Hey folks, me again. More fish tales ahead, so now is your chance to bail and go do something more interesting, like fold some laundry or something.
So the last time I blogged, I was headed for the Rio Malleo, another one of the blue ribbon trout streams in Northern Patagonia. I arrived at the upper section inside Lanin National Park and it was truly crap weather. Slate grey skies, gusty winds and rain. Not your ideal outdoor activity day. Even worse, I check out the river and there's no fish activity at all. Ever hopeful, I tie on a big ugly dry fly, throw on an extra layer of clothes, and start fishing. 7 hours later I've landed 37 trout, 5 of which went well over 16". Once I figured out they wanted the fly skittered across the surface, I could do no wrong. It was not just the best fishing day of the trip so far, but the best of my life. I doubt I'll ever top it. The next day was crisp and clear, and I returned to the Malleo. After 9 hours I had landed 12 fish, with just one big one, proving it's just as much about luck as skill. Especially for me.
I left Junin the next day, headed south for Los Alerces National Park and the Rio Rividavia. I fished the Rio Manso and some small creeks on the way down, caught a lot of fish and generally had a great time. When I arrived at the Rividavia, I was a little disappointed to see quite a few other fishermen, but I managed to find a secluded little spring creek that fed into the Rividavia that was loaded with big fish and devoid of other fishermen, and lucked into a midday hatch of mayflies that had the fish looking up. In the 30 minutes or so before the hatch shut down, I took the three biggest rainbows of my life out of a creek not more than 20' wide in most places. It was pretty fantastic.
On the hike out, I stopped and compared notes with another fisherman, Ming, a 6'2" tobacco chewing Chinese American from Boston. It turned out we were staying at the same campsite, so the next morning I met up with him and his friend Alex from Bariloche, and got his story over coffee. After getting an MBA he'd spent 8 years in the corporate world as a manager before deciding it wasn't for him. He quit his job, spent a couple years in Guatemala with the Peace Corps, and since then has been traveling the world and doing a whole lot of fly fishing.
The three of us headed out to fish the spring creek that had been so good to me the day before, and bumped into yet another American. Todd was in the last two weeks of two months of trekking and fishing in Chile and Argentina. When not hitchhiking around Patagonia, he's a fly fishing guide working out of Sun Valley, Idaho and professional outdoor photographer. It's no big surprise that we hit it off immediately.
Todd and I ended up fishing the same stretch of the creek I had the day before and both landed a fish each, with Todd's being the biggest I've yet seen, and mine the smallest I'd taken on that water. Of course. Not long after, a boat landed nearby with a guide, a fly fisherman and three photographers. It turned out the fisherman was Diego Ortiz Mugica, a professional photographer from Bariloche who was holding a workshop on landscape photography. After 30 minutes or so of photo talk that was way over my head, they exchanged postcard sized mini-portfolios/business cards that apparently all pro photographers carry at all times and Diego invited us both to his gallery in Bariloche. Then we slogged our way back through the marsh to to the car, getting soaked by a short thunderstorm along the way.
We fished the Rio Arrayanes the next day, catching only one fish each before heading into Esquel to meet up with a couple friends of Todd's. Jason and Pat were fishing guides as well, and had spent the season guiding clients in Chile. Dinner turned into beer, and then more beer, and the storytelling ranged from Jason's experiences guiding clients in bear country to Todd's 7 hour overnight standoff with a puma to Pat waking up on the sidewalk of a town in Mexico, wearing nothing but a sombrero. I would have joined in with stories of my own death defying naked adventures, but I didn't want to upstage them.
Tomorrow I'm off to fish a private stream on an 8,000 hectare ranch, the Arroyo Pescado, literally Fish Creek. It's a beautiful spring creek supposedly chock full of trout. I'll let you know how it's goes.
I know, you can hardly wait....
Cheers.
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