Hey guys, not sure if this should be posted here or in "other fish species" since I'm not fishing for bass. Feel free to move this post to where it corresponds.
Anyway, I'm currently in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and I've had the opportunity to go fishing 3 times so far. For now, my buddy and I have been targeting this fish called "tararira" aka "tarucha" or hoplias malabaricus. I've read on a few notes from Argentina that the "tararira" is pretty similar to bass in terms of fishing, so I had prepared some bass lures beforehand to try them out.
During our first trip, we went to this lake called "Laguna El Burro" where people were catching many tarariras. Unfortunately, they weren't taking any lures. After using multiple soft baits and frogs for many hours, I switched to live baits like my friend. At around 2:30pm, he got his first bite. His bobber went down, and he set the hook. I could see how this fish was taking some line as it was making a run, but unfortunately, it got off. Literally 5 minutes later, he got another bite. Set the hook, and this time, he managed to bring it next to the boat. It was easily a 3-4lb fish, but after thrashing around, it got off as well. His next 2 bites were 2 catfish, which we used as bait. Finally, I got a bite, but the bobber wasn't sinking... this fish had the bait in its mouth and was just moving around. When it decided to go between some vegetations, I set the hook and got our first tararira. After this, we had no more bites, so we went home.
On our second trip, we went to a small body of water owned by "Hopliass Piscicultura Intensiva", an organization that's trying to help this species out. They breed this species and stock different lakes where the number of this species has been decimated due to ilegal fishing and other issues, and by paying the entrance fee, you are helping them out as well. If you are interested in it, you can look it up on Facebook since they post many pictures about their work. Anyway, I started off with a soft body toad while my buddy, with a topwater Hula Popper. This pond has a LOT of vegetation, so you can only use weedless lures. After a few minutes, I caught a solid tararira. I was hopping the toad on top of all the vegetation, and when it dropped in a clear area, BAM! I saw the fish pop out out of nowhere and grab the bait. It just sat there for a few seconds, so I set the hook and got the fish. The next one was caught using a Havoc Pit Boss sightseeing. The water was clear, so we could spot a few of them. My friend caught 2 using a Brush Hog. The last fish was caught like the first one, and it weighted 1.4kg (3.08lb).
On my most recent trip, I went to the "Laguna Kakel Huincul" with my parents. We only stayed for 2 hours, but I got a fish on the toad using the same method as before and missed another bite using the Pit Boss. Funny thing is that my mom was messing around with a chatterbait when she got a bite. She got so scared that she almost threw my rod+reel lol. Thankfully she didn't, but of course, she lost the fish...
Sorry about the long post lol. Next time, we might target "dorados" as well, so I will let you know how that goes. If anyone has experience fishing these 2 species, any tip would be appreciated.