After a great previous week, and with the water still dropping, we were hoping for an even greater one, and it all came through.
7 guests arrived as usual on Saturday, while Anders “El Pato” Holmberg didn't arrive until Monday late afternoon. Chantal Chone, who arrived from Barriloche, proclaimed that she neither had the tried this type of fishing nor had the techinique or casting skills to cope with this river! All was proven wrong, she started out with a ball, landing 5 fish the first morning and from then on she absolutely slaughtered 'em, using her “Vitamin C” fly which she had bought, mostly for fun, at a flyfishing show. Steinar and Bosse had both been here before and therefore had no problems figuring out how it's all done, and they did well, especially in the first part of the week. Then it seemed like they relaxed and enjoyed it all rather than chasing fish.
Anders Holmberg arrived late, so we took him to the river for a couple of hours the first night, were he landed two just fishing a couple of pools. Later in the week he got seven in one night, six of them in Old Bridge Pool. He and Chantal shared a beat, and after a few days we were afraid they were gonna empty every beat the left.
Dag and Siv (husband and wife) were new to this and since they are Norwegian, they'd mostly done salmon fishing. But that didn't show up on their results, and Thursday evening accompanied by guide Diego, Siv caught THE seatrout, a fish of a lifetime, of no less than 24½ lbs (11 kg). Diego had to weigh it twice since he hardly believed his own eyes. Dag had been left some “smaller ones” like the session when he landed 3 fish of “only” 14 – 15 and 18 lbs.
John Mccullough and Terry Mulligan, both from Ireland, started the week with some super fish. John who'd been here earlier caught a 22 lbs and Terry's biggest was no less than 17 lbs. A great couple of guys who could bring the Scandinavian eagerness to the ground, and one night Terry showed how a “real” Irish Coffee was made by an Irishman. fter a couple of these Steinar had and “early night”.
River is dropping, but slowly it's just around the 0 mark, it dropped app. 25 cm (10 inch) during the week, but water-color is perfect, like earl-grey tea. There's fish running up and we see them come in groups moving from beat to beat, so it's difficult to say what's the best beat, it changes from session to session.
Size of flies has dropped dramatically from last week, but also during this week we've seen a declining need of big flies. Now the preferred size is around size 6-8 but of course at night we use bigger stuff like wolly-buggers ect. All in all a great week, high numbers of fish caught, a lot lost, and a good mix in size, with some very big ones in between. As Terry said “you never know what you're gonna hook into. We're looking forward to see what happens next week, we've had some rain, but of course it doesn't help any here, but hopefully it came from the mountains. Air temperature has dropped and we've had a couple of very cold nights, so everything looks good.
No. of rods 8
Avg. weight 9,2 lbs
Top Rod Anders Holmberg 32 fish
Biggest fish 24,5 lbs (Siv Anita Eide)
Top pool Old Bridge (11)
Top fly Vitamin C
