Fishing Achievement of the Year

As you all know already Bud is quite the accomplished stingray catcher despite his blindness. I was going to say "one day about 2 months ago", then I looked at the calendar and realised it was exactly 2 months ago to this day...strange? Buddy went far above and beyond stingray catcher and made fishing achievement of the year. He also succeeded in dumbfounding every single person at Karanambu.

What did he do?

He caught and dragged up onto the sandbank an Arapaima!


biiiig!

Now for those of you who do not know what an Arapaima is, it is one of the largest fresh water fish in the world, it is a prehistoric fish. In Guyana it is protected and illegal to hunt without a licence (even then there are strict limits). For more details on it's massive length and weight check out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arapaima
Just to save you all the trouble of googling it, paste that address into your browser ;)

I was not down at the river with Buddy when he caught it (god I wish I had been there!), instead Girly came running up breathless telling us what had happened. I asked her to repeat what he'd caught about 3 times because I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Cameras were grabbed and everyone did a mad dash down to the river to see if the news was true...surely not!

Lo and behold it was indeed true. Buddy was there on the sandbank next to this huge fish making his possessive giant otter noises. Buddy very rarely makes that noise but in this case I think it was well justified!

Quick little vid of Buddy and the Arapaima...I'm not sure why I only took a few seconds worth? Shame on me it should've been longer!

Girly and Guy who were watching Buddy down at the river when he caught the Arapaima said that he caught it out in the lagoon and at first they thought all the thrashing and splashing was because he had run into a caiman. Thankfully that was not the case! Buddy had managed to grab a hold of the Arapaimas tail, catching and dragging it onto land, There were a few small puncture marks and rips right at the end of it's tail where Buddy had bitten it.


A good size comparison photo. Looking at it again I realise at this point in time he was actually eating out the eyeball . . .



Trying to find a purchase somewhere with his teeth so he can start eating. The Arapaima is seriously smooth and slick!



He finally found a place to hook his teeth into - under the gills...


The next trick was to get the Arapaima up to the compound...it took Guy and I to pick it up and carry it. As I mentioned, they are seriously slippery suckers, (no I didn't do 3 s' in a row on purpose!) Guy took the front and I took the back. Unforunately for me this ended up being really awkward because I am much taller than Guy so I had to walk in a half crouch because I knew if I stood up the fish would slip over the front of both our shoulders. I also picked up and carried the fish in the crook of my left arm because it was only 2 days after Philip ripped up my right hand. Cue making it even more awkward because my dominant and stronger arm is my right one! Good exercise haha

Once we had huffed and puffed and carried this fish up a slight slope for a few hundred metres, we put it down on the lawn so it could be weighed and measured. Everyone wanted to know how heavy and how long this beast of a fish was.

Any guesses...?


No?


Ok then spoil sports. The Arapaima weighed in at 38kg (80 pounds) and 5ft 2inches!!! That makes the fish as tall as Kait....ha ha! As good ol' wikipedia will tell you the fish can get up to twice that size but it's still huge. Especially when it was caught by an animal smaller than it. We think Buddy weighs 20-25kg and is probably similar length to the fish I guess, but don't forget a large section of that is his tail!

What a champion giant otter! Some of the staff contest that the fish was sick or the fish was caught in a net when he caught it. We'll never know, but I for one, am certainly not going to underestimate his strength and hunting ability!