Hello to All!
It's a pleasure for me to join a forum on fishing for the first time ever! Please allow me to talk a little bit about myself: I live in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and enjoy fishing more than pretty much anything (well, not everything...). Brazil has very large and diverse water resources, ranging from the monster fishes from the rivers up north in Amazon, to trout fishing in the extreme south. In between there's the Pantanal (a flooding plain area the size of Texas) and an extense shore of 5.000 miles... so you can imagine how easy it is to become a recreational fisherman here.
Here in Brazil, I have been working in an American company in the Clinical research business for the past 2 years. Now, I'm finally going to have the plasure of visiting the company Headquarters... guess where? Yes, ladies and gentleman, in RTP !
A colleague from the RTP office told me I could find good information in the NCAngler (I don't know his user name here), so I have been reading around for a couple days now. I actually now can say that I think he is right. So I decided to stop being shy and step forward.
Interesting fact: the Black Bass, which is native from North America, was introduced in Brazil in 1978, in lakes created from the flooding of huge areas after the construction of dams. 20 year ago, the largest was 21cm (about 8.5"), 10 years ago, the record was 34cm (1'2")... now, the brazilian record is of 49cm (1'5")!!! The Black bass is thriving over here and becoming a star of recreational fishing! Regularly caught size is around 1' to 1'2".
I already apologize for such a long message... but that's how anglers are here in Brazil: they talk a lot! and when they have nothing else to talk about, they start to lie about the size of the fish they caught...
)
Well, let's get back to the visit to RTP. I'll be staying in a hotel half a mile from the Raleigh-Durham Airport, during the first week of August/2008. Having that in mind, I'd like to ask for tips from anyone that knows that area on 2 topics:
- First one is about shopping for fishing tackle. I have visited a Bass Pro Shop store many years ago, and still today I think of it as my personal Disneyland. However, I have looked up the NC store in their website, and found out that it is not quite nearby Raleigh... So, my question is: Is it worth to go there? Is Bass Pro Shop really the heaven I imagine? Or are there other options much closer to my location just as good as Bass Pro Shop? In case there are other options, I'd appreciate suggestions, specially of stores known for good deals.
- Second topic is about fishing sites. I saw in Google Earth that there are many lakes nearby RDU Airport... however, even as good as the resolution of the images from Google Earth is, unfortunatelly, they don't show the fishes in the lakes p I'll have a weekend for fishing, so I'd really love to hear feedback from you for planning the fishing of this weekend. Places to fish, rules, license, species are basically the info I was looking for, but any extras will surely be welcome.
To close out this message, I'd like to ask you to feel free to contact me if you are thinking about a trip to Brazil, or even if you're just curious about anything. I'll be very glad to respond.
Thank you all in advance and have a nice evening!
Peacock