Argentina Fishing Report 2009

By Doug Mcknight

Thank god typing on a computer doesn’t involve using your casting arm too much, because after my recent trip to Argentina my arm feels broken!  Our trip was an incredible adventure in every definable aspect.  First and foremost the fishing was downright absurd and at times completely unbelievable!  The food was fantastic and the guides were all exceptionally talented and hard working. 

Our first day we floated the Rivadavia, which runs between two lakes in Las Alerces National park.  Although we didn’t catch a ton of fish that day, the Rivadavia’s gin clear water and beautiful scenery sometimes made it hard to pay attention to what you are doing.  I stuck with streamers the whole day and found more than a few fish that were willing to seek and destroy.  All of the fish went from 16-21” and were in great shape and fought very hard.  I did shake a brown trout’s hand that was in the 24” range that came out of a very fast and deep run, but as he went backwards after the hook set and he managed shake the hook loose with some violent head shakes.

The following day we embarked for a three night camping trip on the Chubut River.  We caught huge numbers of fish on the Chubut, on just about any type of fly that you wanted to fish.  The afternoon dry fly fishing was excellent with lots and lots of fish up to 19-20”.  I elected to not to set the hook on the little guys under 12”, I don’t count fish, but if I did set the hook on every fish that ate the fly on the Chubut I would have been well into the triple digits the first 2 days of the float.  The highlight for me was the streamer fishing last day on the Chubut.  The number of fish were not quite as good as the first two, (although we still caught all of the fish we wanted to).  The fish on the lower part of the float ran bigger and the guys had some great hopper fishing to 18”+ Rainbows.  On one run I pulled out a heavy 23” Rainbow that hit my fly so hard it hurt my arm!  Everyone in the group was astonished at the number and size of the fish we caught - if your fly was in the water, you were seeing action and lots of it.  The camping on the river was excellent and very comfortable, and the food cooked over a campfire was top notch.  Everyone went to bed early, exhausted from fishing hard.

Next was the Gualjaina River and Arroyo Pescado.  We stayed at Estancia La Elvira, a wonderful working cattle ranch with great accommodations and once again huge numbers of fish on the totally private Gualjaina.  We thought the fish were players on the Chubut, but the Gualjaina fish gave them a real run for their money as far as numbers and action goes.  I stuck with streamers and had some ridiculous action, as you could pull a dozen or more nice fish out of a short run.  Fish were fighting over our flies the entire day.  In addition to an abundance of nice Rainbows in the 12-18” range, we caught a number of great browns up to 21” as well.  The other guys in the group elected to fish with hoppers and other dry flies and had hot action on top.  

The Arroyo Pescado, (one of the top spring creeks in South America if not the world), lived up to my expectations for numbers and size of the fish.  The weather was very tough however, the wind was 25-40 mph and we had a just enough clouds to make it tough to spot fish on this wide and weedy creek.   We still managed to find some extremely good fishing.  It took some long casts and a lot of perseverance with the weeds.  I stuck with the streamers and was in hog heaven, literally, with lots of big rainbows up to 24” and a few browns up to 23”.  The sly brook trout eluded us all this time, maybe next year…  There was a nice mayfly hatch in the afternoon, but the weeds and wind made it very tough to get any kind of drift on the other side of the creek where a pack of very large rainbows were rising.  Being the guy that I am, I stuck with small streamers the rest of the day and had good success with Arroyo Pescado’s oversized trout.

Next up, we drove down to Rio Pico to spend 2 days fishing this wonderful and remote area famous for bruiser trout.  The first day we fished a private access portion of the Rio Pico spring creek and Rio Pampa.  I had seen pictures of the fish from this place, and heard stories of very large fish from this small and brushy creek.  Needless to say I was excited to see what would happen here… and I was not disappointed!  I have never seen so many big fish in such a small creek.  I came upon one pool that had at least 15 trout in it that were just chilling under the surface, more than half of them were well over 20”, and 3 or 4 of them were definitely over 24”!  I had died and gone to heaven.  Getting a cast to some of these fish is a different story as there are many places that are overgrown with willows and very limited room to make a cast.  The challenge of getting your fly into some of these spots was the toughest thing.  If you could somehow get your fly in there, the fish would jump all over it.  I caught and released a number of large trout up to 23”on terrestrials and streamers, and had a serious encounter with two of the largest trout that I have ever seen, one that I hooked and landed, the other I never touched or saw again.  I had a gigantic Rainbow come halfway out of the creek and miss a small streamer.  It never came back either but appeared to be well over 30”!  Very late in the day I came upon a small opening in the willows that it looked as though you could get a short cast into it.  I am glad that I stopped there as I had a very big brown trout ferociously eat my streamer at a mere 12 feet away!  After a short and violent fight I slipped my net under this beast and let out a mighty yell, I was by myself and had just landed one of the biggest trout of my life, it was a big old male brown trout approaching 30” and getting awfully close to double digits weight.   I managed to set up my camera and take a number of pictures with the self-timer and send this bruiser back to his home under the willows. 

The following morning we got up early to fish the famous Lago 3, and had a blast catching huge browns and rainbows up to 6 pounds on small nymphs and streamers.   We had some showers and clouds in the afternoon so the brown trout went on a rampage.  My fishing partner for the week, Brent Nickerson, caught and released 8 brown trout after lunch all in the 4-6 pound range; add that to half a dozen Rainbows in the morning, you have one hell of a day... all on bamboo!

Last but certainly not least, we closed out our trip spending 3 days floating and camping on the notorious Limay Medio, a seriously big fish river with water flows up to 40,000 CFS!  It turned out to be some of the toughest fishing I've ever experienced.  Huge water, huge flies, huge wind, big rods, with heavy sinking lines and lots of casting.  Every afternoon the wind would crank up to 30-40 mph and make casting and rowing nearly impossible.  The morning of the second day of the float was nearly calm and the river produced well for us until lunch.  We caught lots of hard fighting rainbows up to 21” everyday, but we had our efforts set on finding large chrome brown trout that move up the Limay Medio from a downstream reservoir.  We managed to find 2 big ones that morning just before and immediately after lunch.  Both were males in the 10-pound range.  These fish are some of the strongest and most muscular fish that I have seen. You hook one of these guys and you’ll forget about your blisters and how long it took you to find one of of these toads blind casting an 8 weight rod with a sinking line for 3 days.  You might even forget your name...  

A special thanks goes out to George Anderson for letting me “work” down there, to the guys who signed up for the trip: Brent Nickerson, Tom and Dan Tisone, Fred Hall, and David Hunter, and to the guides and staff of Esquel Outfitters and Dreamcast who took great care of us and made our dream trip a reality.

More photos from the trip