Strobel lake, fly-fishing in a lost world

Ancient human traces reflected through the tools and art scattered around the basaltic plateau where the Strobel Lake is located get together with exceptional trout fishing, offering to the traveler an image of Patagonia that will magically take him to a remote past. 
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle´s lost world still exists in the basaltic plateau that surrounds the Strobel Lake and the ponds in its basin. A lost world in which by closing our eyes we can imagine the hunters of the Holocene period as they hide and wait behind stone embankments for the young guanacos to pass by during the spring.
I never imagined that accepting the invitation by Luciano and Beto Alba, owners of Laguna Verde Lodge, and going out to fish in an already famous fly-fishing spot, would become a starting point to know the way in which Patagonia became populated, over 10,000 years ago. The first image that comes to our mind when we think of Patagonia is that of endless plains swooped by the wind, as Darwin wrote; or the Nothophagus forests and the Cordillera ridge with its blue rivers and lakes.
Now I can say that the imagery is correct but not necessarily complete, for Patagonia landscapes are much more varying and include vast plateaus of lava that were shaped during violent times through millions of years. In these plateaus, different geological processes gave place to lower grounds that became ponds and lakes, many still present these days, like the Strobel and the Cardiel, both with a very different origin than the one of the Cordillera glacial lakes.
Getting to Strobel Lake has never been easy, we rode on harsh stone gravel and then on basalt track that made us think about the hardship that the first modern inhabitants of the area must have dealt with when transporting their animals and materials to build their shelter.
Some remnants are scattered in the distance throughout the field, huge carriage wheels and forgotten shelters. The kind of animals that pulled those huge wagons on the hard and endless stone track and the way the people dealt with crude winters is something that the owners of the estancia still try to recover from the old proprietors and neighbors. Those tales are an important part of the whole experience of coming to fish in this particular and spirit-lifting place.
The first inhabitants of the plateau started hunting here more than 4000 years ago. They traveled light and were used to the changing weather, they stayed at the plateau during spring and summer when the guanacos had their offspring and the small ones were easy to catch. 
It is likely that the use of the plateau was seasonal but this is not easy to prove today, since we can hardly find any other settlement that had been exposed to the elements; erosion must have transformed everything in a few tens of years. The remains in caves and rock overhangs are kept to be protected and we know that these sites were not permanent dwelling, but so far we do not know clearly if some groups stayed during the winter in some slope areas protected from the wind, or in lower areas.
Surely everyone knows the Strobel Lake for its rainbow trout but it would be a shame to just consider that, because it has much more to offer than good fishing. The remote past is present in every stone, slope or valley and one does not have to be well trained to find hundreds of details that transport us thousands of years back, when a simple stone carved glass made the difference between life and death.
The Barrancoso river, which feeds the Strobel Lake on the early season can easily become the main attraction for its fascinating geography and the big rainbow trout that take dry flies. The river runs through a canyon formed between two basalt flows over a bed of volcanic rocks of the same basalt as the walls, which are deeply fractured in all possible dimensions. Unless it rains suddenly and intensely, the Barrancoso waters are crystal clear and go down many miles with its runs and pools where trout await.
In the plateau where the Strobel Lake is, there are many ponds; around 1500 have been counted. The vast majority has low waters and get dry quickly during the summer but some are of a good size and depth. There are stocked trout that, like the ones in the lake, grow rapidly because of their amphipod-based diet, very abundant throughout the plateau. In each pond, the birdlife is abundant and in many lakes we can find the rare species of bird called macá tobiano, a curious and funny diving bird. Despite the hardness of the plateau, birds have found clever ways to use the resources and the populations are still remarkable. It is not difficult to spot rhea guarding their offspring wherever there is good pasture.
The lakes are connected by short stretches of streams like the Moro and, in some sections, resemble a true spring creek. If there is enough water, one can spend days fishing these stretches with light gear, not the #7 and #8 weight outfits used for the river or lakes.
The last few years were very dry but this season the Moro stream began to fill the ponds again in the basin and the ones we visited in the upper side were already filled, giving good amounts of water to the lower ponds. With a little more rain the whole system will recover its optimum levels.
When staring the Strobel plateau it is easy to think that there once existed much water on it, the dry depressions that get sun-bleached are countless, but this is not unusual because dry and humid periods alternate periodically, we do not last long enough to see the changes but in geological times the change can be clearly seen.


Many think that the Strobel lake and the Cardiel are drying but there is geological evidence that there were periods when they were much lower and the same happened with the Argentine lake, with underwater trees over 100 years old. The drought and downpipe of that lake lasted so long that it allowed the growth of a forest on the shore. Then the waters rose again and the forest died when flooded. 
Something similar happened in the Patagonian coast, the sea rose as the glaciers melted, covering much of the coast which is now under water and was previously exposed.
The wind, a constant companion on the plateaus of basalt, greatly helped Holocene hunters to avoid being detected but to us modern fly fishermen it creates a good challenge. Casting in the wind we should not fight but understand it, as if we had to govern a sailboat with the wind in our favor. Why fight against wind on our back if we can make a very long roll cast. The wind has to be our friend, and if it does not let us fish, let´s just think it's good that the trout have a sanctuary where to rest from us.
The Laguna Verde ranch borders along with the Strobel lake for miles and can offer a few wind protected bays even in the worst conditions. Something to consider in a lake where water is vaporized into eddies and waves sweep the coast on windy days. To reach these bays today there are carved roads along lava cliffs that allows going down to the beaches in quads or trucks. Before, you had to walk go up and down the rugged cliff. 
The first bay near the lodge is an oasis in the wind. Just by looking at a rocky point nearby and watch how the lake water is transformed into an out of control beast, we recognize that we are in a very rare and special site. A basaltic lava cliff protects the bay from the wind; only a soft back wind at times manifests itself as a final swirl sneaking into the bay. Not disturbing at all, that wind helps us to gain distance with the floating line, the only kind of line we need in this place.
One of the interesting things about fishing in the lake is the effectiveness achieved with floating lines. Large rainbows patrol the drop-offs and seaweed mantles slowly filling their stomachs with amphipods without much effort. Striping as we normally do is not a good idea because we get many more takes when moving the fly really slowly. Of course, as soon as I arrived I assembled an intermediate clear line, so it couldn’t be seen and fish the fly slowly. Well, in such waters the sinking rate of the intermediate line wasn’t slow enough and it made me retrieve the fly faster than it had to so it didn’t get stuck on the weeds. I got some trout, but a couple of English fishermen that were fishing along, so used to fish in lakes, widely out fished me by using floating lines and striping with an 8-figure motion of the hand. Only when I changed the clear line for a floating one attached to a 15-foot leader things improved, but I wasn’t used to strip so slowly. I had to pick it so slow that it appeared the next cast would never come, but it was the only way to get strikes, which were not easy at all to detect. These trout did not attack the flies; they just took them gently if they found them on their way.
Another time in a shallow bay of the lake where every trout looked like if they were floating in the air, I could see that the fly was in front of them and on the next moment it wasn’t, no movement had announced the bite, not even a fin had been moved; only the fly had disappeared amid a discrete suction of their gill plate. We just felt a difference in the line pressure on our fingers and the first move of the trout´s head when spitting the deceitful fly. Fortunately, modern hooks are so sharp that somewhere in the mouth they get hooked, but if we are not seeing the trout, many strikes go completely unnoticed.


I watched how the English fishermen worked their flies. One definitely fished in a different way than the other for having taken part in many fishing tournaments. I could tell this by the position in which the rod was placed by him; at all times maintaining a straight line with the fly in order to sense subtle changes that might indicate a take. The flies they used, unlike ours, are designed to be stripped very slow, they are simple models tied with a long tail of marabou, a rather short hook of no more than a size 6 with a chenille body and two turns of hackle as a collar. Later at the lodge, I tied several in black and olive tones that fished well the following days, although at times a bit tangled when casting. Overall, Bugger type flies, not heavily dressed, and Rabbits did very well, especially in olive tones. I did not think the type of fly was essentially important. Since there are so many fish that it is an interesting place to test all those flies that we never use for fear of failing.
In the protected bays the local wildlife no longer remembers the old Holocene hunters, the Patagonian birds eat bread from our hand and the foxes doze near the fire waiting for lunch to receive goodies which they cannot get in the steppe. But they are wild creatures, some days they are around and others they simply vanish for a stronger call than our temptations. Interacting with wild creatures like these sends us back into a world of feelings that were long asleep inside ourselves. Few places have made me feel the sensation of a breakup with time that takes us straight to the past, as the volcanic plateau of Strobel did. Maybe intimately we associate the volcanic areas with the primitive, I do not know; but you really do feel something special when watching those rocks.
Returning from a distant bay, Juan Pablo, one of the guides from Laguna Verde, stopped at a high area of the plateau which then formed a canyon that went directly to a valley and the lake. In the upper point, tens of stone parapets which the wind punished illustrated how they hunted for thousands of years. Hidden behind the parapets they awaited the herds of guanacos to pass to throw them obsidian-tipped arrows. 
The parapets are stone groupings placed one upon another which are crescent shaped, not too high but able to hide a human figure. We went over one by one and where one would sit and wait small obsidian shards seemed to be the remains left by hunters to repair the tips of their arrows. That they chose the same rocks to sit gave us goose bumps because the time gap shrinks, bringing them to present time at least as images in our minds. Closing our eyes while we heard the wind blowing over us, we could almost imagine those hunters wrapped in guanaco skins waiting, camouflaged until a guanaco passed by them.
Beyond the parapets and in isolation are some arrow tips that lead to good theories about why they are there. They may have gotten out of a shaft in a miss or get stuck in parts of guanaco´s bodies that were discarded, something else to think about when we have time. The obsidian stone points and remains found in the Strobel Plateau is black and comes from a site located about 50 miles north at the Pampa del Asador, where there is a good site for this volcanic glass. These obsidian projectiles are found in many different places in Patagonia indicating that the access to its source must have been well known by a large number of hunters. It may have been used as an exchange for other goods. With the remains of obsidian points appear scrapers that are no longer made of obsidian but other stones as silica. It is clear that they reserved the obsidian for spearheads and arrows using less noble materials for other less important tools. Evidently, the hunting area was at the top of the plateau.
When we got down fishing the Barrancoso I did not see any traces of spears or marks on the stones but I could not look much because the trout made me keep very active, taking an orange Fat Albert with the regularity of Swiss clockwork. Walking the Barrancoso downstream for a day is something I would do again and again. The plot is complicated and you have to move carefully but I have not seen any other place where trout of 4 to 12 pounds take a big dry so gently. The rise is soft, so soft that we can see the fly go into the mouth. There is no rush to hook them and it´s worth enjoying every rise at the most. If one gets away, you will find another one even bigger some yards ahead. We can choose to cast or not, sometimes just knowing that we can make them bite is enough. Large dries and mice flies produce such good takes that it is not worth trying with other flies. As they are trout about to spawn they attack without hesitation any invading underwater fly, with a dry we need to work more and they do not all rise, something that adds up to the challenge in every shot. With sinking flies the take is granted and it no longer feels good because there is no Fair Play.
It is interesting to think why these trout that come from the lake, where they only had consumed amphipods, still remember their young days on the river when they would rise to take a dry as if having a mayfly. With mice it´s different, they are flies that bother and try to get them out of position, the rise is violent and often they do not even grab the mouse with their mouths but they push it with a head movement. You get less bites but every rise transforms into a special memory. The Barrancoso trout are not selective, but as there are many and they are big, it is an ideal course to try new things without ever boring. It is a river where the angler can choose how to fish according to his feelings. I would love to come back just to film and photograph trout takes to a fly with no hook, I can´t think of a better place for this.
The wind that always accompanied us, as it should be in a place that rejuvenates the spirit, is not heavy on the Barrancoso. The river, as it is in a canyon, covers us from wind, allowing us to cast accurately. The shots are short because the river is narrow but must be accurate because of the way the trout are located: quite close to the stones. Fortunately, these are trout that rather fight in their pool without trying to run away. A blessing, these fish are so big that we would not be able to run down the river without breaking our bones. Juan Pablo told me that the river is full of trout in November, December and then in March and April. During January and February the water recedes and many of the larger trout go back to the lake. However, the river remains packed with hundreds of small resident trout and some bigger ones and still is an exciting choice.
I did not fish the last day, with Beto we fished the high ponds and the Moro River were there still were large trout. I had caught everything on the lake, enjoying bays where solitude was tangible and capable of transporting us to another reality, from the Barrancoso I took the best images of trout rising to a dry fly, for these reasons it was not necessary to assemble the rod again.
I was only missing one last contact with the past of the plateau and this was at a place called Faldeo Verde, were thousands of petro glyphs lead us directly to a remote past telling us a story that has survived thousands of years. Mountain lion footprints shrink and enlarge and they almost make us feel the same ancestral fear hunters had during the night when the fire was extinguished without notice, guanacos incessant footprints mark a primary objective, figures of adult footprints, children footprints, and women giving birth, all tales and games that tell the story of a family that is not so different from today.
Stepping away from the slope I realized that each petro glyph was in an ideal position to be seen, each one had something to report, to tell a story. I looked for stones where I would watch the lake and the prairie, and stretching down to the bottom of each stone I found obsidian fragments again left for thousands of years from a hunter fixing and sharpening the tips of their arrows and spears.
Sitting on the stones as the wind whistled above the slope I felt good, very good.