Waking Up Early Isn't the Answer
The Southern Cross is a bright, easily found constellation, in Argentina as much as anywhere else, but nowhere near bright enough to land a sullen three-pound brown trout by. So although it was startling to hear the four-wheel drive van start up, the reason was quickly clear, as its headlights swung onto the water, and the fish could be beached, unhooked and released.
Another day in Patagonia had ended with some furious fishing at dusk.
Throughout this February trip, the late fishing was best. The Mallejo River offered mostly open water, little shielded from the sun, and the water was pretty warm. The landscape, even to the Andes in the distance with their snowcaps, was like Montana, and the daytime fishing often as slow as it can be in those states in the equivalent late August. But it picked up almost every evening, both on the Mallejo and later on the Traful, a more varied river with fast runs and rocks and pocket water.
Whatever the morning or midafternoon had been like, the last half-hour almost always produced a good fish, sometimes with a dry fly, but often with streamers.
Even when the fish were not biting, the scenery was spectacular. There were all kinds of birds. The Andes were always in sight. Up near the mountains, most of the fishing is done from lodges, or estancias. Some are hearty, like San Huberto on the Mallejo, and others luxurious, like Arroyo Verde on the Traful. We would fish in the morning, follow a hearty lunch with a siesta, and have dinner quite late after fishing until dark.
This particular day on the Mallejo had been typical. A few fish in the morning, though nothing very big. Mostly small rainbows.
But after a long, sluggish afternoon, brown trout started feasting on a sudden caddis hatch in the last half-hour before dark.
In the twilight, it was hard to see a little fly, and I kept missing strikes. So after 20 minutes, Carlos Sanchez, Argentina's top guide with Pathways, a Spartanburg, S.C., travel company, called for a change in tactics.
He pored over my fly box and tied on a big bushy tan dry fly of no identifiable design, about size 8. And he suggested that I take advantage of the 50-yard stretch where fish were rising by not making repeated casts, but letting the fly settle into the soft current and then just walking along the bank with it as long as the drift stayed true.
Good advice. Before I had walked 10 yards on my first cast, a big brown took the fly and took off, deep and determined, with two long runs upstream and one down before I had much control of him.
But now it was pitch dark, and landing him and unhooking him presented a different sort of challenge. I wondered where Carlos had gone, until I heard his van start up, and the headlights helped me figure out what I was doing.
Another morning, we drove up to the source of the Mallejo, Lake Tromen, which is almost on the Chilean border. We were looking for big brook trout. We saw some under the boat but never raised any, and instead stalked rainbows we could see feeding along the shoreline. Casting a sink-tip line from a boat, I took five rainbows up to 6 pounds, using a size 6, double-hooked Woolly Bugger.
The Traful probably has fewer good fish but some bigger ones than the Mallejo. Over the mantle at the lodge is the silhouette of a 31-pound landlocked salmon that Ernie Schwiebert took a couple of years back. I took none that big, indeed no landlocked salmon at all. But I lost a big brown of at least 5 or 6 pounds when he threw the hook after 10 minutes, and landed several between 2 and 3 pounds.
There was not much in the way of hatches on either river, and so little need for patterns to match local insects. Ordinary American patterns worked well: Elk-Hair Caddis, Royal Wulff, Adams, and various types of Woolly Buggers. One day, I raised, and lost, two big browns on hopper imitations, even though there were no grasshoppers on the water.
It was much like fishing good water in the American West, except for the isolation. We didn't see other fishermen; indeed our company was usually Magellan geese and an occasional hare.
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