The funny thing about fishing for dorado is that it’s addictive. After my first experience chasing these incredible fish nine months ago, I was already looking for a way to get back to Bolivia—preferably without spending quite as much money.  That’s when I discovered Angling Frontiers’ Expedition Casare, a relatively new dorado fly-fishing camp located in the same watershed as Untamed Angling’s Pluma Lodge, roughly 100 miles away. Casare is definitely more primitive than the top-shelf accommodations at Pluma, but it also costs nearly $3,000 less.

Booking through Fishing with Larry, the entire trip—including hotels, transfers, and the charter flight into the jungle—came to approximately $5,700, compared with about $7,600 for Pluma Lodge. And since my Bolivian visa was good for five years, I didn’t need much convincing. The opportunity to return to the jungle and chase dorado again less than a year after my first trip was simply too good to pass up.  Neither did Steve, my fishing partner. He wasn’t the least bit intimidated by the prospect of camping, roughing it a little, or the primitive accommodations we expected.  We were going back to Bolivia.

Casare sits deep in the Bolivian Amazon, in what truly feels like one of the last great wilderness areas left on the planet. It is so isolated that at night I never saw the lights of a single commercial airplane passing overhead. Getting there is considerably more difficult than reaching Pluma Lodge. From Santa Cruz, it takes about three hours by small plane to reach the jungle airstrip at Fatima, near the village of Cuchisama. Because the river was low during our trip, the closest place the boats could reach was still about a mile from the airstrip.

When we landed, we were met by our fishing guide, Matt Wilderman from Chicago, and about a dozen Tsimani. They loaded our heavy bags and a week’s worth of supplies onto their backs, and together we hiked through the jungle, crossed a river, and eventually reached the boats. We stopped for lunch while everything was loaded for the long journey upstream.

The main Casare camp is about 37 miles upriver, on the Pachene River near its confluence with the Maniqui. Casare is the native name for the Maniqui River, and the indigenous people who inhabit this region are the Tsimani.  Those 37 miles can take five to seven hours by boat. Because travel is entirely dependent on river conditions and daylight, the crew comes prepared to camp along the river both going in and coming out. If you can’t make camp before dark, you simply stop wherever you are and spend the night.  It’s a long boat ride, but there is plenty to see along the way—and this is Bolivia, so naturally we stopped at a couple of rapids and caught some dorado.

At times, motoring deeper and deeper into the jungle felt like being in the river scenes from Apocalypse Now. Along the banks, families and groups of children would come running down to the water and stare as we passed. We must have looked like aliens arriving from another world. In a place with virtually no technology, I joked that the river was their HDTV—and watching a couple of strange fly fishermen motor past was primetime entertainment.

We camped along the river our first night. It had taken until nearly 3:00 p.m. to fly the previous four guests out and get Steve and me loaded and underway, so reaching Casare before dark wasn’t possible.  “Camping,” however, turned out to be a pretty loose description. The guides erected a spacious tent with cots for us, along with a dining tent, an enclosed latrine with an actual toilet seat, a shower, and a campfire. For being in the middle of the Bolivian jungle, it was surprisingly comfortable. More importantly, it felt safe and secure.

The main Casare camp was still a work in progress when we visited. Owned solely by Patrick Taendler and Federico Marancenbaum of Angling Frontiers, the camp consisted of spacious safari-style tents and accommodated a maximum of only four anglers. Pluma, by comparison, could accommodate as many as eight.

For me, that smaller capacity is one of Casare’s greatest advantages: fewer anglers means more water to fish.    And having 24 local Tsimani staff taking care of four fishermen isn’t exactly roughing it.  I can’t say enough about the kindness and hospitality of the entire staff. Despite being literally in the middle of nowhere, we had clean bathrooms, spacious single-occupancy tents, freshly recharged Goal Zero power units in each tent, laundry service, and very good food. Steve actually thought the food was better than Pluma.

Because we booked during the June/July off-season, Steve and I were the only two anglers in camp.  That made the off-season an incredible bargain.

According to Patrick, the dorado fishing remains fairly consistent throughout the season. The real variables are rain and the cold south winds. Either one can put the brakes on the fishing, but those conditions can occur at any time—even during prime season, as we discovered on our previous trip to Pluma.

The downside of the off-season is simply greater weather unpredictability. But when the weather cooperates, there is every possibility of having spectacular fishing—with fewer anglers and at considerably less cost.

The Water Beyond Casare

The real beauty of this region is its pristine rivers, particularly the crystal-clear blue water flowing through the Casare system.  One tributary that especially fascinated me was the Meneche River, which joins the system just above camp. Patrick described it as a narrow, boulder-filled river with shallow rapids where huge trophy-sized golden dorado ambush schools of sabalo. I caught just enough of a glimpse of that kind of fishing to know I wanted more.

Fishing it properly, however, requires considerable hiking, stamina, and endurance. Steve and I decided to pass on it during this trip. It’s one of those decisions that gives you another reason to return. Someday I’d love to go back specifically to explore that water.  And dorado are hardly the only attraction.

There are giant surubí catfish, yatorana, pacu, and smaller silver dorado—more than enough species to keep you occupied when the golden dorado aren’t cooperating. I even spent some downtime practicing with my newly acquired Tsimani bow and arrows, learning one of the basic lessons of bow fishing: because of the refraction of light through water, you have to aim lower than where the fish appears to be.

But perhaps the thing that fascinated me most was the feeling that we had barely scratched the surface of what lives in these rivers.  At lunch we’d toss banana peels or nutshells into the water, and unidentified fish would rise from below to eat them. Half the time we had no idea what they were.   That’s what stayed with me about Casare. You weren’t simply fishing a remote river.  You were fishing a place that still felt largely unexplored.

On our second day in camp, we were hit with cold south winds and rain. I fished through the rain at the Home Runs without much luck, although surprisingly the river remained clear throughout the day. Patrick explained that the real problem wasn’t necessarily the rain—it was the cold south wind. The front cooled the water, and when the water temperature drops, the dorado simply don’t feed as aggressively. Over the next four days the river gradually became a little muddier and cooler, but even under those conditions we each averaged about five good shots at dorado per day and landed roughly two fish apiece. Patrick called that “a less than stellar day.” I looked at it a little differently. The worst day of dorado fishing in Bolivia was still about as good as a great day of striper fishing back home, especially considering that the average dorado we were catching weighed more than 20 pounds.

One day Steve decided to stay in camp, so I invited Matt to fish with me. I insisted that we simply go fishing together—no guiding—and it turned out to be one of the best learning experiences of the trip. I learned more about dorado fishing that day just watching where Matt chose to cast than I could ever have picked up by chance on my own. Certain patterns quickly became obvious. Dorado like the tail ends of pools just before the water breaks into rapids. They like the deeper shoreline edges alongside whitewater, and they especially like deep pools bordering shallow rocky flats—places Patrick calls “ambush points.” The dorado will often sit there waiting for schools of sabalo to relax before attacking. It’s almost like watching a lion hunt. The predator waits patiently until its prey lets down its guard, and then suddenly everything explodes.

My most memorable fish of the trip came from exactly that kind of water. Patrick had taught me to wade slowly and quietly, stopping frequently to observe the water before moving again. He is an incredibly stealthy fisherman and definitely reaps the rewards. I was creeping through perhaps six inches of water when I accidentally spooked a small school of sabalo hiding among the rocks. The baitfish shot out of the shallows and into the deeper water bordering a fast-moving run. I stopped and watched as the sabalo moved together in a tight school. Suddenly they stopped and scattered in every direction. Coming out of the fast whitewater behind them were three dorado, each around 20 pounds, charging at full speed and trying to drive the school back against the rocks. Everything happened in seconds, and I had only a split second to make the cast.

Fortunately, my stripping basket had kept the fly line organized and ready to go. I managed to get enough line out quickly and dropped the fly directly in front of the lead dorado. The fly barely touched the water before it was crushed. The other two dorado continued following the hooked fish as I fought it all the way in, and I’m convinced that if another angler had been standing next to me with a rod ready, we could easily have hooked another one. It was one of those moments that perfectly demonstrated what makes golden dorado fishing so addictive. You stalk the water quietly, find the bait, watch these enormous predators suddenly materialize out of the whitewater, make one good cast—and then the entire river seems to erupt.

My favorite fly for the week was a heavily weighted yellow Andino Deceiver. I actually trimmed the deer hair a little shorter at streamside to help the fly sink more quickly. Most of the time I fished either a sink-tip or intermediate line, although I kept a second rod rigged with a floating line and caught fish with it in the shallows as well. Steve did particularly well using a Teeny T-300 to dredge some of the deeper holes. For leaders, I used 40-pound wire and 40-pound Seaguar Blue Label fluorocarbon connected with Albright knots. I did manage to lose one complete fly line during the trip, which was a painful reminder of just how unforgiving these fish and this water can be. On some of the muddier days I also experimented with Pulse Discs and had some success with them. For this type of fishing, I would recommend lightweight 8- and 9-weight rods that are comfortable and easy to cast all day. You’re throwing large flies repeatedly, often while wading, and after several hours a light, efficient rod makes a huge difference.

I had also come prepared—and was anxious—to do some serious topwater fishing. Unfortunately, the cold front pretty much killed that opportunity. I had brought plenty of Pole Dancers and was dying to watch a big dorado explode on one, but it just wasn’t going to happen under those conditions. That’s fishing. Sometimes the river dictates the game and you have to play the hand you’re dealt. So all those Pole Dancers stayed in the fly box. Looks like they’ll just have to wait for Rio Marié in September.

It’s always interesting traveling and fishing in the Amazon because you never quite know what kind of birds, animals, insects—or other strange creatures—you are going to encounter. While landing one large dorado, I was holding the fish in shallow, slow-moving water over a rocky bottom when I noticed a small catfish had actually swum into its gills. It was a candiru, one of the Amazon’s notorious little parasitic catfish. Candiru normally parasitize other fish, entering their gills and feeding on blood, somewhat like an aquatic leech. They’re also infamous for the much more disturbing story that they can swim into the urethra of a person urinating in the river. Whether all the legends surrounding them are true or not, seeing one disappear into the gills of a dorado I was holding was enough for me. I quickly grabbed my pliers, removed the little parasite before it could do any more damage, and from that point forward I checked every dorado we landed for those nasty things.

Patrick also taught me that releasing dorado requires a somewhat different approach than I’m accustomed to with trout. With a trout, I’ve always tried to keep the fish submerged as much as possible while removing the hook and preparing for a photograph. Here, Patrick wanted us to avoid leaving an exhausted dorado sitting in shallow, slow-moving water where it could be vulnerable to parasites. Instead, we did our “hook dentistry” and photographs quickly, preferably while positioned near faster-moving water, and then released the fish directly into good current where it could recover and swim away strongly. It was another little lesson in how different fishing in the Amazon can be from fishing back home. Everything down here seems to have something else waiting to eat it, bite it, sting it, or suck its blood. And after my introduction to the candiru, I added one more rule to my list for fishing the Bolivian jungle: for God’s sake, don’t bathe naked in the river.

One morning, the Tsimani shot an armadillo, and by that evening it had made the remarkably short trip from the jungle to our dinner table. I have to admit I was a little apprehensive about eating an animal that comes with its own body armor, especially since I vaguely remembered hearing something about armadillos carrying leprosy. On the other hand, it looked surprisingly good—tender and juicy, somewhere between chicken and pork loin—and everyone else seemed considerably less concerned about it than I was. Curiosity and hunger eventually won out, so I tried some. Seasoned with nothing more than salt, it was actually delicious. The only problem was presentation. I just couldn’t get used to seeing the claw still hanging out of the shell while I was eating, so despite how good it tasted, I limited myself to a small portion. You have to admire the design, though. An armadillo basically cooks in its own shell, sealing in all the heat and juices. It’s nature’s version of canned food—although apparently nobody bothered to remove the can before serving.

The facilities at Casare were primitive, but I had arrived prepared for considerably worse, so everything seemed almost luxurious by comparison. The tent cabins were spacious, dry, and clean, and even the lack of hot water in the showers wasn’t much of a hardship. After a long, hot day of throwing giant flies in the jungle, a cold shower was actually pretty refreshing, and after a few days I started to look forward to it. The camp water shut off at 10 p.m., however, and one night I arrived back too late. Fortunately, the Amazon provided its own plumbing. It was absolutely pouring, so I stripped down and stood beneath the runoff from my tent’s tarp gutter, taking a shower in the pounding rain in total darkness. It was probably the best shower of the trip: unlimited water pressure, no waiting, completely environmentally friendly, and best of all, no candiru in the clouds.

Tico, the camp chef, was a pro and somehow managed to turn out excellent meals every night despite being in the middle of nowhere. Dinner was mostly South American fare, and the food was consistently very good. Most of it arrived on the plane with us, although occasionally local fruits and meats found their way onto the menu. After the armadillo, I learned that “locally sourced” can have a slightly different meaning in the Amazon. There was always plenty of bottled water and alcohol available—the two beverages you really don’t want to run out of in the jungle—and lunches on the river were usually sandwiches or quesadillas. They were simple, but after fishing hard for several hours they tasted great. I personally didn’t see much reason to waste prime fishing time sitting around eating lunch. Whenever the boat stopped, I fished, and when we started motoring to the next run, I ate. It seemed like a perfectly efficient system. You can eat a sandwich almost anywhere. You can’t catch a 20-pound golden dorado almost anywhere.

Google Photo Album

Golden Dorado are fantastic fish. They have the ability to detect microscopic hydraulic pressure changes with their adipose fins which they use to hunt fleeing or nervous sablo. How they detect a stripped fly in white water going downstream is amazing. Things I learned on this trip : Big Dorado like long strong strips much like Stripers and not wussy little trout streamer strips. They need to be as long and sharp as your arm can take. This is hard to do if you are trying to get your line in a stripping basket. Also, I learned to be prepared to strike as soon as the fly hits. Most of the fish I caught and filmed hit the fly within the first three strips. It was  rare to catch them at the bottom of the swing vs the beginning. I learned not to fish one spot more than three casts and to cover as much water as possible with accurate cast right to the shoreline. Finally, I learned to cover every inch of skin on your body if you dont want to get bit by insects which includes two gloves and socks to cover the skin between shoes and pants.

The Mavic Pro Drone worked flawlessly in the jungle. The first day I used it to get a low riverbed shot, a river eagle came out of the jungle and tried to attack it. The Tsimani thought that was pretty entertaining. One way to start a party in the jungle is to fly a drone. I bet they hadn’t seen an eagle back down from a fight like that before. the eagles wing touched the prop and it lost a feather in the encounter. It flew off and watched for the rest of the afternoon. I had a feeling it knew I was controlling it and that I was next. I received the new DJI Spark three days too late to test it on this trip but it looks great. Its smaller and easier to deploy than the Mavic, but it is limited to 1080p vs 4K for the Mavic.

Drone Shots and more pics