Butterfly Peacock prefer still waters or slow moving waters like those from the Amazon and Orinoco watersheds especially lagoons.

 

Important Note: They’ll avoid fast moving water and moderately fast moving water including torrents.

Where to catch Peacock Bass – what you need to know

You’ll find Butterfly Peacock bass

  1. among fallen timber when in deep water, or
  2. along the edges of waterways where timber has fallen.

Unlike other bass, the butterfly peacock bass enjoys the sun and it’s essential for their reproduction. The sun helps them grow and increases their metabolism. This is no surprise as the butterfly peacock bass is not actually a bass at all and is not a member of the sunfish family.

 

In fact, and we can’t stress this point enough. All the other bass we cover on this site hide from the sun.

  • The butterfly peacock bass feed at dusk and dawn and the peacocks are slow and lethargic when the sun is down. They’re not active night feeders and don’t reproduce unless the sun is out.

They’re often found together in schools, but it’s uncommon to land many fish from one school. They tend to scatter from the noise made reeling one of them in. They don’t stay in one particular school, but tend to wander from one to another frequently.

 

Read more about fishing in deep water for Butterfly Peacock Bass on this link

Fishing Technique to Try

  • One technique for keeping the bass around is to swim a hooked peacock alongside the boat while another angler attempts to catch those that follow the hooked fish.

With the rainy season comes an increase in the water level which floods many areas and causes the fish to disperse. Heavy rain makes fishing all but difficult and the scattered fish are hard to fish with sonar devices being rendered ineffective from all the debris.

  • Therefore, the dry season helps concentrate the fish, making it easier to catch them in lagoons.

Tourism

Butterfly Peacock Bass fishing is big business which attracts tourists from around the world because of it’s reputation as a huge fish and being a ferocious fighting fish. All told, it’s estimated that the fishing industry built around them amounts to billions of dollars annually.

 

The Butterfly Peacock is not limited to the Amazon river catchment. They’ve been introduced to the United States, Syria, India, Sri Lanka, Madagascar and Iran to name a few places.

Environmental Effects

Unfortunately there’s a downside to every good story.

 

These fish are huge and have a large appetite. In their natural habitat there is an abundance of food but in many of the introduced locations, food is not as plentiful and their eating habits have put strains on the local wildlife.