As Fly Water Travel’s Patagonia trout and sea trout Destinations Manager, I oversee 30 pretty spectacular operations. As you can imagine it takes considerable time, energy and resources to visit each of these lodges even once, making this year’s late January trip unique and special as this year I had the pleasure of revisiting two of my favorite long-term partners and programs, Estancia Despedida and Jurassic Lake Lodge. In addition to these being great programs individually, collectively this was a trip where the average fish size would prove hard to beat! As a special bonus, I had the pleasure of being joined by writer/journalist Jason Rolfe, the editor of Fly Fish Journal.
How did we get there:
Our group flew into Argentina on an overnight flight and arrived in Buenos Aires early the following morning. We spent the day exploring the city, ending our first day of travel with a fantastic dinner at Fervor, a black and white tiled, authentic steakhouse on the fabled Michelin list. The following morning, we made the final push to Tierra del Fuego with a 3.5-hour flight south to Ushuaia, famously known as “the end of the world”.
While Rio Grande city has a local airport just 45 minutes from the lodge, over the past few seasons the domestic airline carrier, Aerolineas Argentinas, has made those flight times unreasonably early in the morning. As a result, we elected to take a more relaxed midday flight from Buenos Aires to Ushuaia and ground transfer 3.5 hours to the lodge. The drive, albeit longer than the easy drive from Rio Grande city, gave us ample time to enjoy the landscape of Tierra del Fuego and make a quick pit stop at a local panaderia in the small town of Tolhuin to stock up on fresh pastries and empanadas for the final leg into the lodge.
What was your accommodation and meals like?
Despedida is a small, log-framed lodge that only takes six anglers per week in double occupancy rooms. There are no single rooms available, so guests double up, but the rooms are comfortable with en-suite bathrooms and offer a nice place to relax between fishing sessions and at the end of a long day of fishing.
We were well fed, and each day, the chef greeted us with a hearty spread of local meats, homemade breads, empanadas, and fresh pasta dishes that showcased many of Argentina’s specialties.
How was the fishing?
During the week I was constantly amazed by the sheer numbers and size of fish in the system. Large, chrome fish were rolling constantly, and without a doubt you knew that in the prime pools you were fishing over fish… a lot of them.
The river has been challenged with low water levels in recent years, and we found that the fish were more concentrated in fewer pools, rather than evenly distributed across a wide range of pools. That said, there were very good numbers of fish in the system by the time we arrived in late January and average catch rates over the week were solid with many large fish in the system, and some true monsters over 20lbs. The largest of the week was a stunning chrome-bright hen in the mid-20s.
Every fish we hooked was feisty, powerful, and incredibly acrobatic. These fish were also clever and knew exactly where every clump of structure was. Many did a great job of wrapping your line around various obstructions whenever possible. A far greater number of fish were hooked than landed, and that is one of the reasons most guests want to return here year after year.