| The Amazon basin and its surrounding drainage is home to about 3000 freshwater fish species, almost a third of all the freshwater fish species that exist in the entire world. The aquarium trade has long found some its most beautiful, interesting and exotic specimens here. This extraordinary aquatic biodiversity has also created the richest freshwater sport fishery in existence. What the aquarist has long known, the sportfisherman is just now discovering. The adventurous angler will find no harder fighting or more exciting gamefish anywhere in the world. Amazonian fish species evolved from an ancient line of groups that were already established over 200 million years ago (they have changed little since this time). The most commonly accepted theory regarding these Amazon species is that their precursors evolved during a period when what is now South America, Africa, southern Asia and Australia were a single continent called Gondwanaland. Upon the separation of these continents, these mutual ancestors then evolved independently. Today, although the history of this relationship between the Amazonian, African and Australian fishes remains evident, their modern descendents have speciated into thousands of endemic varieties. The majority of Amazonian gamefish belong to three large groups (Orders): the catfishes (Siluriformes); the characins, including dorado, payara and pirapitinga (Characiformes) and the cichlids including the king of all freshwater gamefish, the peacock bass (Perciformes). Several fish families from other orders also contribute to the Amazon’s gamefish variety such as the osteoglossidae (the aruana and the immense pirarucú), as well as groups with salt-water origins such as the sardinata (apapá), and the pescada (corvina), a freshwater drum. The list of Amazonian freshwater gamefish is as extensive and exotic as the land itself. |
New Zealand Game Fishing Re...
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