By David N. McIlvaney
“The best anglers, like the best saints, need to be a little bloody to get into heaven” is one of those clever lines that come to you when there’s a #4 Chubby Chernobyl stuck in your cheek. If true, the blood sliding down my face meant I was heading right up.
A sudden gust had grabbed my back cast and whipped that huge hook three feet to the left and smack into my face before I could duck.
“The wind,” said my guide, Herve, “is a bitch. Hold still.” He wrapped a piece of 3X tippet around the bend of the hook and counted, “unos … dos …” There was no “tres” as he ripped it out.
I screamed.
Welcome to Patagonia.
——–
I have a deal with my wife that goes something like: I’ll go anywhere in the world as long as I can get in a few days of fishing. (She fishes but doesn’t “fish fish” just as I sightsee but not really “sightsee sightsee.”) That arrangement has seen me hiking down the Rio Grande gorge in a Christmas Day snowstorm in search of cutbows and excusing myself from a family lunch in downtown St John’s, Newfoundland, to cast to sea-run browns in a tiny creek behind the café.
Argentina seemed perfect for us.
We flew to Buenos Aires, sampled that wonderful city; steak, wine, empanadas and ice cream; not always in that order, and then flew far to Patagonia. Everything is far in Argentina.
Patagonia goes on forever: some 400,000 square miles spanning Chile and Argentina, divided by the Andes Mountains. We focused on the Argentine side with its arid steppes, grasslands and deserts (versus the glacial fjords and temperate rainforests of Chile), and based ourselves in San Carlos de Bariloche. Nestled in the foothills of the Andes, Bariloche is a well-known ski/adventure/fishing destination that sits on the shore of the Nahuel Huapi Lake and borders the transition from the mountains to the desert.
Though we were officially fishing three hours away in Junín de los Andes, when I later asked my guide up there where he would fish, he didn’t miss a beat and said, “Bariloche, the Limay.”
The Limay River is tailwater that empties into Nahuel Huapi lake. There are wadeable areas and I tried one, finally figuring out that the trout were eating LWS (Little White Shit – the opposite of my tried-and-true Little Black Shit) – but it’s best floated with a guide.
Sightseeing sidebar: my wife arranged a day for horseback riding with a woman named Carol Jones – a third-generation Texan/Argentinian. Her grandfather was the first gringo in the area and had an enormous ranch where she still runs trips. One day, there had been a knock on his door and two dusty Americans stood on the porch. They had heard there was another American around and stopped by to say ‘hi’ on their way to Bolivia. Their names were Robert Parker and Harry Longabaugh, AKA Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
We spent a day with Carol, her ranch hand and an 86-year-old gaucho, whom we politely called ‘“Señor.” A casual ride and talk through the hills of her property. Lunch was by a small stream in a copse of trees where the ranch hand has previously placed wine in a notch on the trunk of a tree and mugs on its branches. Though I thought I’d had enough steak, I couldn’t turn down the traditional Argentinian asado. And wine.
At one point, “Señor” took my wife’s Hermès scarf off her neck and retied it for her in the traditional gaucho way. Then he laughed.
Laughing seemed to be a Patagonian pastime.
From Bariloche, you drive north along the famed Seven Lakes route with the first stop being Villa La Angostura, a quaint small village that looks like a Montana town. We fell right into its rhythms: hiking, eating and fishing. There are a few rivers to fish, including the Rio Correntoso, known as the world’s shortest river at just 200 to 300 yards, depending on the height of the lakes it connects. But much of the fishing is in the lakes for big browns. If you can get up in time, it’s recommended to swing streamers at dawn in the mouth of the river where it enters the lake. I fished the Rio Azul, a small, turquoise river loaded with rainbows. Big foamy floaty files work here with a rubber legs dropper.
Continue on the Seven Lakes drive, and you come to the golden spot of trout fishing – San Martín de los Andes and Junín de los Andes. San Martin is another pretty little lake town with a few surrounding lakes and rivers that fish incredibly well.
The next day was to be my first guided day in Junin.
Prior to the trip, I looked around the web for DIY info and came across a site that ran a semi-DIY: you supply the food and drink, and they supply a guide. The service seemed well-rated and the owner sold me on his head guide. That experience turned into a bit of a nightmare. I won’t go into much as I don’t want to compromise my now-friends guides down there who need to continue to work with the guy.
I received a call the night before from the head guide to say he was unavailable, and I would be fishing with another guide. Booked and paid for months in advance and no communication, this isn’t the kind of thing you want to happen the night before your trip.
Oh well, sometimes you have to swing with the current. My new guide, Herve, texted to say he would pick me up at 6:00 am.
He arrived on time with the usual decent guide pickup truck with rod carriers and all the right window stickers. We introduced ourselves and drove a few minutes down the road to get a coffee at the local petrol station.
So how do you know you’re in a new kind of fishing town? The gas station has great coffee— try finding that in the Catskills—and a large display of dragonfly and mice flies beside the register. No tiny BWOs or delicate EHC. Go big or go back to the other side of the equator, pal. This is Argentina!
Herve bought me a coffee, I bought a couple of mice and we drove the 40 minutes to Junin and the Rio Collón Curá.
Drives to the river with a guide are not like boarding a plane and meeting your seatmate where the thought of “Is this the last face I’m going to see if we go down” flits across your mind. It’s worse. More like, “Can I spend the next 10 hours in a boat with this stranger without killing him?”
We sized each other up over bullshit fishing stories.
Past town, he pulled over and opened a locked gate to a put in where he had private access. At the river’s edge, we met his assistant who had the boat in the water ready.
I pulled out my gear from the back of the truck and Herve got his first good look at my bright blue wader bag.
“What’s that?”
“My wader bag.”
“Not Orvis or Simms? What company?”
“Ikea.”
After trying all kinds of expensive wader bags, I’ve settled on the $1.00 Ikea Frakta bag for waders and boots. Waterproof and almost indestructible, I have used them to haul nearly every type of gear, camp wood as well as drinking water. And waders.
“Are your rods from Ikea, too?”
Argentine humour.
A quick transfer of gear and I was floating a river in Patagonia.
“Let’s see your fly box.” I handed it over and he stared. “Okay, we’ll use my flies.” He fished around and handed me what looked like an ugly White Wulff about a size “huge.” I tied it on and pulled out some dry fly floatant powder.
He shook his head and said, “Amigo, you have to listen to me.” He grabbed the fly and dunked it into a jar of homemade gink. If you don’t know, gink is a mix of paraffin and kerosene. It will either make your fly float or spontaneously combust. The fly now looked like a drowned albino rat. As he made for the middle of the river, I tossed it over the side to pay out some line to cast. Bam! Hit by a 12” brown.
I reached over and unhooked it and noticed he was laughing. “Culo Grande!”
“What’s that?
“’Big Ass’ … ‘lucky person’.”
My ass was about to get much bigger that day.
The Collón Curá is a wide river, generally slow moving with very little structure on the section we fished. This is high desert, similar to the terrain of the Upper Owens River in the Sierra, with little to no bank vegetation. You won’t get hung in a tree, but then there’s nothing to block the wind. Helpful hint – overline your rods.
As our section was private access, we fished all day and didn’t see another soul. Going to get a little Quint … “I don’t know how many fish I caught, maybe a thousand.” Okay it was fewer than that but six were over 20”.
Just after lunch, Herve anchored above a slotted run and suggested I switch over to a Wooly Bugger. A quick flip into the current and then I simply let it swing into the slot. It was hammered again and again as it straightened. I’ve never said this before, but after a while, my rod hand began to tire from fighting so many fish. My largest trout, which measured from my fingertips to the middle of my chest, came out of this slot.
And that was the day. We floated, changed flies as we saw fit, laughed, bullshitted; made fun of my Ikea bag; ate, drank and caught fish for about ten hours.
I arrived back at the rental exhausted and buzzing. It was Christmas Eve. The next morning, my wife and I were fishing the Rio Chimehuin with Herve.
We met at a different petrol station with better coffee. As I walked out to the truck with the coffee, my wife called out “Culo Grande!” and Herve laughed.
The Chimehuin is a very different river. We fished the lower section where it is narrow and fast with tight banks lined with willows. As always, my wife caught the first fish. Then the second. Then the third. Then she just sat back and enjoyed the float. Her work was done. Doesn’t really “fish fish”.
“Relax,” said Herve, when he saw my face, “your section is coming up.”
We passed through what seemed like a canyon and he anchored up in the middle of a fast section of the river. The banks were even tighter with willows, and between each clump was a small section of still water protected by the vegetation – think about a square yard.
“Okay, my friend, once I start, I’ll only stop for a fish because of the flow. You have to line up and cast into those little pockets, drift for a moment, pull out before you get snagged, then set for the next pocket. Ready?”
No. Not even close.
I pulled out what I thought was the right amount of line and he raised the anchor.
Imagine you’re standing in the back of a pickup truck on a rough gravel road with washouts and the truck is driving at 15 miles per hour as you’re trying to cast 40’ and hit a garbage can lid. When you look ahead, there are 30 lids lined up.
Ready?
I was short on the first few, too slow to set on the next, snagged on a few after and finally connected. Oh, and the wind picked up and put the fly in my face.
After that run, Herve pulled around a bend and rowed into the estuary of a little channel that came out of the willows. The rush of the river dropped away and we entered what looked like a spring creek – gentle and mossy.
My wife starting casting to small trout in a bottom riffle while I walked up to the head of the “creek.” I saw the smallest of movements just under a tiny spill and tied on one of my proper little flies with my fancy floatant. I dropped to my knees and crawled up to about 20’.
First cast landed above the spill but was ignored as it fell over. Second cast got a hit but I missed. I waited. The third cast floated onto the spill and dropped right into his mouth. 18” brown in 6” of water. That may have been my most memorable fish of the trip.
At the end of another long great day of fishing, we pulled into the takeout and I dropped my line into the water to straighten it out. Bam! Another trout.
“Big ass,” they said simultaneously.
~~~~
“Unos mates?”
The fish and game warden at the Nahuel Huapi National Park handed me a gourd filled with a bitter yerba maté tea and a bombilla, or metal straw. I sipped as we chatted in poor English and shitty Spanish about fly fishing and rehabilitating condors in the national park. I finished and handed it back but made the mistake of not turning the bombilla toward him. He reached around and spun the gourd into its proper position and took it back.
I had more to learn about fishing in Argentine Patagonia.
—David N. McIlvaney is a terrible fly caster who catches fish all over the world. When not in Manhattan, he stays well-hidden at an off-the-grid camp in the Catskills, where he writes, hews wood and draws water like all good Canadians. Don’t ask … you can’t get there from here. @the_real_dnm