By: Rasmus Ovesen
Photos By: Rasmus Ovesen, Anders Ovesen, and Pedro Rodriguez
Another one of Jurassic Lake’s massive fish wrenches away from my hands as I carefully remove the barbless streamer from its powerful jaws and release it. It flings cascades of cold water into the air with its iridescent green tail fin as it shoots forward through the water –startled and willfully headed for the drop off, along which the rest of the school of rainbow trout are foraging.
Having weighed in the vicinity of five solid kilos, the fish was close to the absolutely mental average size on this lake. It is one out of several fish that have remorselessly hit our flies during this April-morning, where the winds have continuously picked up. My 8-weight is packed away along with the remainder of my gear further down the beach, and with wind gusts starting to reach gale-force levels, I’ve decided that it’s time for the 6-weight to give way for heavier artillery. I pack away the 6-weight and bow down to pick up my 8-weight. As I grab it, I hear the giggling laughter of the guides somewhere behind me.
The cheeky buggers - who have settled momentarily behind their truck for a bit of shelter and a gulp of nourishing, warm Argentinian mate. I have tied a large, bright red spoon onto the end of my leader, while I was busy fighting and releasing my last rainbow trout. “Ha, ha, ha! Classic guide humor”, I think to myself! But I pretend as if nothing has happened and just play along.
The laughter falls silent, when –shortly after – I do the unimaginable: I get the spoon airborne, blind cast it for a bit and send it far off into deeper water. The silence doesn’t last for very long, however. Because when a big rainbow trout resolutely hits the spoon and gets hooked, all of us are about to die laughing!
Since 2005, when it was first properly discovered, Jurassic Lake in the southern reaches of Patagonia, has stood for me as one of the most monumental fly fishing destinations in the world: A tantalizing and remote fishery in a barren and windswept desert with rainbow trout of near-mythical proportions. And every time I have heard stories about the lake’s spectacular fishing or seen pictures of the almost unrealistically big and shapely fish that are caught there, I’ve felt a relentless pull within. The fact that it has taken me more than 10 years to finally materialize at the lake’s pock marked shores, therefore shouldn’t be ascribed to a lack of wanderlust or attraction. No, the answer lies, rather, in the seeming paradox of the place: How it has come to embody something unachievable, an impossibility – an unfulfilled promise.
It’s not coincidental that I have a long history of traveling to faraway destinations with a naive and open mind –without having properly adjusted my expectations or done much research. Too often, I have experienced how something that sounded too good to be true, actually was. And, personally, I feel much better being positively surprised than disappointed. Unfortunately, when it comes to well-exposed fisheries, there’s an increasingly drastic difference between history, reputation and marketing on the one hand and reality (or personal experience) on the other.
And as my brother and I land at Lago Strobel – on the rudimentary landing strip recently built by Jurassic Lake Lodge – and we make our way to the lake via windy and uneven gravel roads – the myth is suddenly on an unavoidable collision course with reality. Everything that I’ve previously heard about this place is now in a wrestling hold with all the sensory impressions my over-stimulated brain is bombarded with – and one simple question begs an answer: Will the fishing be able to match the immense expectations that I’ve managed to build up over the years?
Now that it’s late April - and with the imminence of a relentlessly long and bitterly cold winter, the season is slowly but surely coming to an end, and - according to the guides - the fishing is far from optimal. But, frankly, that suits me just fine!
When, in December and January, the fishing is at its best, it is actually TOO good! This is confirmed by the many stories told by the guides – stories involving vulgar amounts of trout, concentrated along the shoreline in front of Jurassic Lake Lodge where the lake’s only tributary, the Barrancoso River, pours in – and where enduring fly fishermen have caught more than 100 rainbow trout in a single day. (With an average weight of about five kilos that comes to the quasi-industrial catch of half a ton of rainbow trout in less than 24 hours!)
During our first day by the lake - we experience something that few ever experience: A completely windless day, where Lago Strobel’s otherwise frothing surface is like a big, shiny mirror. Bathed in warm light, we move along the beaches and the rocky, lunar-like shores eagerly looking for fish. And it doesn’t take us long before we locate small schools of relatively apathetic and spooky fish swimming about at random. Some nerve-wracking and highly challenging sight-fishing awaits us, and having extended our leaders considerably with cobweb-thin tippets and experimented a bit with flies and presentation, the first few fish nervously start to react.
I’ve sent off a cast in front of a few fish circling around near a well-defined drop-off, and as I start retrieving the fly, I immediately capture the interest of one of the fish. It lazily pursues the fly, following its monotonous path through the crystal-clear water with a body-language that, at the same time, seems both tense and indifferent.
Shortly after, a vague tug propagates through the fly line, and as I lift the rod, the fish sheds all of its seeming indolence. All hell breaks loose, and I now find myself desperately trying to cushion the effect of a ragingly heavy run, which is only briefly interrupted by hectic scenes of tumultuous headshakes and meter-high jumps.
In deeper water – with a full fly line and some 40 meters of backing dragging behind it – the fish finally dis continues its attempted escape and changes tactics. It now tries to find shelter along the lake’s jagged subaqueous tufa-reefs, and all I can do is lift the rod, put maximum pressure on the fish and pray to God that the leader isn’t cut off.
When - a good while later, the fish glides across the frame of my landing net and into the trap of the rubber mesh netting, a loud, cheerful roar is impossible to hold back. My first Jurassic Lake rainbow trout is a reality – and what a fish! It must weigh in the vicinity of six solid kilos, and it is among the most flawless and beautiful fish I've ever seen: Dashingly chrome, with blushing red gills and infinitesimal ink stains along its iridescent green back. And the tail fin!
The massive and well-defined tail fin displays a glittering mother-of-pearl glow that radiates from the base, as if all the centrifugal powers from the fish’ fierce tail slaps have made the silvery glow of the flanks exude into the very tips of each tail fin-ray.
After two days with some of the best sight-fishing I've ever experienced, the inevitable happens – the winds pick up! It’s as if the weather gods have taken a long, deep breath in order to thoroughly blow the whole desert apart one last time before winter emerges and covers everything in snow and frost.
The howling winds rip and tear at everything that manages to stay erect, and the lake has now re-transformed into its usual self: A roaring ocean, where meter-high waves crash relentlessly onto the shore, partly blown apart by heavy gusts that cause a swirling haze of foam and droplets to rise from the lake. And this is only the beginning…
The beautiful Barrancoso River is really an unjustified parenthesis in the history of Jurassic Lake. Because even though the river rarely yields fish that rival Jurassic Lake’s monster fish in size, it offers some incredible sight- and close combat-style fishing with plenty of shots at fish in the 3 – 7 kilo range. It is a technically demanding fishery, where stealth skills, precise casts and calm nerves are required, but it’s worth the whole journey in and of itself.
Equipped with light single-handed rods, thin leaders and small streamers, we share many unforgettable moments on the Barrancoso River. But we’re at our most ecstatic, when we manage to land a couple of fish on dry flies and mouse patterns. The experience leaves us craving for more, and for the next couple of days - as the winds die down just a little bit, and the gale force gusts - which have rendered the lake a foaming inferno - run out of breath, we reappear at the lake shores armed with big, buoyant dry flies.
Seeing and 9-kilo trout confidently rise through the water column and gulp down a dry fly at close range is indescribably cool! And it happens repeatedly during our last two days at Jurassic Lake. As we’re about to find out, the lake’s chromers aren’t merely interested in scuds, and they always keep an eye upwards – even when the winds are howling and ripping at the water surface.
