Karanambo
KARANAMBO, Guyana - THE pilot circled the red dirt landing strip and dropped the 12-seater Cessna Caravan. Below, the green cauliflower knobs of the hilly forest belt had suddenly given way to the lime-smooth fuzz of southern Guyana's Rupununi savannahs. Eleven passengers were headed for Lethem, the next stop, on the Brazilian border. In the back, a lone American on a murder mission gathered his yellow rucksack, his sun hat and the featherweight fishing rod loaned him by Herald GM Gary Rudy. He was there for one reason: To kill the storied peacock bass, Amazonia's prized sport fish, known locally as lucunani. After eight weeks toiling in tropical America without a rod in his hand, he was more than ready. It was 7:30 a.m and already, the tropical sun showed no mercy. Outside, Diane McTurk, the gaunt and weathered, 70-something mistress of Karanambo Ranch, had come to collect him in Guyana's most disreputable Land Rover. The windshield was gone. The windows, too. The body looked like it had stood out in a meteor shower. He threw his things in the back and got in. The Amerindian driver Kenneth, rigged up the passenger door with a string. "Goodo!" said the jaunty McTurk. "I understand you like to fish?" "Came to fish," the American said. They set out on the one-lane track toward the ranch compound, where McTurk has been taking in wildlife watchers and fishermen for 15 years, since she inherited Guyana's second largest spread - 125 square miles - from her pioneer father, Tiny McTurk. The savannah spread out in a dry season tableaux of stumpy sandpaper trees and sunburned grasses. Every once in a while, a skin and bones steer poked its head out of the rough, like one of those pop-up targets in a pinball game. "We've got 1 500 head." McTurk shouted over the hacking engine. "Per square mile?" "No altogether," she laughed. "I'm afraid this is not very rich land for ranching. That's why we started taking tourists at Karanambo. We always had guests when I was a girl anyway. It's the only thing we know how to do here. During the rainy season when the river floods, we collect guests with the boat. Of course, we don't have many guests during the rainy season. You wouldn't want tourists all year round, would you?" "Some places would," the American said. After a big ranch breakfast of cold cereal, scrambled eggs and sausage, coffee and Guyana's unique baked goods, tennis rolls, which look - and taste - like a tennis ball, McTurk went off to care for the giant river otters she shares her life with. People bring her injured otters to rehabilitate and she has devoted many years to preserving endangered otters in the shrinking wildlands of southern Guyana. The American was turned over to Karanambo fishing guide, Pip Hiscocks. A native Guyanese who makes his living as a heavy farm machinery operator in England during the ploughing season, Hiscocks comes home for several months of uninterrupted angling during the season. After a short fuel-siphoning ceremony, they took off in the ranch's metal skiff, adequately powered by a Yamaha 25 and more than adequately provided with a thermos of Ms McTurk's patented rum punch made with Guyana's famous Demerara Rum and fresh mango juice from her own mango trees. Macuxi Indian Lorindo took the bow to watch for snags and ward off caimans, while his teenaged son, Mikey piloted in the back. They headed up the muddy Rupununi River, narrowing since the rains flagged in January. At the flood stage, the river carried off huge trees and everything else. Both banks displayed the recent season's flotsam, trees sprawling like pickup sticks, dead trees stuck high in the crotch of living trees. It appeared, from the bared sand bluffs, the river was down at least 15 feet. You couldn't tell how far the river flooded during the rainy season. Guyana's savannahs meet Brazil's savannahs, deep in the floodplains of the Amazon Basin. The flood waters don't care about political borders. The lucunani are said to have reached Guyana in recent times, borne on the Amazonian flood waters. "Fishing gets better as the dry season goes along," said Pip. "When the river floods, they go into the bush after bait fish and you never find them. We'll try the usual hotspots first - the Simooni ponds, where the river widens out." He rigged up for trolling the banks with a boat rod and spinning reel loaded with stout 14-pound test. At the end was a homemade steel leader and a bright metal spoon with a single hook like a gaff. "For the piri - local name for piranha," Pip explained, "You get fed up with them ruining hooks. There's one piri has two big teeth protruding from its lower jaw curving up to its eyes. Like a wild boar. They bend hooks straight with their teeth. They'll cut through your line. I hate losing lures." The American, equipped only with the featherweight rod and four-pound line, began felling distinctly whimpy. But he tossed out a delicate Finnish-made lure called the Rattlin' Rapala. And soon, a peacock bass came calling. It wasn't the world's record lucunani, it just felt like it. It didn't fight like a barracuda, it just felt like that, too, on the ultra light tackle. The lemon yellow fish made one leap to free his mouth of the hook. The American recognised the distinctive colouration from photographs. "Point your rod tip!' said Pip. "Keep the tension on, Try not to let him get into the trees on the bank or you'll lose him." It was a good fight. Not really a fair fight, of course. But it went on for several minutes before the American brought a two-pound lucunani, about 16 inches long, to the boat side. He laid it down in the bottom of the boat to admire. It had two distinctive eyespots, one near the dorsal fin and the other on the tail, with green-black centres surrounded by bright yellow rims - like a peacock's tail, thus the name peacock bass. Though the species is not really a bass, but a cyclid, according to Pip. Its belly shone flaming orange. The eyes were red. He had never caught such a colourful fish - a fish worthy of Matisse or Miro. The mouth, cavernous, contained no real teeth. During spawning season, Pip said, lucunani get very protective. They will bite anything they think threatens their nest. He's caught them on lures bigger than the fish itself. When the young are born, the parent fish carry the fry in their mouths. It seemed almost a shame to take away such a handsome fish. Although there are no legal size or catch limits for peacock bass in Guyana, the American decided to limit himself to two keepers for the ranch table. By lunch time he'd had his fill. You couldn't stay in that sun much longer anyhow. Later in the afternoon, while the fish were being prepared as fried fingers, he joined McTurk for a boat ride and watched some of the wildlife of the Rupununi. Along the banks, long-legged jaburu storks and tri-coloured herons jabbed their dagger beaks for prey. Big black caimans lazed, only their empty eyes and armoured snouts above the surface. An osprey flapping along, with a fish grasped firmly in its talons, reminded him of his home fishing grounds in Cape May County. On the bank, a Macuxi Indian family had made their camp. They salted down their catch and dried them on clotheslines stretched between trees. "There used to be many more Amerindians fishing this river," McTurk told him. "Then, there was the El Nino drought and last year, someone hired local men to use gill nets across the river. They supplied them with a boat and engine and ice chests. After a month, there weren't any fish left." "Any way, to protect the river?" "Kill the people," McTurk said deadpan. Before dusk, they found an otter holt along the river bank. The young ones scurried up the slide and escaped into the rustling bush. The growing adults swam swiftly downriver, trying to lead the human intruders away from the holt. They didn't know one of the humans was their best friend. At dusk, a musky odour announced the arrival of the fishing bats. They coursed only a few inches over the water, ready to dig their hooks into any fish they hear with their super sensitive ears. All fishers great and small, he thought, living in rough harmony with each other and the Rupununi. "Have another rum punch," said McTurk on the ride back. "A shame to waste it. Have a biscuit with it?" He remembered an Amerindian he'd met elsewhere in Guyana who said, "Me no want money. But money she become necessity now." And he wondered how the Rupununi could survive the men who hire others and provide them with nets, motorboats, ice chests. Next day, something smacked his lure. He didn't have to set the hook. The line leaped off the tiny reel. There was no way the weak drag was going to stop it. The fish headed straight, straight, straight for the fallen brush along the bank. It went where it wanted to go, and it wanted to go deeper and tangle up the line in the snags, and shake loose of the lure, so that's what it did. That monster is still enjoying life in the Rupununi. It's got Gary Rudy's name on it.
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