Born in 1979 in a little town of Alto Garças in the state of Mato Grosso. Robson learned to fish with his father on Rio das Garças as a kid. He’d enjoy time on the water with his dad as much as the fishing itself. In 1995 Robson moved to the capital of the State, Cuiaba, where he studied business management, Soon after he landed a job with John Deere, which allowed him to buy a piece of land on the Cuiaba River. Managing a sales team there, allowed him to reward the staff and clients with fishing trips. In 2005 an agricultural crisis in Brazil forced him to leave John Deere. He took the opportunity to build a lodge on his riverbank property. That is how Itaicy lodge was born in 2006. In 2008 one of the guests at the lodge was a fly fisherman. Robson was fascinated by the style of fishing and decided to be his guide for the week.  Within a year he bought fly fishing gear and started learning the sport. It was not long until he met one of his future mentors, Nelson Borges, a signature tier and one of the pioneers of fly fishing in Brazil (passed away in 2019). Another one was Jose Francisco Nacif who travelled with Robson in 2012 to San Martin de los Andes chasing Patagonian trout. The operation they visited in Argentina was Robson’s first encounter with soft sided fishing rafts. Those rivers reminded Robson of Rio Manso – a tiny river full of rapids, similar to what they saw in Patagonia. Robson was lit up by the idea of pioneering this type of operation in Brazil as rafting on rapids was nonexistent and had a minimal environmental impact. He put together the first trips right away and in 2015 inaugurated the Itaicy Fly Lodge, where he caught his largest Golden Dorado on a fly that weighed 25 pounds. At the same time Robson was part of a movement to forbid commercial fishing for a number of species of fish in Mato Grosso and now Golden Dorado are protected by state law.

In 2019 Robson came to the Xeruini River, attracted by some chattering about the possibility of the headwaters turning into a fly fishing only area. That is how he met Rob Anderson who was premiering the Rio Novo operation cutting through the jungle to explore the never-fished-before tributary of the Xeruini near the Equator. As a result of the meeting of the two obsessed fly fishermen, Rob visited Itaicy Fly Lodge in August of the same year and put together an ambitious exploratory trip featuring the Pantanal, Golden Dorado and Peacock Bass – a Bucket List Destination for those who can’t leave this world without seeing a jaguar…

Robson is now one of the operators of the Bucket List Fly Fishing Amazon Peacock Bass program and a very important part of our Exploratory team. We look forward to our future together with Robson and his knowledge and experience in the South American fly fishing world.