Fish On

Welp, after five months in Patagonia i finally managed to get out to a river and get my hook wet! This past weekend i hopped on a bus with my friend French Will to the Rio Penitente. While the Rio Penitente is advertised as a premier fly fishing destination near Punta Arenas, it proved to be very popular with the locals but lacking in fish! Over the two days spent on the crystal clear waters i saw one good sized brown trout and hooked another that measured about six inches in length. Given that this is a fish tale, i'm probably being generous with that estimation. To add some insult to injury, i couldn't even land the little guy! The bit of shore i was pulling him onto was very shallow, and with all my care and caution he spit the hook out before i could get a picture. So it goes. Just another fish tale really.

As mentioned earlier, what the river was lacking in fish it made up for in people! And i'm not talking crowded by MT standards here, but i honestly saw 20+ Chilenos wading it's banks over about 5k of stream! What was even more surprising was the number of fisherman i saw spin casting. Over the two days i spent fishing I only saw one other person fishing with flies. I believe the low numbers of fly fisherman can be attributed to Patagonia being super windy. It was damn hard putting my fly where i wanted on the water. On the plus side, this was the first time in my life i was able to throw out 20 yard casts with ease. Go figure there was nothing in the river to bite.

One of the plus sides of fishing a crowded river is that we had ample opportunity to talk with the locals! Aside from "Buenas, que tal?" our main question was "donde estan todos los peces ocultando?" or "where are all the fish hiding?" Most of the Chilenos would just smile and shrug and make a joke of our crazy gringo questions. Fortunately, one Chileno took our question seriously and took the time to explain that this past winter was too cold for the fish or something. I only understood every other word he said, but I always thought cold weather was good for cold water fisheries. Chalk it up to being lost in translation i guess...