water color, sunshine, temperature, factors sometimes combined with the influence of the tides in coastal zone. But all these datas are universal regardless of the latitudes in which we operate. A predator stays a predator whatever the place in the world where you stretch your fly line. Nothing looks more like a carnivorous lurking-place than an other carnivorous lurking-place. Dead woods, shoreline foliages, grass-beds, excavations in the bank, rocky caches, are common to all game fishes of the globe.

In Amazonian waters, predatory fish is very aggressive, probably more than anywhere else on the planet. Its attacks always occur in haste, because by leaving even during a flash of lighning its cache for so-called solitaries species, or temporarely abandonning the collective protection of its likes for so-called gregarious species, it's taking the risk, going to acomplish a predation, to become oneself the prey of an other specie, or of a larger congenery, because here as elsewhere, the canibalism is the rule. In brieve, survival stays in absolute immobility or mimesis.

So, each movement must go fastly. In this environment, any exceptional or abnormal behavior is automatically regulated by all sorts of cleaners and eliminators of the river which the piranhas are the most famous.This is indubitably what explains the reasons why a fast stripped fly generates more attacks than a slower stripped one with a feint hesitation, as in the case of flyfishing for pike or musky for example. We'll rarely assist to the spectacle of a carnivorous slowly following your imitation, before swallowing it, but almost always to flashy-attacks of fishes arose from nowhere. This is particularly true in acid and poor biogenic midst as the dark waters of the rio Negro basin, for example, where the low abundance of bait-fish, turn every fry swimming far away from its territory, an alimentary opportunity that must not be let slip away.

It's a methodic prospection of fishing posts and manifestations of fish activity at the surface. So, flyfishing becomes a real competitor of lure casting or spinning, with streamers and poppers whose actions, appearances, sizes and colours remain wobblers and stick-baits. Everywhere we can cast spinning lures, we also can flyfish, and reciprocaly.

So It's no uncommon to see a flyfisherman and a fisherman whith lures operating together on the same boat in a perfect osmosis.