The Big Thrashing - Kdu Magalhaes- Adventures/ENGLISH 48

THE BIG THRASHING
Kdu Magalhães: http://www.sportfishing-brazil.com/




A lot is being spoken about the first Peacock Bass World Tournament that occurred on the good ship Amazonian on the Rio Abacaxi, a tributary of the Rio Madeira watershed, from September 16th to 24th - 2006. And also about the huge “wallop’ the Gringo team gave us. The objective of this article is to try and analyze what defeated the Brazilian team and how. Of course, in our point of view, the fisherman that was better prepared for the battle won. He who knows better his tackle, his techniques and his physical abilities. For sure, luck helps, but in a series of various stages, the luck factor was well diluted!


Through the analysis of the classification tables, we can see that the points of the winning ‘doubles’ team were nearly equal to the sum of the rest of the points accumulated by the other next 3 teams. Through that we see that only one Brazilian ‘doubles’ team appeared in the first four winners out of a total of seven. In the individual winning places, the American/English teams reinforced the winning places. The 1st, 2nd and 4th places out of a total of 14 anglers were won by Gringos. Together the Gringos accumulated 562.000 points against the Brazilian’s 310.250. A total of another 55% plus.





So, but who were those Gringos? Professional fishermen from the Bass tournaments in the States? Amazonian guides? None of the above. Steve Townson, overall individual winner and double winner is an English garden landscaper living in Portugal. His double partner is Charles Hammontree who is married to a Venezuelan girl and lives in Venezuela, took 2nd individual place. Even the 3rd individual place winner, Luis ‘Luizão’ Arantes, could only amass less than ½ of the 2nd place winner’s points, thereby saving some grace for the Brazilian team. The 4th place went to 69-year-old Wayne Hockmayer, who invented the famous ‘Banjo Minnow’.



Now you must all be wondering: what happened? How could the grand masters of Peacock fishing, Lester Scalon, Flávio Talmelli, Marcio Mattos, take such a huge beating? And how come Flavio, although winning the ‘big fish’ trophy of the tournament, only came 6th overall?



My firm belief is that there is no Brazilian fisherman that, taking any of the Brazilian team’s place, could have beaten the Gringos that week. And even worse, with at least three of the Brazilian team members, in normal conditions, temp ºC etc, in my view were better than any of the Gringos and they still lost. And severely! Why? Reasons:


1. Better choice of lures. As only fish with 2 kilo and above being weighed, they fished with lighter gear, 7-foot rods, spinning reels and buck tail jigs. The total amount of lures and equipment weighed far less than ours.





2. Too much worry on trying for the big ones. With a minimum weight of 2 kg per fish, catching large quantities instead of just exclusively large fish is the way to accumulate points.


3. Focus on results. They didn’t share our ‘fixation’ for ‘top water’. Although saying that it is always fantastic to see, top water baits do not always add points to a competition.



4. Fishing positions in the boat. In the photo (left) you can see how the winning doubles fished. Side by side the whole day. One on the point of the boat casting over his left shoulder, and the other just behind or by the side, casting over his right. Every hour they would change positions. Sometimes using prop baits made by Charles but 90% of the time they used jigs made by Steve. 5. Physical fitness. I doubt that any other participant in the tournament were as fit as these two winners. Fishing three whole days non-stop in this way is no easy task. The conclusion is very simple. The one who planned well his methods, tackle and lures won the tournament. The rest is just tale.