Fishing in Guyana
Posted by Pam Arnsberger on Jul 21, 2016
July 21, 2016
Announcements and Reminders
Doug Deaver announced: (1) That we have two articles in this week’s Aptos Times; (2) The faux debunking for Al is on Aug 11th at the Yacht Club; (3) Next Thursday the district governor will be here with his wife. They will be the program next week.
Keith announced that we received thank you notes from several of our community grant recipients including the Volunteer Center, Save our Shores, and the Kids Foundation.
Pam Goodman introduced Sam Bishop our speaker for the day, pictured above with his wife, Elena. He is a member of the Santa Cruz Rotary Club, an adventurer, and a world traveler. He presented a slide show about Monsters of Guyana or rescuing the world’s largest scaled freshwater fish.
He began by showing us the very long rod and very large fly he used. The trip was in February in Guyana which is on the north coast of South America. The group spent two solid days on the river before they could begin fishing past Rewa village on Bamboo Creek. It was very remote and they only saw one other couple on the whole trip. It is a conservation area to preserve rare fish among them the Arapaima.
They caught swordfish, red tail catfish (which was huge), peacock bass, a colorful and aggressive fish, an erewhana and a piara with two huge tusk-like teeth in the bottom of his jaw. There also saw many beautiful butterflies and a weird turtle called a mata mata. Piranhas and caymen were all over but unlike what we see on television, they don’t bother people.
Arapaima are huge and hard to locate once the water is disturbed, but the team did manage to catch two of them (catch and release). It is the world’s largest scaled fresh water fish. Working with the local people they also managed to rescue sixteen of these fish using nets. The local people tag and measure them and then release them into the river.