Chasing anadromous fish means that you understand the meaning of ”last week was…” or ” you should have been here then…” just too well. Chasing conditions were everything aligns perfectly is seemingly as elusive as the trophy chrome fish itself. Well, this is exactly what happened last week here at Las Buitreras/Rio Gallegos. The good, the bad and the ugly upfront. Many fish were landed – a 117 to be exact, a lot of them were big too. The bad, the soo sought after 20/20 club achievement remained untouched although 6 anglers (that’s more than 3/4 of our group) missed it by just one fish and pound. In other words 6 anglers caught 19fish including a 19lb! Mawil managed the 19/20! We are complaining on a very high level here… The ugly? Week no.5 is already on the run and might break the seasonal record so far. Here they are…
The lineup for these conditions was too good to be true. David Kleman and Derek Taylor know the river just as good as our guides do – their tenth trip down to Buitreras and certainly not the last one. Also, Sten Rudd and Bent C. Wilhelmsen are feared by Patagonian Seatrout – it’s their 8th consecutive viking invasion here. Mawill Lüdenbach, chrome addict and another regular-joker completed the bench of almost locals. The group joined forces with George Lenzi and his group of Japanese (Katsumori Mayasawa & Yoshinobu Taide) and Italian anglers (Ferruccio Rainoldi & Giani Stefani) Yet again, a colorful mix of nationalities all joined by the same idea of catching wild silver argentine seatrout in the desert.
Sink tip lines and slow intermediate lines were the tools of trade in the beginning of week no. 5. Proven pattern, just like the week before, mid-size tubes and hook flies in yellow, black, orange and green. The water level remains stable until the last two days, where a fresh push of water onto shuffled the deck once again. All in all, we are still not under the +20 barrier and we are not complaining about it either. Ten rods on 42 pools means 5 sections – a big rotation, that has proven to be very successful. Almost every section perfumed flawlessly, indicating that the main run of spring fish has spread all over the entire stretch of our water-shed. The usual windy welcome has seemingly passed this week’s group very much to the delight of our anglers. Our guides instead were praying for a bit of apocalypse for the first session since the good old saying “No wind, no fish” has some truth to it. Still 17 fish found their way to the landing nets – quite a start for the first day. Keeping the end result in mind, the week continued the way it started. The fishing was simply superb and whilst the endless landscape of Patagonia was filled with the sound of screaming reels equally much bragging was going on in the lodge after a hard day of fishing. Fishing tales and big seatrout being lost in space were the main topic even long after midnight.
