skills to pull a string of fish from the
roaring torrent. The guides were well
impressed when one of the fish topped
nine pounds.
Once you leave the lodge at 9am,
you don’t return until 7pm. You
stay down at water level, with the
guides providing a cooked lunch with
fine wines at a three-sided shed
overlooking one of the best spots in the
entire lake. It was heaven on a stick as
you finished your meal and then began
catching double figure fish again – not
a hundred metres away. You could see
dozens of these huge trout swimming
up and down only six metres out from
you. Pick your target and hang on!
Our party enjoyed three days of
fantastic still weather and the fishing
that goes with it, but as usual, all things
must pass, and it ended in spectacular
fashion as 40 knot winds roared down
the lake. Luckily, we could put our back
to it and fish a small peninsula, but
you had to be seriously careful of the
swells that built and smashed into the
shore next to you. We finished our stay
exhausted and sore from all the casting,
but both over the moon about scoring
every fly fisherman’s dream – a double
figure wild rainbow trout.
However, things can change in a
flash. Our fishing hat trick adventure
went pear-shaped the very next day, as
we literally flew to the end of the world.
Ushuaia is situated at the bottom
of South America and is the largest
city in Argentine Tierra del Feugo. It is
recognised as the southernmost town in
the world with snow-capped peaks and
a huge bay.
Unfortunately, we had a bad first
impression when our guides failed to
meet us. I spent a fruitless two hours
trying to contact them. It turned out
Kau Tapen Lodge didn’t have a phone,
and all the emergency travel numbers
failed to answer on this Saturday
afternoon. I was forced to hire a small
taxi for $US300 for the three-hourjourney with a driver who didn’t know
English. It turns out the Lodge didn’t
have a sign on the front gates, and we
drove straight past, only to round a
corner on the remote Patagonian gravel
road and hit a cyclist! I thought we
had run over him. Amazingly, the rider
bounced off, receiving just cuts and
bruises, although his bike was crushed.
He handed our driver a torrent of abuse
in Spanish that made the surrounding
sheep run for cover!
Luckily, a group of locals turned up to
help sort the mess. We turned back for
the Lodge, to be greeted with profuse
apologies about being left stranded.
Kau Tapen Lodge sits on the Rio
Grande River and boasts some of the
biggest sea-run wild brown trout in the
world. There are two fishing sessions
from 9am-1pm, then 6-11pm. The later
period is known as the ‘Magic Hour’
or ‘La Hora Mágica’ when the sun can
often turn a fiery red over the Andes
Mountains to the west, and the monsters
come out to play. Big tube flies in black
combinations were the ticket for the
evening, and we both landed and lost big
fish. Dave even scored two 22-pound
fish in the last half an hour of the final
evening session.
The gear was a revelation, consistingof 12-14 foot (4m) spey rods with
Skagit lines that have a range of
floating and sinking 10-foot tips. This
is the gear you see in movies, ads and
fishing magazines used by Scottish
and English salmon fishermen. They
are now the rage throughout North
America. The around-the-shoulder
casting takes a short time to come
to grips with, but once you get it, the
system is sensational on big rivers and
estuaries. You can cast a long way with
little effort. There are also single hand
spey rod systems, and some anglers
are using them in South Australia. My
first Rio Grande wild brown was a 12
pounder and the rod and sinking tip#8 fly outfits are standard tackle on Jurassic LakeThose Rio Grande sea
runners are mighty fishuoS
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(^56) rleg http://www.saangler.com.au