OUR GUIDES
When booking a peacock bass fishing trip with Amazon Fishing Adventures, you can expect comfortable accommodations, tasty meals and quality fishing boats. However, we believe it is our superb guide staff that has resulted in such a high percentage of repeat guest bookings, season after season, to our operation. The majority of our talented guides are referred to as caboclos - a person of mixed Brazilian Indian and European ancestry. All of our energetic, hard-working guides grew up in communities, villages or small towns along a tributary of the Amazon river. Although Amazon Fishing Adventures guides average five years of experience with American anglers, as well as other anglers from throughout the globe, they each possess a lifetime of knowledge about the Amazon watershed, intimately know the numerous fish species that reside in these waters, and are experts on the wildlife and flora of the Amazon rain forest. Each of our guides learned to paddle a canoe at a very early age, using the various lakes and rivers in close proximity to their villages and towns as their childhood playground.
Many started their professional fishing careers as young teenagers, collecting tropical fish for the aquarium industry from backwater lagoons. Eventually, the “cream of the crop” of these young men progressed to full-time sportfishing guides because of their intimate knowledge of this vast watershed and their understanding of the various fish species that abound in the Amazon. They understand the peacock bass and its many haunts and hiding places, often taking their guest anglers to their secret lakes and lagoons, many of which are actually now named for the guides that discovered them. All of the guides have had training in first-aid, mechanics and boat handling.
One of the finest compliments ever bestowed to our guides recently came from one of our clients – Doug Youngblood, a former Bassmasters Classic competitor and a full-time professional guide of some 20 years on Lake Lanier, Georgia – who was simply astounded at what our guides would do for their guest anglers. It was Doug’s first trip with us and one of the few times in his fishing life where he felt he did not have to do the guiding.
“I couldn’t believe my eyes when, in the course of just one day on the water, I saw our guide cut trees with his machete that lay toppled across a narrow creek that blocked our access to one of his private lagoons; then watch him climb a tree to retrieve a badly cast lure and then nervously sat in the boat as I observed him dive in the water to un-snag a trophy peacock we had caught that became entangled in a tree some five feet below the surface,” said Doug. “I have never seen any guides, any where, any time, work so hard to make sure their clients are happy. And that’s just not one or two of the guides I fished with – that’s every one of them."
Many of our guides have taken the initiative to study English during our off-season. While some have grasped the English language better than others, all communicate in “fishing English,” and there will be no language barrier when it comes to them directing you on what to fish, where to fish and other dialogue throughout the day. Our guides are treated more as family as opposed to simply our employees. The guides appreciate this relationship and, in turn, treat our guest anglers as part of their Amazon family.
