The season has just started in Patagonia and every year we are looking for new places and adventures. I´m a fishing guide so, this is the time were I enjoy myself with friends fishing and scouting places. This year we got a few days to kill the anxiety that we bred the whole winter. Therefore, I will just show you some of the surroundings of Gallegos zone and places where you can fish while you come for sea runs or the mystic rainbows of Jurassic Lake.
Chico Sur River
This place is a must for the brook fans. You hunt the fish in slow water pools mostly and in some narrow runs where the main current hits the cut banks, that´s the place you aim to find while you walk and spot fish. This a typical spring creek but wider than usual and quite deep too. For years, this place was totally opened for everyone and the fishing pressure was extremely high putting the number of trophy fish down. This fact also made some of the big fish a lot more smart and alert, and fortunately kept some of them safe. Now most of the properties where this river runs don´t open the gates to often what has probably caused the recovery of this fishery on the last years.
When you think on brooks you think on a pound or maybe two, but this river has given fishes up to 8 or 9 pds. I must tell a short tale about one of the estancias house where the slaughter goes right above the river. It was end of the season in the 50ties´and my uncle was fishing close to that place with a pot and some thread (we call it LATA). After a while, a piece of wood he was watching close to the shore started to take life, and swam to get some of the rest of the sheep meat that was coming through the slaughter drain; my uncle Tito grab his net and took the monster inside with the bad luck of braking the wood handle and almost losing the fish. He got into the water and came out with a brook that weighed 8 kg, and both eyes white. Sadly, I could never get that picture, but the legend remains still in my family.
This season on a windy afternoon, I and my friend Claudio managed to get some nice brooks using #5 weights loop exact and grey line rods, floating and sinking lines and weighed flies. It was our first fishing afternoon after months so the excitement made us walk for miles, but on the way back we didn´t notice that the wind was blowing way over 40 miles. We barely made it to the car!
Estancia Río Pelke
The other place, I consider it my home, where I spent summers chasing fish and learning to love my land. Estancia Río Pelke, where I´ll be receiving some anglers right on next week, surprised me with some big browns this time. One of my personal best came out last weekend.
I call my friend Hector to scout a piece of water that could be good on a high water condition. We found that this beat was crowded with some amazing browns. This place is one the best spring creeks you could imagine. In some places, the channel is a meter wide and then it can get 40 meters and force you to cast a #4 weight rod with more distance. We walk and fish the whole way, that is the fun this river, the browns are in every piece of water that is more than a meter deep. If you stay down close to any of these pools, you see them jumping and hunting bugs. Here you can catch browns of 5 pds and brookies over a kilo, dry flies and streamers are the choices with a floating line the whole time.
