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Sunset rainbow
(click image for detail)
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TROUT FROM JURASSIC (STROBEL) LAKE
We all have the dream of finding “the” river or Lake where large fish take our flies with abandon, all day long, all season long. I mean, matching the hatch is beautiful and casting a tiny dry fly to finicky trout all day long is challenging and (sometimes) rewarding, but there is something about the old stories where our grandparents caught LARGE fish ALL the time. Where have these days gone? What happened to these places? Yet one of the great things about being a fly fisherman is that we never give up our hopes that this day will come. So it happened three years ago while fishing a remote lake south of Corcovado in search for large brook trout, that I crossed paths with an angler and guide from Los Glaciares National Park, some 2000 km south of Junin de los Andes. While exchanging flies and drinking mate, I showed him photos of a 9 lb brookie I caught that morning he started talking about a Lake so remote that getting there is (literally) a pain in the butt with hundreds of monster rainbow trout patrolling the shores and a tiny creek that is the only source of water to the Lake, also chocked with these trout. Curious as I am, I had to see (and fish) it for myself. So I booked him to fish for 3 days the following year. After we arrived at the town of Calafate, we jumped on our 4 wheel drive trucks for a 5 hour journey through a desolated and barren land, so remote that it makes you feel uneasy, even for a Patagonian guide like myself. No matter where you look, there’s nothing around, except for the occasional foxes, rheas, guanacos, wild horses, shrubs and rocks, rocks and more rocks. It makes you feel you are on the moon, craters included, until you reach a large body of water, of deep blue water. Just as we arrived and pulled out of the trucks, I saw the first trout through the lens of my polarized glasses. She was patrolling the shore in a foot of water. It looked like a female of around 12 lbs. As I watched incredulously these large trout floating slowly and sipping something I could not identify, Willy had already rigged a 9’ # 7 rod with a # 4 Olive wooly bugger and placed the fly 2 feet in front of this baby. The trout stopped abruptly, stayed still for a second or two and then charged to the fly, ate it and when she felt hooked, run some 75 yards to the drop off. I can’t remember what happened then, but while Willy was still fighting that trout I had already rigged, cast and was into a very strong 10 lb rainbow that pulled line like a bonefish and jumped only like wild rainbow trout do. And so it went for the following 2 hrs of light we had left when we had to leave the water because in the rush we forgot to put our waders on and it was getting dark and cold. In two hours of fishing we caught more than 10 trout each with the smaller being around 6 lbs and the larger hitting the scales at 21 lbs. All muscular rainbows with some females that looked like stuffed Piñatas.We had only two days left in this angling Nirvana; and what two days!The incredible thing about these trout is that they take everything that you throw at them. We caught them using Wooly Buggers, Royal Wulffs, Prince nymphs, Caddis Pupae, Adult Dragon flies, Jack Garthside’s Gurglers, and you name it.One particular trout topping the scales at 8 lbs followed my Red & Peacock Gurgler for about 40’ and finally taking it when I had just the leader from my rod tip. I cannot describe in words what the fishing was like, because it is hard to believe, but we felt we were part of the stories we heard from older anglers of the good old days.
WE HAVE AVAILABLE THE FOLLOWING DATES:
November 1st to 8th 2007 (6 rods)
April 14th to 21st 2008 (2 rods)
April 21st to 27th ( 4 rods)
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