Dave Goldberg has enjoyed some spectacular fishing in his life. Brook trout on Ontario’s Sutton River. Fly-casting for brown trout in New Zealand. King mackerel at Isla Contoy off Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula.
None of those adventures matched his first trip for peacock bass on Venezuela’s remote Pasimoni River nearly 20 years ago, Goldberg said.
“The most anticipated trip I’ve ever taken was my first trip for peacock bass,” said Duluth’s Goldberg. “That was back when it wasn’t all that popular.”
Peacock bass can grow to nearly 30 pounds. They fight with unbridled fury. They’ve become a highly sought species among globetrotting anglers, many of whom pursue them in South America’s Rio Negro, a tributary of the Amazon. The world record for speckled peacock bass is 29 pounds, 1 ounce.
Goldberg, fit and wiry at age 80, is an avid angler who flies his own Cessna 206 and owns a cabin on a fly-in Ontario lake. That first peacock bass trip - he has made several since - was memorable in part for the logistics of getting to the Pasimoni River, whose waters eventually join those of the Rio Negro.
“We flew into Caracas (Venezuela),” Goldberg said. “Then we flew into a city on the Colombia border. We took (Cessna) 206s to the Rio Negro. Then we took a wheel plane into a small village on the Rio Negro River.”
They weren’t there yet.
“They loaded us into big canoes,” Goldberg continued. “There were two guides and four of us (anglers) in each canoe.”
They motored upriver into first one small river and eventually up the Pasimoni River, getting out to wade sandbars at points where the river was too shallow for easy passage. The parties entered Colombian waters in one stretch, where they made the border crossing after offering cigarettes to the Colombian border guards. When the group arrived at its destination, there was no village, just a thatched-roof hut for meals.
“We slept in hammocks with netting over them,” Goldberg said. “We were only the second or third group to go in there.”
A big rainstorm hit the area one night.
“Huge - I mean huge - toads came out of the jungle everywhere,” Goldberg said. “Probably six inches long. You couldn’t walk in the forest at night because there were toads everywhere.”
Oh, the fishing? Terrific, Goldberg said.
“We primarily fished topwater (lures),” Goldberg said. “We also used some Rapala-type lures to cast for them. By the time we caught a few, they had chewed up the back ends of the lures.”
The anglers caught fish mostly in lagoons off the main river. In some places, they had to hack through overhanging trees with machetes to gain access to the lagoons, Goldberg said. They caught speckled peacock bass up to 26 pounds, close to the world record. The group spent six days on the river.
“Catching a peacock bass - the explosion is hard to describe,” Goldberg said. “When they come up and smash that thing on the surface, water explodes 20 or 30 feet in every direction. Right away, they take off running for the trees or debris. You have to have pretty stiff drag to stop them. We were using 50-pound test.”
His son caught an 18-pounder and a 21-pounder on a fly rod.
Beyond the fishing, the jungle wildlife kept the anglers on their toes.
“We saw a number of caiman (aquatic reptiles like alligators),” Goldberg said, “one big anaconda, a number of freshwater dolphins. We heard howler monkeys but never saw them. You don’t feel in jeopardy with the wildlife. They don’t want any part of us, either.”
Goldberg has since made trips for peacock bass to the Rio Negro, where he has stayed in lodges or on yachts, fishing from bass boats. About 10 days ago, he was off on another fishing trip - to Brazil, for peacock bass.
