WHERE FISH REALLY BITE; AMAZON BECOMING ATTRACTIVE TO ANGLERS.

Byline: Ken Schultz New York Times News Service

The guide Ejio slipped over the side of our aluminum boat into piranha-inhabited waters in what was beginning to be a common occurrence. For the fourth time that day, the lure of my companion, Yutaca Honda, was stuck about 8 feet below the surface on a flooded bush.

Ejio grabbed Yutaca's line and submerged. His red shorts vanished, followed by the white bottoms of his paddling feet. A moment later his black hair surfaced and Ejio came up with the lure and a grin. The grin was for my sake, because he was aware that I found his act astonishing. Especially since we just caught a 3-pound piranha nearby.

That piranha was in a well underneath my seat, destined to be a gift to a local family. When Ejio boosted himself back into the boat with the smoothness of a gymnast mounting a pommel horse, I sat down and the piranha thrashed a bit in the well. ``Nah,'' I thought, ``it can't bite through metal.''

Ejio grabbed his hand-carved paddle and moved the boat forward, then spotted something. He started the motor and rushed toward a spot in the dense flooded timber where tucunare are pummeling baitfish, creating a frenzy of splashes and swirls. I cast into the melee and got a strike so violent that the rod was nearly pulled from my hand.

A big yellow and black tucunare vaulted into the air, streaked for the bushes, darted at the boat, and rocketed two feet out of the water just a paddle's length away. Then Yutaca hooked a fish. We landed and released the savage battlers, and in 10 minutes caught several more and lost nearly as many.

Then the curtain dropped and all was quiet. Unseen birds made strange calls from the dense jungle. In the distance a shirtless man paddled a dugout canoe. Here, at midday in the Brazilian state of Para, 1 degree south of the equator, the heat and humidity were relentless; Ejio's clothes were soaked from his swim, mine from perspiration.

There are many ferocious, explosive and attractive fish in these waters, but tucunare, known as peacock bass, capture the most attention from American anglers, who are increasingly being welcomed in the Amazon, particularly here in Para, the second-largest state in Brazil.

Para has yet to develop its sportfishery, but it's larger neighbor, Amazonas, already is well established with several operators running houseboats for up to 20 anglers per week for three to four months, all to the tune of about $3,500 per week. In a country where 80 percent of the people do not have a telephone, this is a welcome event.

It is also welcome to the energetic commander of the new enterprise that employs Ejio, Jean-Pierre Schwartz. The 34-year-old Schwartz came to Brazil from Geneva, Switzerland, 17 years ago and eventually settled near the heart of the Amazon in Santarem.

This frontier has been a constant adventure to the enterprising Schwartz, who speaks six languages, outfits jungle explorations and leads ecotours. He has traded with Indians, worked in a gold mine, provided logistical support for several Hollywood movies, including ``Medicine Man,'' and met not only their stars, but also Michael Jackson, Mick Jagger and Jacques Cousteau.

Schwartz has leased a 65-foot houseboat for traveling far up the Nhumanda and Trombetas Rivers, both Mississippi-sized tributaries to the Amazon. Schwartz will need his linguistic skills, energy and charm to succeed in an area ripe for sportfishing but with little know-how and infrastructure, and where some of the best angling waters are off limits or too flooded most of the year.

One of the latter is the Trombetas Biological Reserve, strictly controlled by the Brazilian federal parks agency (IBAMA), which Schwartz has asked for permission to start a pilot catch-and-release angling program. This, bureaucracies being what they are, will be difficult.

Another place until recently off limits is Abui Lake, where Ejio went swimming. The day before, Schwartz visited the chief of the local community for permission to take anglers there in motorboats.

Previously, the chief had threatened to shoot unwelcome people who went to Abui, which was recently made part of a national park. But he was swayed by Schwartz, perhaps in part because he gave food, money and motor oil to a family with two sick children who were facing a 14-hour trip in a small boat to medical care.

The chief accompanied one of Schwartz's fishing clients to see what this business of using rod, reel and artificial lures was about. And also to observe a phenomenon he could not understand. When told that all of the anglers would catch tucunare and let them go unharmed, the chief was puzzled. ``Why would they do that?'' he said.

Which is exactly what crossed my mind when Ejio swam in piranha water to free a hook.

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Drawing: (color) no caption (Piranha)

John Gerung / Daily News