Sunday the river rose to the highest level this season, a rise of 20 cm to +7 over normal waterlevel. Since the summer's been very warm and with low and clear water, the algea have had perfect growth conditions, and with the water rising, it drifted a bit down the river, but it wasn't impossible to fish. Mostly because the wind stayed down, and for the first days the river was more or less like a “mill-pond”. Later in the week wind cahnged to an upstream galeforce wind,  luckily the water had dropped a bit by then,  but Thursday was a tough one, and for the first time in history we had a total blank day, and that even in good water conditions. It seems like northernly winds is as poor down here, as they are in the northern hemosphere....

Jonathan Murray and Richard McDowell (also known as “Team Ireland”) arrived with another friend of the lodge, Kerry Hardy, along with them as back up, came Steven “Stevie C” Coulter.
They were up against “Team Wales” with the Rio Gallegos veteran Illthyd Griffiths as the team captain,
who supported and coached, David Patton, Richard Griffiths and Glynn Freeman, Neil Truelove.

Jonathan and “Stevie C” teamed up and (as allways) Jonathan just “slaughtered” from the beginning, Stevie C  had a bit slower start, but soon picked up, inspired by Jonathan.
On the other hand Kerry Hardy had a tough time, as guide Juan Carlos asked him one day “ what happened to you? Last time you were here, you casted so nicely, and now it looks like shit” but even so, Kerry went for quality and landed a 20 lbs'er the biggest fish of the week. Richard McDowell who almost deserves the titel as an expert on the river, also struggled this year, maybe also inspired (but in a negative way) by Kerry. Any way, Team Ireland brought us a new rugby ball, for pleasure and it sure did add another risk for a broken rod or two, when Klaus “rubber-finger” Frimor fumbled with the ball out of shape from the usual.
Team Wales was split in two, those that wanted to practice the casting, and those that just were picking on eachother.
The two “Friends” David Patton and Richard Griffiths, when asked by guide Diego, if they were friends, both answered at the exact same time NO! Despite their little friendly fight, they did ok, David though managed to loose a couple of seriously big fish, both within the first day, while Richard was a slow starter, but finally broke the spell and got some really nice fish.
Neil was fishing with Glynn who's an AAPGAI instuctor, and Neil is running for the advanced salmon-intructor test in April, so it was a perfect opportunity to get some tips, and practice casting. Of course they also fished and especially Neil did very very well, maybe because Glynn had to look after his casting most of the time. But Glynn did get his trophy seatrout on this trip, and a few others that would be hard to catch anywhere else in just a week.
Illthyd, went from one group to the other, in order of who was on the best beat (we think), but as allways Illthyd, who's familiar with the river, caught his share, even though as a good “Team Captain” he also had to spend time “Pep-Talking” his team-mates.....

We had every weather you could think of this week, execpt from the normal. One session with a nice downstream wind was all.
Eventhough the river came up and the colour of the water is now dark Tea, we still fished fairly small flies, small wolly bugger, prince, silver stoat ect. But all size 8-10'ish and as always intermediate lines. Double handed rods were only used when the wind was galeforce upstream, otherwise it's still singelhanded 9'6” - 10”  #7/8 or 8/9.
The water dropped slowly during the week and ended on – 16 cm, but since it's now autum it'll probably start rising to more normal water-levels.

No of rods        9
Avg. Weight        7,1 lbs
Top rod        Jonathan Murray

Biggest fish        Kerry Hardy (20 lbs)

Top fly            Black Damsel (small skinny wolly bugger)
Top Pool        El Henric