SIX weeks in Brazil for anyone with an interest in fishing, seems like too good a chance to miss. The opportunities, like the country itself, stretch far and wide from striped peacock bass and giant catfish in many of the rivers of Amazonia to marlin, tuna, sword and sailfish in the Atlantic coastal waters to the south.

In many of the rivers which network the huge mountain ranges between the states of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, and up into Minas Gerais, trout were introduced during last century and have found the environment very much to their liking. Sounds tempting?

Very. But my Brazilian odyssey fell into the category of road trip with family, as opposed to fishing trip with chums and although I did get on very close terms with dozens of tropical marine species including swimming with greenback turtles on a diving expedition off Ilha Grande, the scale of the recent flooding and ensuing national disaster for many Brazilians did dull my appetite somewhat.

That’s not to say the natives’ enthusiasm for dipping a rod into the nearest river, pond or sea-shore seemed to be in any way muted by the calamities taking place elsewhere in the country. And while enjoying a spot of surfing and generally lazing around in 30 deg heat on a quiet beach at Ubatuba on the Costa Verde I was able to watch some of the locals practising their beach-casting skills. At the end of the day, it was the fishing highlight of my holiday.

If you’ve never witnessed this use of a 5-ft spinning rod for beach-casting before, you’ll enjoy this clip as two Brazilian holidaymakers demonstrate the art of sub-aqua angling . . .