Fishing in Big Rivers

We went down off the foothills of the Andes to the closest fishing river that can be reached by road from Cochabamba. Puerto Villorreol on the Ichilo River. Here is a skipper of a fishing boat holding a piranha they caught, most likely with a gillnet. We think we have problems with seals...how would you like to mend a net piranhas have been working on for a while. They come in to eat the fish in the net and shred the mesh.
I have been working with the conservation organization, Faunagua, on a book they would like to publish on the commercially important fish of Bolivia. Most of which are caught on the big rivers which are the headwaters of the Amazon. They needed more photos for the book in addition to the illustrations I've done for them, so we headed down to Puerto Villorroel to take photos. We wanted to be there on the day before Good Friday because everybody eats fish on the Easter weekend here and the price of fish doubles. So any good fisherman is going to schedule his trip to end on thursday or friday to take advantage of the increased market and price. So the number of boat deliveries promised to be high. Tom, Maggie and I had fun. Franny was on the beach in Chile with a friend at the time. It took a little courage to approach the fishermen and ask for photos, but after we showed them photos of fishing in Alaska they usually warmed up and were willing to show us thier gear and talk a bit. We hired the guy with the prianha to take us out in his "skiff" or canoe for an hour, which was great. We went swimming in the very murky but warm river. Trying not to think about pirahnas.