The Wall Street Journal - 07.03.2020 - 08.03.2020

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ADVENTURE & TRAVEL


once in the morning and once
in the evening, so that we
saw all of its varieties in all
sorts of light.
Ahead of us stretched a lot
of fishing. As in, a whole lot
of fishing. Four hours in the
morning, followed by a large
lunch and a long siesta, and
closer to five hours in the
evening, from 5:30 until dark-
ness fell around 11:00. For six
days in a row.
Feet in the current, we
were at last casting flies into
a river in Patagonia, not quite
elegantly but with enough
distance to earn a nod from
Carlos on shore. We’d arrived.
We were in the hunt. I got
lucky and felt an explosion in
the first half-hour: a 12-pound
sea trout that darted and
leapt and splashed water in
my face when we let him
loose. With tips from the
guides and a lot of practice,
our casts improved. When we
got the motions right, an ac-
tion that seemed complex be-
gan to feel simple and the line
shot through the rod with
such satisfaction that I hardly
cared about the fish. I became
entranced by the rhythms, the
flickering of the river and the
abundant birdlife. Time itself
took on a liquid quality and
slipped by unnoted.
We drove back some
nights across the pampas
with the last silvery sheen of
the day still on the river.
Sheep, the ostrich-like rheas,
the graceful guanacos, foxes,
tall hares, caracara hawks
and black-necked swans all

scattered at our approach.
As the swans took flight,
they transformed from un-
gainly creatures to the quin-
tessence of grace. The sheep
remained clumsy no matter
how far they ran, but their
plenitude turned huge mead-
ows into a glimpse of Eden.
The lodge resounded dur-
ing the off hours with a sin-
gular obsession for fish. By
the third day I felt I had
joined a monastic order com-
mitted solely to fishing, with
a vow of silence unless one
was talking of fish. When not
fishing, sleeping, eating, prac-
ticing casts or telling fish sto-

ries, this brotherhood sorted
flies, swapped out lines on
fishing rods, or studied the gi-
ant map on the wall to plot
the next outing. We fished
calm waters under gray skies
and in full sun. We fished in
the heaviest of winds, with
gusts that would ground
planes at LaGuardia. We
fished when it was gusty, cold
and wet—weather others
would call miserable but that
we somehow found hilarious.
“That was amazing,” Shailagh
said, piling into the Hilux after
an hour casting against 40
mph crosswinds. I had
watched in awe as the waves

HOT RODSFrom top: Fly-fishing for sea-run brown trout on Patagonia’s Rio Gallegos; a red fox.

beat at the backs of her wad-
ers and the last light seeped
from the sky.
We generally tally our
travel pleasures by vineyards
visited, mountains hiked,
sunsets seen. Rarely do we
set off on trips that demand
mastering new skills. That
test our dexterity and bal-
ance. In Patagonia, rod in
hand, you just want the mo-
ment when you anticipate
the huge sea trout, divine
the pool in which he rests,
and then lure him from the
depths with the well-placed
fly. The reward is a higher
form of enchantment.
One evening I fell into a
rhythm of making long casts
to exact targets far across the
river, casts that went taut
straight to the reel, and
thought: Please don’t let
this end. Just a little more
light. Just a few more
casts. Such was the joy of
standing there.

A week at Estancia Las
Buitreras, all inclusive, starts
at $4,990 per person and
can be booked at flywater-
travel.com DIEGO EIGUCHI (RIO GALLEGOS); JARED ZISSU (FOX); GETTY IMAGES (WYOMING); MATTHEW COOK (MAP)

Alaska
Wood-Tikchik
State Park
Vast, remote, stun-
ningly beautiful, Wood-
Tikchik is also home to
five varieties of Pacific
salmon, pike, char, you
name it. Mosquitoes,
too, when the wind
isn’t howling.


Idaho
Middle Fork of the
Salmon River
Fish for native cut-
throat amid utter gor-
geousness on a 100-


mile float trip. Lots of
white-water included.

Wyoming
Pinedale
The waters around
Pinedale and the Wind
River Range teem with
the ultimate in low-
cost dirt-road trout
fishing. Bucket-list
travelneedn’tbehard
or expensive.

Bolivia
Upper Amazon
If you like jungles,
snakes and dugout ca-

noes, go land some
golden dorado in Bo-
livia. They’re enormous,
and fight like crazy.

Chile
Torres del Paine
If you can divert your
eyes from the jagged
peaks, the rivers here
offer spectacular fish-
ing for sea trout,
browns and king
salmon. Gauchos and
hiking, too.

Mexico
Baja, East Cape

Chase rooster fish,
marlin and dorado
from a panga, the lo-
cal fishing boat, be-
tween Cabo San Lu-
cas and La Paz.
Margaritas to follow.

Seychelles
Alphonse islets
These tiny islands
are far—smack in the
middle of the Indian
Ocean—but the shal-
low flats abound
with bonefish and
seven species of truly
giant trevally.

PRIME BAIT/SEVEN OTHER SPOTS TO ADD TO YOUR FLY-FISHING BUCKET LIST


For fly-fishing pros, Argentina’s Patagonia is paradise. But what happens when two nervous neophytes wade in?


Life in the Cast Lane


ing guide from Wyoming. Two
angling buddies fresh from
fishing in Tierra del Fuego.
Another guide, from Connecti-
cut and his wife. In all, 13 an-
glers who had clocked thou-
sands of hours on rivers
around the world. Eleven
men, two women. Including
us, the dunces.
The intimidation factor
ticked up a notch when I
learned that the group in-
cluded four certified master
casters who spent whole af-

ternoons on the lodge’s front
yard practicing specialized
casts and tossing around
pointers. Masters instructing
masters, like Tom Brady fine-
tuning the screen pass with
Aaron Rodgers.
Our first full day, well
breakfasted and snapped into
our waders, Shailagh and I
set out at 8:30 sharp with
our first guide for the week,
Carlos, in one of the ranch’s
mighty Toyota Hilux 4X4s.
The plan was to fish the
river’s six huge zones twice
over the coming six days,

A


WEEK UNLIKE
any of the other
3,000 or so I
have spent on
Earth began as
a birthday surprise from my
wife. Seven days at a remote
fly-fishing lodge in Argen-
tina, in the far south of Pata-
gonia. Here we were, the fly-
fishing equivalent of duffers,
booked to fish some of the
most challenging bucket-list
waters in the world. Patago-
nia is the land of lunkers—
huge seagoing brown trout,
steelhead, Pacific salmon—in
big rivers that demand fi-
nesse and serious casting
chops. The lodge’s list of rec-
ommended gear went on for
a page: two-handed Spey
rods, this and that fly line,
flies with names like Woolly
Buggers and Chernobyl Ants.
“This is some pretty intense
stuff, Shailagh,” I said to my
wife, marveling at the mate-
rials. “We’ll figure it out,”
she replied.
That we had to bring
our own gear was daunt-
ing in its own right. Once
we had our new rods, a
friend showered me with
videos on proper Spey
casting techniques—the
two-handed method pio-
neered in Scotland in the
mid-1880s to hurl flies across
the gusty River Spey. We prac-
ticed on the Potomac River
near our house in Washing-
ton—a sobering experience.
Our destination was the Es-
tancia Las Buitreras, a vast
and gorgeous sheep ranch
three hours by jet from Bue-
nos Aires and as far south on
the globe as Labrador is
north. It was a landscape rem-
iniscent of the American prai-
rie but with volcanic necks
and huge random rocks of so-
lidified lava that added to its


end-of-Earth feel. Twenty-five
miles of the meandering Rio
Gallegos flowed through the
ranch, bringing snowmelt
down from the Andes and sea
trout back up to spawn. That
river would be our focus for
the week ahead.
As we settled into the
lodge—crisp guest rooms up-
stairs, dining table for 16 and
ample room to sprawl down-
stairs—we started to swap
tales with our fellow guests
for the week. A father and son
duo from the far north of
Scotland. A professional fish-


BYNEILKING


I felt like I had joined a monastic order


committed solely to fishing.


Wyoming’s Wind River Indian Reservation. The Wind River Range teems with every kind of trout.


Iamthe


beginning


of many


ideas.


MAX, AGE 11, BOSTON

STUDENTS WRITE THE FUTURE.
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