Our Concept of a Premier Fishing Trip

River Plate opened Brazil’s Peacock Bass fishing to the public in 1992 and has been providing the finest Peacock Bass fishing trips available since then.  As late as 2000 there were fewer than a handful of operators offering trips for this hard fighting member of the “African Cichlid family of fish.  Since then the interest in Peacock Bass fishing has exploded and today there are several fixed lodges operating on the upper Rio Negro watershed and  over 50  mother boats handling as many as 30 fishermen per day, each plying the Rio Negro out of Barcelos, the hub of the modern day Peacock Bass fishing industry.  As these mother boats draw 4 - 8 feet of water, they are restricted primarily to the main Rio Negro Channels within a 100 mile radius of Barcelos.  This means there can be as many as 100 - 150 bass boats on these waters in a given day during the fishing season.  Some of these operators have tried to compensate for the limited mobility of their mother boats by equipping their guides with heavy, large high powered bass boats which allow them to run 30 - 60 minutes from the mother boats to reach their prime fishing areas.  This limits fishing time plus the ability to get into select backwater lakes and lagoons.

Twenty years ago Luis Brown, founder of River Plate foresaw the escalating problem of excessive fishing pressure on the easily accessible waters of the main Rio Negro and the mouths of its tributaries and initiated a plan to provide River Plate anglers with opportunities to fish the upper reaches of the Rio Madiera & Rio Branco tributaries that would be inaccessible to the mother boat and lodge operations of Brazil’s northern fishery, the upper Rio Negro and the southern fishery of the Rio Madeira watershed.  To accomplish this goal, Luis Brown invented the concept of linking floating cabins and support cabins in a “River Train” that allowed them to fish the remote, unpressured waters of the upper regions of the main river tributaries.  Drawing only 4” of water, the “River Train” concept allows River Plate to move their comfortable, air conditioned Safari Camps several times a week allowing fishermen to fish uncounted miles of backwater lakes and lagoons as well as the tributaries themselves in a weeks fishing.
​

Mobility & Limited Fishing Pressure

Our Private Lands Offering Exclusive Fishing Privileges

River Plate has gone a step further to ensure our anglers enjoy the  finest Peacock Bass fishing experience in    the Amazon by negotiating exclusive fishing entry permits from over 12 Indian Reservations located in both the  northern and southern fisheries.  These permits are enforced by the villagers of those particular rivers and several times they have brought in anglers from competing fishing operations that violated these exclusive entry areas and  escorted them off   these private entry waters. The compensation given to the indigenous Indian villages have included electrical generators, satellite systems that have allowed the villages to acquire online communications and online  learning centers for the indigenous peoples of the remote Amazon, as well as promoting cottage industries such as lure manufacture  providing additional compensation from River Plate fishing  operations.

These exclusive fishing privileges have allowed River Plate to manage the amount of fishing pressure on a given fishing area, greatly enhancing the numbers and quality of Peacock Bass available to their anglers.  The villagers have discontinued spearing & netting Peacocks for their own use and one village recently voted to refrain from targeting Peacock Bass for subsistence helping River Plate’s overall management of the resource.
​

 Enjoy shore lunch during the week