Have you ever bathed under a full moon in a piranha infested river where you have to shuffle your feet along in the sand to move the stingrays out of your way? Well now I have and it was a pretty amazing experience! When I mention to people that we are going to the country of Colombia to film a fishing show, there is usually a funny stare, a slight pause and then questions.
Our second week found us on plane out of Bogota to the small town of Puerto Carreno on the border of Venezuela. From here it was a short 4 hour drive through the savanna, across the Bita River on a ferry and then finally up a river in a small boat to our camp the Tomo River. This is a remote tent camp set up owned and operated by national Taekwondo champion Oskar Posada for about 4 months out of the year. The first day we landed an impressive 14 pound fish along with a handful of smaller peacocks getting the trip started right.
On day 3 we made an impressive journey upriver about 2 hours where we found ourselves in one of the largest lagoons we had been in yet. As we made our way around the corner of the first bay entering the second I made a monster cast that laid gently on the bank, so I could pull it off without making a splash actually the cast got away from me but it sounds better if I meant to do it about the third swipe with the rod a monster explosion erupted on my Timber Turbine.
I screamed like a little girl and set the hook out of pure reflex and the fight was on! This was definitely the biggest fish of the trip and he was making some enormous runs. As we played the fish side by side with the camera rolling being ever so careful to not get the fish tied up with each other my fish gave up first, the boga grip came out and the fish was mine. Andres was still playing his while I unhooked my beautiful specimen for the camera as his fish finally played out.
The rest of the day was equally amazing with Andres landing another 12 pounder and myself landing the biggest peacock of our trip at a monster 18 pounds! Throughout the entire trip we saw double digit fish chasing our lures along with two fish that looked over 20 pounds.
