Pirá pytá, the Paraná salmon: what fish it is and where to catch it in Paraguay

Pirá pytá means "red fish" in Guaraní: pira, fish, and pytã, red, for the fins and the tail. It is the same fish Argentines call pirapitá, salmón del Paraná or salmón de río, and that Brazilians call piracanjuba. The scientific name is Brycon orbignyanus, in the family Bryconidae, until recently placed among the characins.

It is not a salmon, though the long body, the silver flash and the fight explain the nickname: it runs, jumps and throws the hook in the air. It is one of the fish anglers seek on the fly in the Plata basin, and one of the scarcest.

How to tell it from a dorado

From a distance they look alike in the fight and in the reddish fins and tail, though the dorado is golden and the pirá pytá silver. The sure difference is in the mouth. A golden dorado has even, conical teeth, a hunter's teeth; the pirá pytá has multi-pointed teeth, especially at the front, built to crush fruit and seeds. An angler who opens the mouth knows at once.

Another frequent mix-up, above all in Brazil: the piraputanga of the Pantanal is a different species of the same genus (Brycon hilarii). It looks similar, but it is not the fish in this note. In the Paraná and Uruguay basins, the big Brycon is the pirá pytá.

How big it gets and what it eats

Females reach 80 centimetres and 8 to 10 kilos; males are smaller, around 60 centimetres and 3.5 kilos. On the Paraná, a fish over 50 centimetres and 6 kilos is already a big one.

It eats what falls into the water: fruit, seeds and insects, and now and then a small fish. That explains two things: why it holds close to the bank, under laden trees, and why it is fished with fruit imitations and on the fly, as well as small lures. In the guide the technique is listed as fly and small lures.

It is a prolific fish: a mature female studied on the Paraná carried almost 695,000 eggs. If it is scarce, it is not for lack of eggs, but for lack of the open rivers and wooded banks it needs to breed.

When it is caught in Paraguay

The season listed in the guide is spring and summer. It is a migratory fish: at the end of winter it starts moving upriver, and it spawns with the rising water, between November and January depending on the year and the stretch. In the months before that it is active and feeding, which is when it is caught. November falls inside the closed season, so in practice there are two windows: spring, before the closure, and summer, after it. The month-by-month picture, with the closed season marked, is in the month-by-month calendar.

Where it is caught

The guide lists it in 2 areas: Ayolas y Corredor Paraná and Concepción. The first is the Paraná below Yacyretá; the second, the Paraguay river in the north. The species page lists the lodges and guides that fish for it: Pirá pytá.

One Paraguayan fact worth knowing: the San Cosme y Damián fish farming station, run by the Yacyretá binational entity, produces fingerlings of salmón de río alongside boga, pacú, surubí and dorado, to restock the reservoir and the basin. That an institution breeds it says how much it is valued, and how much it took to become scarce.

A fish with a club of its own

Across the river from Encarnación, in Posadas, a fishing and boating club carries its name: Club Pirá Pytá. Every spring it runs the 20 Horas de Pesca, a boat-fishing marathon for mixed species with full catch and release, now past its 49th edition, where the salmon is among the highest-scoring species. That is the measure of what this fish means on the Paraná: a club took its name, and the club's tournament releases everything it catches.

Why it should go back

The pirá pytá is listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List and on Brazil's official list of threatened species. The causes are documented: dams cut its spawning routes, the clearing of riverbanks removed the trees it feeds from, and intensive fishing did the rest. In Brazil, wild populations are now restricted to a few rivers far from cities. In Argentina, the National Parks system treats it as a species of special value in one of its protected areas.

In Paraguay the MADES licence and the annual closed season apply, and the minimum-size table we publish (licence, closed season and sizes) does not name the pirá pytá: no rule forces you to release a small one. We say what the serious lodges say about the dorado: photo, then back in the water. A slow-growing fish that is already scarce does not belong on the grill.

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