Tierra del Fuego: Endless Travel, Unceasing Wind & Monstrous Wild Trout

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.

I find that one of the most appealing aspects of fishing for sea-run browns is that you can “work” the fish and prime parts of the pools, constantly changing your approach to entice them to grab your fly. This is a different tactic from most of my steelhead fishing at home, where we make a pass or two over a pool and keep moving to find a player. At Despedida, we knew the fish were there, and the guides were constantly changing fly size, color, leader length, and retrieval speeds to see what worked best. We had to pull out every trick in the toolkit and when it all came together, it was a great feeling! 

We also spent a magical day on the Rio Menedez, the Rio Grande’s largest tributary, hooking huge fish in small water. It was a remarkable experience.

What was your go to set up?
The guides' techniques have evolved over the years, and especially in low water, they prefer to fish with single hand rods with a modified sink tip set up, more so than two handed rods. My primary rod was a 9’0” 8wt Sage R8 CORE, with a Sage Arbor XL reel, and 15-feet of T-11 as the casting line, attached loop to loop to 25-lb slick shooter running line. This unconventional approach proved itself, enabling us to cut through the wind and get the fly deep quickly to where the fish were hanging out at the bottom of the pool. It resulted in many hook ups and required some skill and craft, but admittedly, this fishing style is not for traditionalists. 

I also fished a 12’6” 7-wt Sage R8 SPEY rod with a matching RIO Scandi-Versitip and 12-foot tapered leader. This was a great set up when conditions were right for a floating line, and I found several quality fish on the surface during the evening sessions using sun ray shadows and even a skated muddler I pulled out of my summer steelhead playbook. 

Jurassic Lake Lodge - Trophy Rainbow Extension
While planning the trip, several in my group acknowledged that there were just not enough fishing days on the Rio Grande for the multiple days of travel it took to get to and from Tierra del Fuego. We decided to extend our trip with a big travel day to add a trophy rainbow trout extension with a 4 night/3 day visit to Jurassic Lake Lodge.

Getting there was a bit of an adventure. Following our week at Despedida, we took an early morning 3.5-hour shuttle from the lodge back to Ushuaia, jumped on a quick 1-hour commercial flight to El Calafate, and made a 6-hour ground transfer into Jurassic Lake Lodge. An option is available for groups that would like to shorten this transfer by paying for a charter flight direct from Rio Grande to Jurassic Lake Lodge.

For those looking to extend their trips to the sea-run brown trout rivers of southern Argentina or elsewhere in Patagonia, Jurassic Lake Lodge offers shorter packages during January – April. This is a great way to add a handful of quality trophy rainbows to your trip. Mid-January through mid-March is traditionally considered the slower season compared to other times of the year, and we knew this going in and set our expectations accordingly. The guides and staff at Jurassic did an excellent job of showing us an incredible three days, and each of us had several great fish to hand. I found the fishing and hanging out with the guests and staff to be a fun and rewarding experience.

The biggest change to our plans came about three weeks before we arrived at Jurassic Lake when the Barrancoso River, the only inlet to Jurassic Lake, experienced a record rain event that was the equivalent of their annual rainfall in just two hours. The intense high flows carved off up to 10 meters of cliff-like bank and pushed countless large boulders into the lower reaches of the river. Most notable, the first major holding pool, “The Aquarium” was completely carved away by the flows and a new river mouth was formed about 100 meters to the right from its previous location.

One of my favorite moments of the trip came when Jason found a small jaw-shaped object the size of a fingernail sticking out of the bank on the newly formed river mouth. He brought it up to the lodge to show us and immediately photos were sent around to local Patagonian paleontologists to understand what he had found. After connecting with an expert at the natural history museum in El Calafate, Jason’s finding was identified as an ancient fossil from a relative of the chinchilla and estimated to be 6 – 25 million years old! 

Despite arriving right after the significant rain event, my experience was that Jurassic Lake remains one of the world’s premier trophy trout fisheries and is a great option for folks looking to add a trophy rainbow trout extension to their Patagonia travels.

Who is this trip best for?
There are two aspects of fishing in Tierra del Fuego that there is just no getting around regardless of the week you are on. First, the journey is long. It takes two days to get there, so guests should be prepared for several flights, a hotel stay, and with the new Aerolineas schedules, a longer drive into the lodge than many anglers have experienced in the past. Second, the wind is real. The joke is that the first thing you learn as a guide in Tierra del Fuego is how to park the truck facing the wind correctly, so the doors don’t blow off when you open them. That said, the wind can also be an advantage by creating waves that provide cover for the fish to make them feel more comfortable, and in the right position with the wind at your back, casting couldn’t be easier to lob the line across the river.

Even with those factors, southern Argentina’s sea-run brown trout fisheries remain one of the world's most sought after for good reason, drawing hundreds of anglers each year. In a world where sea-run fish numbers seem to be on a perilous path, the Rio Grande continues to produce, and it was great to get a firsthand look at an abundant wild fishery. 

Contact our expert Jake Crawford below to learn more about these destinations and check remaining availability.