It is dusk and I am trying to perfect the art of standing still. Staying motionless is never easy at the best of times, but with the sun becoming lower and lower in the sky, any movement and my shadow will throw a shape of exaggerated size and form. Sea trout are notoriously sensitive to any sudden changes in light and I have no choice but to wait, and wait, until I can no longer see my presence across the pool. As most sea trout anglers know, your chances of catching fish increases as the light diminishes and their natural caution reduces, resulting in more active and confident fish. It was now 9pm on the Rio Grande and this was the time. I had an hour before I had to be off the river.
I scan the water. Nothing moving yet. It’s been a day of glare and wind, and the water feels cold. I wade very gingerly into the river, not too far in, maybe 5 feet from the edge and at a depth of knee height. These fish are easy to spook, and I have been told that they can move out of the deep channels that provide cover during the day and into the shallower water as the light goes. It would be a stupid mistake to wade too far or too deep, and I don’t want to cause too much water disturbance by inadvertently standing within a flow channel that could take scented water into the very place that the fish could be lying. I am now in the right place and remember again to stand still. Still nothing moving. I know there are fish in the pool across from me as I have seen them move the previous day.
The final hour of the day is my favourite time to be on a river and if I had to choose I would always fish at this time. I enjoy a heightened sense of anticipation, of possibility, and of hope. Unfortunately, it’s only when I get the chance to travel to more remote destinations that I make full use of the opportunities to fish late. No family to return to, no long drive home, no work the next day. It’s a great time to be fishing, and especially when you are trying to catch some of the legendary sea-run brown trout on the Rio Grande.
Now I can wait no longer, and releasing line from the reel, I wait for the Skagit head to pull below the rod tip and I sweep the rod to the vertical and punch a cast across the river. Now at last I am fishing. One upstream mend and the line ticks with the flow of the river and makes its way downstream. Nothing moves. I cast again, but this time I put movement into the fly. I am fishing a Black Intruder, a well known steelhead pattern, with a size 6 single hook extended two inches behind the body of the fly. It’s a fly designed to pulse as it swings across the current, and this cast I bring the fly to life.
Intruder beware…
The cast is straight, there is tension on the line, and I make a slow sawing motion as I pull line towards me and then release. I am not retrieving any line, just imparting the faintest jag of life to the fly as it swings across the current. Tick, tick, tick. Suddenly a fish rises. I can make out the light change on the water surface but little else. Did he rise to my fly or did the fly line disturb him? Only one way to find out and I cast again into the same part of the pool but this time lengthen my retrieve in order to give more movement to the fly. This time maybe..I know he’s there. I lean forward over the rod.. Tick, tick, tick when suddenly the line is wrenched away from me, and a fish explodes out the water. Wonderful, I have hooked him, but now what? This is my first Rio Grande sea trout and I try and remember the guide’s advice…’Get pressure on him, keep the rod tip high, get out of the river, tighten the drag, keep him off balance, apply side-strain, walk backwards and try and beach him’…my first thought was unprintable, but my second was that’s easy for him to say, and much harder for me to remember in the split seconds I have to gain control of this fish! I tighten and slowly start to walk backwards in order to bring the fish towards me. He moves in the other direction and my rod is pulled horizontal as I move one way and the fish the other. I move forward quickly towards the fish and suddenly a surge of energy and the fish propels itself out of the water. I lower the rod tip and hope that I am still connected. Such power. This continued for another few minutes before the fish was safely in the net, photographed and quickly released. Wow, are all Rio Grande fish like this? The answer was to prove a very conclusive yes.
This was my first visit to Argentina and I have long wanted to have a crack at the runs of migratory sea trout that run the Rio Grande in Tierra del Fuego. Much has been written about the fabulous runs of fish, their size and hard fighting qualities and I was keen to experience first hand how these sea trout compare to their cousins who forge the well known rivers of Wales and Sweden. Would the stories of winds that bluster one minute and howl the next be true? Was casting across windswept water going to be as tricky as I feared? Technique-wise should I fish as if for salmon or big brown trout…or a combination of both approaches? Were the elemental forces easily forgotten by the pull of a big fish, or would I be battling against nature for 6 days?
I decided to fish Villa Maria’s water that is situated towards the mouth of the Rio Grande only a few kilometres in from the sea. I figured that this early proximity meant that this was as good a chance as any of intercepting the runs of fish. I also liked the fact that Villa Maria takes only six anglers, and as I discovered four out of the six were on multiple repeat visits to the fishery. Clearly something was working well and that the experience was good enough to be repeated.
An endless sky
We were fishing water no more than 5 kilometres from the sea and the first runs of fish had already moved further up the river. They had come earlier this year. No matter as the Rio Grande fish are obviously migratory but are understood to go no further than 40 miles from the mouth of the river. They feed intensively on the squid, krill and sardine shoals off the coast of the Falkland Islands, and then year after year the same fish return to the Rio Grande to spawn. There are few predators, and the fish are in fantastic condition as they enter the river system. Scientific research conducted in 2011 concluded that the total run size for the fish is 85,000, with some of the sea trout being as much as 12 years old. They are perfectly shaped creatures, with huge shoulders and depth. In fact, the study proved that Rio Grande sea trout can be as much as 20% bigger than their Atlantic salmon cousins of the same length. Whilst length is interesting in demonstrating the health of the fishery, it’s the weight of the fish that inspires me. The average weight of the Sea trout here is 9+lbs, and one in 5 is over 15lbs. One in fifty is over 30lbs. There can be few places on earth that produce fish of such quality and in such numbers.
Another beautiful fish..
Heavy rain during the previous two weeks had colored the water, and the rise in levels had enticed many fish to move further up the river. Nevertheless, in these far from ideal conditions, all of us in the group caught fish and we had 66 large sea trout for the 6 days of fishing. My average weight was 14lbs, and six fish were caught of over 20lbs, and the biggest at 24lbs. Great fishing by any standards. For me after listening to the very experienced guides, a few themes emerged which, if followed, really boosted your chances of success.
The first was to make sure that you covered the water carefully. Cast after cast needs to land 6 inches to a foot from the far bank to enable the fly to swing into the deeper undercut channels where the fish like to lie. Cast too short and the fly isn’t fishing over fish. A heavy fly, attached to a T14 (or even T17) sink-tip, is sometimes essential to reach the holding depth before the fly has swung out of the channel. Each cast should ideally be two paces further downstream but at the same distance each time. Cast and repeat, cast and repeat. Secondly, the ability to cast off both shoulders is a big advantage. A downstream wind for the right hander is straightforward, but an upstream wind makes the mockery of us all unless we can double Spey or cast left handed. I learnt to cast left handed during the trip. It took a little time and a lot of practice in a 35kmph upstream wind!
I was told that it is only considered really blowing hard when one of two things occur. Either you are standing in water at knee height but that the force of the wind will blow spray over your head, or you are simply unable to make yourself heard to the person standing next to you. Thankfully I experienced neither! However, the third piece of advice was to make sure that rods and lines were suitably balanced for the heavy wind that you might experience in Tierra del Fuego. It’s difficult to know when you have never been to a new destination whether the rod and line combination that has worked for you in Scotland or Iceland will work on the Rio Grande. In spite of pre-trip research the reality of standing at the top of the pool in a strong upstream wind proved that the lines I had bought were too light for the conditions and that the 480 grain shooting head for the 12 ft 6 in switch rod was insufficient to give me the necessary line control when casting. I quickly changed lines to a 580 grain shooting head and the difference in distance and wind cut through was palpable.
Finally we caught fish using a variety of different methods. We were constantly changing line density from intermediates [with Collie Dogs and Sunrays] to heavier T14 and ultimately T 17 lines [Intruders and small nymphs]. Flexibility is key, and upstream rolled nymphs into deep channels proved to be a highly successful technique even in high water. One minute ‘traditional’ across and down techniques as if fishing for salmon, the next Czech nymphing, very much a trout and grayling method. Versatility and the willingness to experiment is very important.
The experience was as good as I could have hoped. It was great to be out of the UK in February, the fishing was excellent, and I came back with a sense of having been very fortunate to have experienced the Rio Grande in all its raw and rugged beauty.
This article first appeared in The ‘Flyfishers Journal’. The journal of the Fly Fishers Club at 69 Brook Street, London W1K 4ER.
Thanks to the three excellent guides from Villa Maria: Jason Jagger, Alejandro Martello and Augustin Garcia.
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