Setnetters of the Amazon

Joao Cardoso da Silva is particularly strong and agile for a man of 77 years. Or 72. Depending on when I asked him, he reported his age differently. No matter, because what he does daily is a feat for any age. He has broad shoulders, a thin white moustache lining his upper lip, a slight underbite, and an omnipresent smile. Joao married Maria Santana Soares, and together they have nine children, 37 grandchildren, and many others who consider them avós (grandparents). One of their sons, Antonio Marco, 29, is of slight build but every sinewy ounce that he does have is of pure muscle. Antonio has three children to an earlier marriage but now lives with an older woman, Josa, who has five children of her own and now cares for two of her grandchildren. Joao and Antonio are my fishing partners. More correctly, Joao and Antonio are fishing partners, and I am the gringo whose name is impossible to pronounce who alternately helps then gets in the way, and seems to say "Wow!" every other paddle stroke.

In truth, neither Joao nor Antonio ever let on that I was in any way a burden. Although my thinly-veiled spanish rarely bridged to full communication with their particular breed of Portuguese tongue, Antonio quickly took initiative and decided to call me "Joe" (due to my many odd statements like "Yo no sé", or "Yo no lo entendí"…), and then gave me warning of potentially exciting upcoming events by exclaiming "Wow!", in a hilarious animated voice.

This particular day I was lying in my hammock in the da Silva household, doing a very poor job at patiently waiting for Antonio to wake up from a nap, so that we could head up into the upper lakes to fish for a few days. Up to this point we had been fishing every day, but had based ourselves out of the house. The usual schedule was to set the nets after the midday heat, around 3pm, to pick the nets just after dark, around 8pm, and then to pick the nets and bring them in for the day around daybreak. When rainstorms interrupted a date with the fishing grounds, it was shifted or skipped. This seemed a fairly relaxed schedule from my ignorant, excited perspective; I wanted to be out fishing the entire day, or for days at a time, watching the family catch heaps of fish for market. I was excited to get away from Maria Santana`s generous but overly-frequent coffee breaks. (Her only other experience with foreigners was a Japanese man years back who, upon visiting the family, became terrified of getting sick from the local food or water. According to lore, he ate only crackers and drank only sugary coffee. Maria then concluded that all Japanese-her word for foreigners- must have an insatiable thirst for sweet coffee.) Any local could probably have explained the clear logic and wisdom in fishing these hours and in this way. (Picking fish after their peak movement, before Jacaré are most active, then in the morning, after another period of fish activity but before the rainstorms moved the tetris board and locked the nets between huge blocks of vegetation.) I was just anxious to go to the lakes and fish, and didn´t- never will- have Joao´s cool patience.

What of all this setting and picking nonsense, and for those of you who know the trade, how do they do it in the Amazon? Well, a setnet is a gillnet (in which fish try to pass through, get tangled, and drown) with both ends fixed to something unmoving. Joao and Antonio were using monofilament gillnet with "holes" in the web about four inches on the diagonal; the entire net fishes about six feet deep. The current being slight in the area they fish, they used nothing but the weight of the monofilament or nylon to sink the bottom of the net. The top of the net is buoyed by pieces of styrofoam about the size of a deck of cards, simply wedged onto the line. Either end of the net is fixed either to a stick pushed into the muddy bottom, or tied to a handful of reeds. This is it- very simple, low-cost, and, with luck and skill, very effective. Depending on where they are, Joao and Antonio either set the net to span an opening of a serpentine, or they weave it along the floating mat at the edge of the open water, hoping to catch fish going to or coming from the sheltered waters. All this father and son did together without more than a few gestures and a word or two, spoken just louder than a whisper. It is spectacular to watch.

To the lakes! The afternoon and evening activities quickly explained for Antonio`s groggy behavior in the morning. Without fanfare father and son loaded two canoes- one with power and Joao`s smaller 4-meter boat in tow. Three tarps, one mosquito screen, one kettle, three plates, three spoons, coffee, maize farina (the ubiquitous food source of Brasil- cooked, ground corn, which is used heavily as a dressing on any and every meal), salt. Long pants and shirt for the bugs. Boots for the woods. All the nets, ice to keep fish, a couple of spears, and two large nails, bent in the shape of hooks, sharpened, and attached to stout cord- Jacaré hooks, I was told. We were off!

The trip up to the lakes was memorable, and is the tight, twisty, overhung waterway that you might imagine when thinking of the Amazon. Small fish jumping made the water´s surface look like it does during a light rain. Vines dangled to the water, and many of the trees boasted bonafide thorns, inches long. Once onto the lake, storks and black-headed vultures were the yin and yang of the sky, the chorus of insects and birds same from all directions, and the da Silvas went to work.

After setting, we set up camp in the dark. This involved making a lean-to from the biggest tarp, stringing the mosquito screen underneath, and laying the other two tarps as a groundsheet. All the while Antonio was teasing me about getting carried off by monkeys. I told him I was more afraid of the snakes, especially having only sandals. He had a great laugh over this, saying that there were snakes all over, and yes, they were mostly poisonous,. Almost as if he set it there as a prop, he suddenly hopped back grabbed a stick, and beat the ground right under his feet, killing a four-foot snake. Still in sandals and with a dying flashlight, I didn´t find this as funny as he did.

Still alive after tiptoeing around in a half-hearted attempt to help set up camp, I was glad to dive under the mosquito mesh for the night. Across the lake a tribe of monkeys roared like a jet engine, and the deep echoless forest gave birth to every sound, screech, and cry imaginable. These were the animal punctuations of the insect symphony, complete with the drone of all too many mosquito bagpipes. The noise was as intense as the heat.

In the middle of the night (probably only 9pm), I woke up to Joao unceremoniously getting geared up to go out. I followed suit, confused as to why they`d chose to work the nets with clouds of mosquitoes around them, and without natural light, but unwilling to miss out on the action. The bugs were fierce upon exit. Instead of the big slow mosquitoes of the north, these bugs are quick and pragmatic- they know their cause, and their metabolism is in full swing. They land and plunge for blood. On the water, the moon gave light to work and the bugs were considerably thinner. The lakes, being clearer than the Paraná, hold more of the smaller targeted species (visual feeders), and fewer catfish. The nets held a range of fish- tambací and others in the general morph of a sunfish, triera, which resembles a lake trout with steroid-infused teeth, and many strange little armor-plated fish that look like they`d never be limber enough to swim.

The first two triera were sacrificed for Jacaré bait, after Joao uncovered the lair of a large one. He did this by making an impressively foreign series of gutteral tones and finished with a sharp clap, just as we entered a new lake. He then waited, and from not far away, a very similar set of noises responded, and then a very large animal charged into the water. This was stunning and scary, sitting in a small canoe, freeboard of three inches, in an unknown dark. I have no idea what the sound effects in a Jacaré, but it seems to vault the dominant animal(s) in the vicinity into immediately reply and action. The reaction was as abrupt as a huge bull moose storming to a call in rut, and Joao knows how to call his Jacaré.

Once located, and with fresh bait, we paddled towards the crocodile zone, threaded the fish onto the modified nail-hooks, looped the cord over an overhanging and flexible branch, and then tied it securely to a large limb. The idea is to hang the fish so that just their tails dangle into the water, so that Jacaré see the fish, swallow it whole, and then are held near the tree because in their haste they also engorged a strangely shaped nail. Witnessing a strike with this kind of fishing would be sensational.

This trip to the lakes, the Jacaré avaded us, seeming to prefer live prey. And the moon, according to Antonio, allowed the fish to see and avoid the nets more than usual, so the catch was slim. We ate caldeira de peche, fish soup, every meal, with plenty of maize farina to add to it, and it was delicious. The snakes and monkeys left me alone, the bugs made mash out of me from the ankles down. I watched Joao work, shift, and pick his nets in an area he`s fished for 74 years (or perhaps 69), in an area which his father fished before that, and in an area that he doubtless showed to Antonio.

We left after three days with a meager 25 kilos of fish, comprised of a nice blend of species but of types only saleable for around $1 Real/kilogram (Brazilian currency, right now $1US is worth about $2R). A scant income for half a week´s work of two men. Neither seemed frustrated or disappointed. It seems that fishing here can be very pulsy (like everywhere), and that this trip, the fish had been sparse. While working the nets, Antonio had told me about the potential to catch a whole school of tucanaré (peacock bass) when they`re thick, or the holy grail of the Amazon- catching several huge piraracu. Growing as large as 120 kilograms, and worth a whopping $12R per kilogram, a single fish could value over $1200R- an astounding amount of money for a fisherman living this sort of low-overhead life. A single fish could yield enough to buy an engine, or almost an entire new canoe! The sushi-grade giant bluefin of the Amazon. As we worked net after net for fish destined for the family soup bowl, I had to wonder how often piraracu are a fisherman`s dream in these parts, and how often they become a reality. For the da Silvas, father and son, profit doesn`t seem to be a big priority. At least there`s always something to eat.