Since we ended our combi-weeks in the middle of a fishing week, we decided to go exploring a river we'd heard of but couldn't find much info about, the only thing we hoped for was that the rumors about the river was inhabited by Chinook's were true.
After a wonderful trip in a westerly direction, we arrived at this stunningly beautiful place between snow-capped mountains and glaciers. We had no idea about the size of the river, depth or size of the fish, so we brought all the tackle we could think of, just in case..... of flies we had a little experience from Rio Serrano in Chile, where we caught king-salmon a few years ago.
Well arrived, and after a great lunch of barbecued lamb, we headed of for the river. As soon as we arrived to the first pool we saw rolling chinooks, which didn't help us tying on flies (not easy with hands shaking). After a trip down river we found more pools with fish in them, and there they seemed to be more corporative, than in the first one (that turned out to be 11 meters deep, measured with a transportable fish-finder).
After landing just a single fish the first afternoon, the rain started falling and we planned on going back getting ready for the next day. While waiting for the pick up, I decided to give it a last chance and within ½ an hour landed two fish 93 and 96 cm (37 and 38 inches) so we were optimistic for the coming day.
It had rained all night and since the river is quite short, and runs of very steep mountains the river had come up and turned a bit colored, but it didn't seem to affect the fishing, and by noon it already started to drop again and clearing.
We started out fishing Deep-Diver lines, but the river wasn't deep enough so we switched to sink two/sink three, and having fish taking almost in the surface, we reckon that intermediate lines could be enough, at least when the river is low.
Of flies we used big zonkers and articulated flies, especially the local pattern “El Choique Loco” (choique is local for Rhea) worked really well. Big flies need big rods so 11'6” #9/10 and 13' #10/11 came in handy, also because the river got trees along the banks, that makes it difficult to overhead-cast in most pools.
At the end of the day we'd hooked around 20 fish and landed 12 of 'em, not bad at all for less than 12 hours fishing. All fish between 11 and 20 lbs.
We'll get back with some more info as soon as we've done some more testing. So for now, the river stays a “well hidden secret” in the out-backs of Argentina...................
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In the meantime some of our guides fished Rio Gallegos occasionally, and the reports from there was great. A lot of BIG fish in the river, Diego went fishing a couple of hours on the Friday and landed two fish of 16 and 21 lbs, and the group that arrived Saturday went out a couple of hours in the evening, and more or less all got into action.
